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market-farming - [Market-farming] Food enough for all.....

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  • From: "rebecca" <rebecca AT gaiagardener.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Food enough for all.....
  • Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 13:17:06 -0500

snip
> On this note...any other Farmer's Market managers out there, does anyone
> know what it takes to set up a market to be able to accept Food
> Stamps or the WICK program?

I'm a market manager in Oklahoma. This year we have people working on the
Senior Nutrition Program - we don't yet know if we have the gov't funding.
If we get the funding, then the farmers have to attend a training. Once
they attend the training, they are certified and can accept the checks at
the market or at the farm.

The program we are putting into place is a system of checks. Every
qualifying senior will receive something like $40 worth of checks/season.
The checks will be in $4-5 increments (I pushed for $2, but no one listened
to me). The farmer can then cash that check and go on about his business.

We are hoping that if this is successful, our WIC program will follow. We
tried WIC first, but they said they were too busy doing the programs they
already have in place.

I looked into Food Stamps, but they're a problem. Any more they are all on
a debit card, so you have to have access to a phone line to put it through
(just like with a credit card, except you can't do a carbon thing). Our
market is an outdoor market and this is not something we can accomodate -
too bad too, poor people need the access to fresher fruits and veggies even
more than people that aren't poor.

Rebecca





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