University Place

My name is Kristin Krokowski. I'm the Commercial Horticulture Educator in Waukesha County for UW-Extension. Today's presentation is called Expanding Community Food Access through Farmers' Markets. We have a group of five different people working in different areas around the state on different types of programs. So first of all, we're gonna be starting with, Starting a Farmers' Market EBT Program. The next presenter will talk about Attaining EBT Self-Sufficiency. Next is Building Community Relationships to Expand Food Access. Next is Farmers' Market Incentive Programs, and then, Opportunities for Markets to Improve Food Access. So I'm gonna start kind of at the very basic level. What is SNAP? Not everybody knows right away what SNAP is. But SNAP is what we originally called food stamps. So when I was a kid, that's what they were called, and I think a lot of people still call them food stamps. But now it's called SNAP. And the SNAP stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. So these are the federal benefits that people receive in order to buy food to supplement their food intake. Wisconsin's program is called FoodShare. So, FoodShare is just Wisconsin's version of SNAP. It's not a different program. It's just the way the SNAP money comes into the state and then it's distributed by our Department of Health. It's called FoodShare. Each different state gets to pick its own name, and we picked FoodShare. So in Wisconsin, SNAP benefits are called FoodShare. Who receives SNAP?

Just have an overview of who is receiving SNAP in the state

14.4% of Wisconsin's 5.7 million people received SNAP in 2014, and those are the most recent numbers available. 2014 rate is three times the 2001 rate. We've seen a rapid expansion in the use of SNAP in the state and all over the country since the recession. 41% of these people on SNAP are minors, and then 20% of the benefits go to working families. The average benefit for those working families is about $239 a month, but that number varies. Why is food access important? It increases access to fresh, local food. Some parts of our state don't have easy access to grocery stores or fresh produce, and increasing food access makes this possible for a lot of people to get fresh fruits and vegetables or other types of products that aren't easily available to them. It increases fruit and vegetable consumption. There have been many studies that talk about the people who go to the farmers' market to use their SNAP benefits do eat more fruits and vegetables. It increases vendor farm sales. Myself as a commercial horticulture educator, I work a lot with small, direct-marketing farmers. And small, direct-marketing farmers, like many people, kind of struggle on the edges, and this, improving food access helps bring that money, that federal money, into the pockets of farmers in our local area. And the last is investing in the local economy. For every $5 of SNAP benefits used, $9.20 is realized in the local economy. So, that's your introduction to basically what SNAP and food access are. I'm going to talk a little bit about starting a farmers' market EBT program. I work with farmers' markets all around the state to help them start farmers' market EBT programs And I will explain to you what EBT programs are in the next slide. So what is EBT? EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer. It's the mechanism where the food stamp money, or the FoodShare money, comes in electronically and is deposited on a card. Before 2002, the benefits were the paper coupons. But after 2002, to increase integrity and efficiency in the process, all of those benefits went electronic. The benefits are deposited onto the debit card, which is called the Quest card, there's a picture on the slide right there of what our Wisconsin Quest card looks like, and then SNAP recipients use the Quest card to make purchases. It's just like a debit card. So those benefits are deposited onto the card. You can go to the farmers' market, or you can go to the grocery store. And you can swipe that card and use the benefits that are on there. Why EBT as a payment option? So why does it matter if it's even at farmers' markets? Why don't people just go to the grocery store? And part of that is the access issue. But there's $1.1 billion, billion dollars in benefits in Wisconsin. And that's 2014. That's a lot of potential income for our farmers. And that's a lot of increased access for those folks who want to shop at farmers' markets and want fresh, local products. It increases access for those folks who participate in SNAP to local agricultural products. It improves community health. We talked about just a minute ago how people who shop at the farmers' market eat more fruits and vegetables. And, it serves the community. We find that a lot of the people who have been able to use their EBT benefits at the farmers' market feel more a part of their community, feel more engaged in their community. So how do markets get started? There are a couple of different ways markets can run EBT programs. This isn't just a one-size fits all. There are market run programs where the market takes the responsibility of the program. There are not-for-profit, or volunteer-based programs where an entity outside the market, with the permission of the market, runs an EBT program. And then there are vendor-based programs where individual vendors take responsibility for the program, and they are able to take benefits directly at their stand for the fruits and vegetables that they're selling. Today we're gonna talk about market run programs. Virtually all the markets in the state do market run programs, either run as the market, but this particular system also works if there's an outside entity, such as a non-profit, that's running the program. And the things that I ask the markets to consider

before they start an EBT program is

Do they have the infrastructure? Do they have the time? Do they have the funding? Do they have potentially partnerships that they could tap into? And, can they promote the program? So what we're gonna talk about are the eight steps. So if a market comes to me and they are interested, and they feel that they have the capacity to run a program, then we talk about the eight steps that they need. So these are just the basic steps, we're kind of just gonna go through them and talk about, kind of generally, what it takes to get it up and going. There's a lot more information, if you're looking for more in-depth information and you want to actually help a farmers' market start an EBT program. But we're gonna start here with kind of the intro level. The first is the Responsible Party. So in order for our farmers' market to accept EBT, there needs to be an individual willing to put their social security number on their application. The other option is if the market has a tax ID number. The tax ID number has only happened in the last couple of years. So if an organization is set up and has its own tax ID number that can be used in lieu of the social security number. But the social security number that is on there, is on there. It's not something you switch over all the time. You would actually have to end the EBT program and start it up again to put somebody else's social security number on there. This person needs to be responsible for following, enforcing the rules. This is the responsible party. If people aren't following the rules, if they're using their EBT tokens for something that's not eligible, this is where the buck stops. This is where the USDA is going to say

exactly what's happening

you're the one in charge, you're the responsible party. They need to be able to provide a bank account. Many of our farmers' markets don't have bank accounts. They do suggest that you have separate bank account, but for many markets, that just isn't necessary. And they have to be responsible for proper accounting and reimbursement. So if there's a problem with a vendor not being reimbursed for their tokens, then that's, that responsible party is the person that's gonna be contacted about that. The next thing, once you have somebody willing to put their social security number, their tax ID number on there, is becoming an authorized retailer. There's an online or paper application. Online is much, much faster. There are certain qualifications that you need to meet. So if a farmers' market is predominantly food products, it will qualify. But sometimes we have places that call themselves farmers' markets that might be predominantly crafts or flea market items, and those wouldn't qualify. So once that person applies and they meet the qualifications, they will receive an authorization retailer number and a contract with a service provider, if applicable. If the farmers' market is only doing EBT at the market, then there is a state-assigned service provider. But if a market wishes to do credit and debit also, then they can choose the provider that they contract with. And that's quite a little bit of shopping, and we won't delve into that too much. The next thing a market does once they've been authorized and they know they're gonna have the program is usually you figure out their script or tokens. So they can either use paper script, but most of our markets use wooden, wooden tokens or plastic tokens. The important things for script and tokens are that they're uniquely identifiable. You don't want people trying to use them at other markets, and you don't want to accept other markets' tokens at your markets, because it doesn't work that way. The accounting really won't hold up. Usually when vendors take the wrong tokens, they're stuck with those tokens. So it's really important, especially in a fast-paced market where things are moving fast, that they know what a token is, because, for EBT tokens, they cannot give change. So if they have a bright yellow token that says EBT and they know it's that farmers' market, they know that they have to make sure that that's a dollar-for-dollar exchange. You also want something that's difficult to duplicate to prevent fraud. USDA does like them numbered, but it's fairly expensive, and most markets don't actually do that. And then, it takes time to get your script or tokens, so you really need to do this early. It takes probably at least a month to two months to get those printed and in hand for a market. The next thing to consider is signage. What good is a program if nobody knows that it's there? So part of what we do is we want the redemption location so the place, so if I'm on SNAP and I have my card, I need to know where I'm going to get my tokens. So I basically take that card to a nice booth that has a nice sign that says "EBT accepted here." And I swipe my card, exchange it for tokens, and then I can go to other places at the market, hopefully that has an "EBT tokens accepted here", a vendor that has that sign, and I know very easily without having to ask anybody who will take my EBT tokens. Some markets make it mandatory that all vendors accept EBT tokens if they're gonna be members of the market, and other ones, it's a sign-up. So, there's no real consistency there, so it's really useful for farmers' markets to very brightly and obviously sign who accepts EBT. The other value of this is only eligible vendors would get those signs. So if you have a flower vendor or you have a craft or they wouldn't have one of those signs, and it makes it very easy for the SNAP folks to be able to know who to go to. And then the last thing is, at market entry points, if a lot of the farmers' markets have people that have SNAP benefits that have been shopping there all along and didn't know they had a program. So if you can have a big, bold, obvious sign at your entry points, that helps people know that it's available at that market.

Accounting and reimbursement

Someone is gonna have to track the tokens out to customers, record redemptions and reimburse farmers, which can be quite a little job, and then refund tokens. One of the policies of the USDA FNS is that if you redeem-- if you swipe your card and you get tokens, at any point you can go and get a refund for those tokens deposited back onto your card.

And then reconciling the statements

making sure you know what's coming in, you know what's going out, and that, that goes together with your bank statement.

Recruit and train vendors

So you need to recruit vendors with eligible items. Talk to all the vendors who have eligible items. See if they're interested in participating. Create vendor contracts and keep them on file. Contracts are not mandatory by the USDA. We do have contracts that are already written and available on the Waukesha County UW-Extension website. And these are contracts that basically outline the rules and the agreement that they agree to follow the rules, and only take tokens for what they're supposed to and not give change and all the basic rules that go along with farmers' market EBT. We find the contracts very helpful for people who forget the rules and need to be reminded of them. So you can go back with the contract. Show them the contract, maybe highlight the spot that they had misunderstood or not complied with. And it makes it much easier and less confrontational to talk to people, the vendors, about those rules and make sure that they're abiding by them.

Serve as a resource for question

There's always a question. Can I buy cookies with my EBT card at the farmers' market? Can I buy popcorn with my EBT at the farmers' market? This is the person who needs to know this answer or be able to get that answer, at least for the vendor. So sometimes we can't answer those questions right away. Occasionally we have to talk to the Department of Health or FNS to see what the answer to that question is, but it's definitely someone who has to be responsible for finding the answer and getting that answer back. And then, do an annual review.

Program promotion

So again, this is one of those things if people don't know you have a program, if they're not going to the farmers' market, how do you get the word out there? And how do you make sure that the folks in your community who do have SNAP benefits know that they can come to the farmers' market and use them? So one is connecting with groups or agencies that serve FoodShare participants. Are you connecting with the different agencies that do that? Are you putting signs or leaving information in places where those folks frequent? Creating and distributing promotional materials, and make sure, when you think about these, that you're thinking about the languages that might be present in the area and the folks that you're trying to attract. And then, other opportunities to cross-promote with other agencies. Sometimes health clinics or other things that like that you know that there are SNAP participation, you might be able to cross-promote with them.

Hiring and training staff

This can be paid or volunteer, seven to twelve hours a week. This needs to be a person who's highly organized. They are dealing with your social security number and money. So we need to make sure that they're keeping track of those tokens and that, you know, things are being done in a responsible way. Good with people. This is a person, if you're going to have them do the enforcement, make sure that this is somebody who can have a good rapport with people, that is not confrontational, that knows the rules and knows how to handle these kinds of situations. It's also a very good thing, if possible, to have somebody from the community be that person. So if you're trying to draw more Hispanic folks into your farmers' market, it's a great idea not only to have a Spanish-speaking person to be that person at the EBT table answering questions and handling all this stuff, but it's also great if it's somebody from that community that people feel comfortable with. We want people who are bringing their benefits and may not have been to a farmers' market before to feel comfortable being there and comfortable returning. And then creating a successful program. And many of the things we're gonna talk about these in more depth in the talks that are coming next. But some of the things to think about are long-term program funding. Many of these EBT programs are started with grants from the USDA or from other agencies, putting forth proposals or funds that are supported by the USDA. So there are a lot of different options for the first year or two of start-up. But after that, how is the program gonna be maintained? The next is community support and involvement. Is there a way to tie in your community and get them involved and get them supportive of the program?

Bonus and match programs

They have been shown to make a tremendous difference in the SNAP participation at the market. Folks that receive SNAP are always looking for ways to stretch their food dollar.

And then the last is

how do you maximize the program use? The more people that are using it, the more benefit there is to the market. So it's really key to try to think about how we can get as many people as possible who want to shop at the farmers' market there and shopping at the farmers' market. So that is the end of starting an EBT program. And the next speaker is Nancy Coffey, Nutrition Education Program Coordinator with UW-Extension, Eau Claire County, and she's gonna talk about attaining EBT self-sufficiency. Here you go. In 2012, I partnered with UW-Eau Claire, AmeriCorps VISTAs and the downtown market manager and board, and this is a market that is being run by the board and our hunger prevention coalition. So basically, we're just assisting to help get the program started. To reduce stigma and improve economic stability, we did accept and still do accept FoodShare credit and debit for exchange of a dollar. Each token is worth a dollar. So for three years we had this token program. And in those three years, our funds that came into the market rose from $4,000 to $15,000. So we had a really good amount of use of the program. We had, of non-duplicated users, about 140 in the first year, with 90 of them being FoodShare and that was in 2012, to 460 users in 2014, and 165 are FoodShare users. As far as the sustainability, in 2014, so by the third year with the token program only, we were able to sustain the cost of the point-of-sale machine and the transaction fees just through those fees that we charged the credit and debit users. So for each $50 that they spent, they were charged a $1 transaction fee. My responsibility in this was to assist volunteers. As you notice, our costs were not very much because we had volunteers to run that point-of-sale machine. So, we used JONAH which is a religious group, that social justice group, called Joining our Neighbors, Advancing Hope. They ran the point-of-sale machine, as well as 4-H older youth council, and parents.

30 until 12

30. Some programs run their programs once a month, but we felt like it was very important that we ran that weekly. In 2015, we started a program called Market Match, and Karen's gonna talk about this a bit more. And we then had an incentive program. So for every dollar of tokens that a FoodShare client was spending, they would receive another $1, up to $10 a week. So it was a direct match up to $10. Our funds for this program became more expensive, because, as you know, by that time we had quite a number of people using FoodShare. And so, we figured it was going to take about $5,000 to cover that direct match. We got that money through UW-Extension Innovative Grants and then found out that that money could not be used toward direct match. It had to be used for program promotion. So then we scrambled again to come up with more money, and we went to our community. So we had a new business called JAMF, the software business, that gave us $2,500, the North Barstow Medical Business Improvement District gave us $1,000, a small group got together and gave us $500, and, I got an innovative team grant, along with our 4-H and Youth Agent through a UW-Extension program, and we got a team award and that gave us another $1,000. So be creative about where you're able to pull that money from community to be able to make this program work. I think one of the most important things is this volunteer element that we had going. And the 4-H'ers, as you can see in their comments, realize that working at this program was a community piece that they could help farm community, as well as helping their neighbors. And from their comments, you can see how important that was to them. And they are continuing to help with this program weekly. We do not have too much trouble getting people to sign up to help out. Of course in June when it's a little colder, it's a little bit more difficult. So as far as the token program and how it's now evolved into the incentive program, I want to focus mostly on that incentive program. So we had the sustainability of now we have given out, our FoodShare clients have spent $8,000. So they're spending a bit more than they're actually getting for direct match. Many people spent about $10, $10 to $15, and they're getting that $10 each time. So our direct match was $5,900, and as I told you, we had $5,000. So we were scrambling to work with another partner, and we got Group Health Cooperative in our community to cover that last $900, so we didn't have to shut down the program early. So we went from having a $15,000 in the year prior to now $23,000, almost $24,000 that we're able to generate for our program. So a total of over $50,000 in three years. Now, who is using the program? We now, because of the incentive program, we had a 74% increase in our FoodShare usage of the program, and people were really, really excited about that. And now I want to talk about a little bit about that match of sustainability. We are still being able to cover that point-of-sale machine and transaction cost through the debit and credit users. So, we're really encouraging credit and debit participation because it also makes everybody feel like the program is for all, not just for those of limited income. It's been a really remarkable thing that people who are using credit and debit cards are saying, "I want all of our community "to be able to eat more fruits and vegetables." So now, we are trying to get $7,000 to $10,000 for the next year, and we are working with a health insurance company in order to get that. We will know by December if we have it. And another remarkable thing, our city has now put in our budget $4,000 for our token incentive program. And $2,000 is going to be for posters and promotion, and $2,000 for city staff to help with designing posters and with distribution. So I think it's important to find out about outcomes. How is this helping our FoodShare clients? So 100% are saying that they're eating more fruits and vegetables, 94% are eating more fruit because of this, eating more fresh food because of this, 76% report saving money on fresh produce, and, 62% report trying at least one new fruit or vegetable. We also have over half of our respondents saying that they feel more a part of our community. So in the next part, is Christy Marsden. She's gonna talk about building community relationships to expand food access. She is from Rock County and a Horticulturist. Thank you. All right, so to give you some context for Rock County, here's a picture of it. And we have Janesville and Beloit. We're considered an urban environment, even though we don't have the numbers that Madison and Milwaukee may have. We still have some of the challenges within urban audiences, within the centers of Janesville and Beloit. And so to give some context of where I was coming from when I started thinking about trying to improve food access to our farmers' markets, we have two main markets in Janesville and Beloit. The populations you can see up there, and the percentages are actually really quite high for participants on the FoodShare program compared to the state. So this is really kind of important to our community to try to improve food access through our farmers' markets. And so what I did with the team for UW-Extension in Rock County is, and to increase food access, we thought we could get both farmers' markets together at the table with some other community partnerships to try to answer this question. Because, when I think about farmers' markets, I'm just gonna go to whatever farmers' market that is closest to where I am at the time. And we thought that if we could kind of put resources together, we could better and more effectively reach out to people. So then that way, if somebody is in Janesville, they could use a Janesville farmers' market just as much as the Beloit farmers' market. And to get the two market people at the table to talk together and to, like, get together to create a county-wide program, was really quite impressive and great partnership. So the Beloit Farmers' Market is run by the Downtown Beloit Association, and it's the second most popular behind the Dane County Farmers' Market on the Madison Capitol Square, which is kind of cool. And they started their EBT program in 2013. In 2014, they had a total of 157 transactions for $17 about each of those transactions and then total $4,000 over three seasons. So this is a pretty good number, but it can definitely be increased, and that was kind of our goal, especially because this and the Janesville Farmers Market tend to be neighborhoods in which there are a lot of FoodShare individuals who live in those neighborhoods. Next is the Janesville Farmers Market. This is run by a board, so it's slightly different than the Beloit Farmers' Market. It was founded in 2005, so it's not as old as the Beloit Farmers' Market, but they've done a really great job of jumping up and trying to answer the needs of the community. They started their EBT program in 2012, and they had quite a few more transactions and dollar amounts. And this is because they were able to get some grants to promote the farmers' market and reached out to the audiences a bit more than the Beloit Farmers' Market did, just to get people involved and interested. And so in working, we worked together with these two farmers' markets to try to apply for two different grants is what we were working on. One, and then the next year a different one. And they were all around the idea of trying to increase food access to low income individuals. And so we thought, well if Janesville has this expertise and they have these materials, then we can share them with Beloit and we can share this expertise. We can all work together and try to answer the needs of the community. So one of the partners that we worked with is ECHO. ECHO is a Janesville-based food bank, and it was started by individuals within ECHO, I mean sorry, within Janesville. And ECHO stands for Everybody Cooperating and Helping each Other, which is kind of a nice acronym. So it started in 1969, Janesville-based, and they, they have a lot of outreach. So you can see the numbers here. They reach a lot of people, they do a lot of really, really fantastic community service. And so with them on board, we were thinking, okay, so if we have these incentive programs, how do we tell people we have these incentive programs? It's one thing to have them, but it's another for people to know that it exists and how to use it. Because it's, you need to know how to use it, what it means, and how you can get the best benefit from it. So with ECHO's reach, we were really able to say, okay, so they're gonna help educate the individuals who come use their services about this additional service that's available to them. The next partner was Second Harvest, which is a food bank that does more regional work. And so, Second Harvest works with ECHO, so they decided to work with us too. And the same idea that they were going to be able to use the promotional materials that we were going to create and reach to these audiences. They assist with FoodShare access. So people call them to get FoodShare. And so what they were willing to do is, say, hey, everybody that calls from Rock County, we'll tell them that they can go to the Janesville, the Beloit Farmers' Market to use their FoodShare. We were building an incentive program under a grant, and if that had gone through, we would have been able to have them on the phone to each individual who called from Rock County tell them about it, which is huge outreach. Everybody would hear about it. And it's a great partnership to have that. The next partnership we had was the Head Start, Early Start program. This is for both Rock and Walworth counties. And then they have educators that were going into the homes, similar to the Wisconsin Nutrition Education Program, and doing one-on-one education. They have a lot of, so, they have a lot of reach. And we, together with them, developed this program where we would have them talk about FoodShare access at the farmers' market as they talked to individual families and work with those families on how to incorporate the produce that they would get at the markets. We also built an educational program in which we were gonna have them help us transport families who were interested to the farmers' market at least once a month, and then have some of the nutrition educators through the Wisconsin Nutrition Education Program assist with market navigation. 'Cause it's kind of-- I'm fine with the market, but not a lot of people understand how it works. And it can be really daunting if you don't know how it works, so it'd just be like this is where you get your tokens, this is how you buy produce, and, this is what you should look for, and kind of how to navigate that market to take down some of the barriers. And then, UW-Extension. So I'm an Extension Educator in Horticulture, and I feel very strongly about these things which is why I put my passion behind this. But we also have other community partnerships through the various people who work within Extension, such as the Wisconsin Nutrition Education Program. And they brought a lot of really fantastic people to the table. They do in-home education as well, capacity for grant-writing, organization and education. So with all of these various people coming to the table, that's a lot of power, a lot of different people with a lot of different reaches for both promotion and organizing and getting this together. So all these partnerships within Grant County, or, Rock County, were to build grants. We applied for two grants. The bad news, I'll tell you now, is we didn't get either of them. But, we wanted to do Double SNAPs, so an incentive program, so you'd get up to $20 matched if you went to the farmers' market, and it would be valid at both markets, so the idea is it would have that county-wide reach. We were going to try to do, eventually try to get some of the local grocery stores to get involved, focusing on that local food consumption part of it, and that with the monthly educational market navigation assistant to kind of break down some of those walls, and then both grants would increase the advertising efforts so then that way we could tell people that this exists and that this option is available. And that we had all those, the partners of Extension, the market, Second Harvest and Head Start. The second grant that we applied for was just a SNAP support grant. So it was to help build these programs and make them bigger, mostly through advertising and utilizing our partnerships to reach to bigger audiences and kind of pull them in. The way this worked is the markets were gonna be able to share resources. So Janesville already had really fantastic brochures and had already translated some of them as well. And so we would be able to share those brochures so that Beloit could use them. And then Beloit can learn from Janesville how they reached out to these particular audiences to increase those numbers. The Janesville Farmers Market did receive the farmers' market promotional grant. So they had a few years of experience on how to promote their market and get increased access and would be able to share it. And then ECHO would share. Second Harvest would share within their communities and the people that they reach, the availability of this. WIC was on-board as well in doing this. And just like everybody who reaches these audiences was gonna work with us to tell them about these programs, which was great. We didn't get either grant, which was kind of a disappointment. But we're a small community and they wanted, the federal grants wanted us to have year 'round outreach. And given that we're farmers' markets, and things don't grow in Wisconsin in the winter, that was a little hard. But what I realized, you know, you sit back and you're kind of bummed about this, but there's all these partnerships of people who are still really, really interested in this. And so my goal moving forward is to leverage these partnerships, all these people who are still really interested in making it happen, and building an incentive program similar to the one that we just heard about and are about to hear about within our community, using those partnerships and the people we know to kind of build this and increase access even more. So to learn about the incentive programs, we have Karen Early. She's the Nutrition Education Program Coordinator up in Brown County. Thank you. Increasing food access was identified as a nutrition priority in Brown County as part of our county health improvement plan process. So we've been fortunate to have a number of people working together who are working in food access issues anyway. So we came together, and the incentive program in Brown County was really part of an initiative to build sustainability for our entire EBT program by boosting sales. As part of our method for getting the word out that we had this program, we were able to get some media coverage. And we'll show you a little video clip now of what it's meant for one family. People who receive government assistance to purchase food can how see their dollars go a little bit further at the farmers' markets in Green Bay. It's called the Double Your Bucks program. That's right and it's designed to help the recipients get even more fresh fruits. Fox 11's Bill Miston has that story. -

Felicia

30 until 12

Where do we go to first? -

Voiceover

30 until 12

You wouldn't know it, but Felicia's Van Calster's shopping at the Wednesday Broadway Farmers' Market for the first time. -

Felicia

30 until 12

These are so cool! - Why? Well, frankly, because she was embarrassed. 'Cause I didn't have the money, ever. So I didn't really want to come down. I mean, my friends used to come down and look, but there's no sense in looking if you can't buy something. But when the 25-year-old single mother of three found out that she could use her government-issued debit card at the market-- -

Felicia

30 until 12

I immediately came over. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

For fresh food and purchase more fruits and vegetables than she has money for? $10, now I got $20. I mean, what's better than that? -

Voiceover

30 until 12

The new county program is called Double Your Bucks. It doubles the first $10 people, like Van Calster-- $2 for a bunch. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

Can spend weekly on fresh produce at each farmers' market. There's nothing better than getting fresh produce, fresh veggies and fruits for your kids. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

The way it works is, money is taken off a user's government-issued debit card, called EBT, or Electronic Benefit Transfer. The recipients receive wooden tokens from staff at the farmers' market. You can use the EBT tokens on those? -

Voiceover

30 until 12

EBT recipients use the tokens to purchase non-prepared foods. The Broadway and Saturday markets have accepted EBT for three years. -

Felicia

30 until 12

I don't really ever get much from the store, because it's so expensive. But here you, they're cheaper. People have a perception that fresh produce costs a lot, and it's going to spoil quickly. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

Karen Early is a nutrition educator with the Brown County UW-Extension. Early says the county has 14,000 households that qualify for nutrition assistance. One of the proven most ways to have people use EBT at the farmers' market more is to give a financial incentive. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

Program organizers say last year there were $16,000 worth in EBT transactions done between both farmers' markets. This year, they hope that the privately-funded Double Your Bucks program actually runs out of money. Can I get some strawberries, too? -

Voiceover

30 until 12

Working the market like a pro-- I just want one. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

Van Calster has a message for others who might shy away from the farmers' markets because they use EBT cards. Don't be embarrassed to come out here and do it, 'cause everybody needs help at some point in their life. -

Voiceover

30 until 12

In Green Bay, Bill Miston, Fox 11 News. Looks like a pretty good deal. The Double Your Bucks program is only for people who live in Brown County, however. For more information on how to use this program,

go to our website

fox11online.com. So there's nothing like a mom who's using the program to kind of bring it home about the importance about why we do this work and what it really means to them. I was doing education at the market, and Fox 11 wanted to do a story to help us get the word out. And we were just talking with this mom, and I asked her if she might talk with them instead. And she was so happy to be able to do that. She said, "I just want to do it to help other families." And so that's, that's what she did, and it really did help boost our, our sales at the market. So our incentive program is called Double Your Bucks. And it is to purchase locally-grown fruits and vegetables. We did have quite a bit of discussion at our coalition meeting about how we wanted to run our incentive program. And we decided that the funds would only be used for fruits and vegetables. And that they would be only the locally-grown fruits and vegetables, because we do have some vendors that, that acquire some fruits and vegetables aren't real locally grown. And that's because the program is also an incentive to, for our local growers for the economy. Our healthcare provider partners have been our funders in both 2014 and 2015. They've been so supportive of the markets and the incentive program, which really aligns with our initiative with our county health improvement plan, that they're really acknowledging the importance of increasing access of healthy foods for all populations and finding ways that they can partner with us to make that happen. So you heard a little bit about how the program works. Every time a family goes to the market, they receive $10 for the first $10 of their EBT purchase. So the first year, United Healthcare, and the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation were our partners for Double Your Bucks. And we say,

we had it available in all three markets

our downtown Green Bay Saturday market, our downtown Wednesday Broadway market, as well as our Oneida market. And anyone who is on SNAP Ed is eligible. The second year, our HSHS partnership provided funding for Double Your Bucks. And the green tokens at the top of the slide here, are a visual of what our Double Your Bucks tokens look like. Our program outreach was a lot of word-of-mouth with our Wisconsin Nutrition Education program. We spoke to families who participated in our programs, also with our partners that we work with. WIC was, provided education to their families. We have a back-to-school store and talked to families as they were waiting in line to participate in that program. And Aging Disability Resource Center, economic support, everywhere that we could think of in the community, these flyers were distributed. So I mentioned that we have three locations, and these are the tokens of What's happening in Green Bay. So when we talk to vendors, we have to explain why they might want to do that. In 2014 our EBT and Double Your Buck sales increased their sales an extra $30,000, and we had 631 new families, and 40% of them were repeat users. So the vendors need to know how they might do this, and we do a vendor training every year. And they need to first be, determine their eligibility. They sign their agreements. They have to sign the EBT, hang the EBT sign where it's visible at their booth. They accept the tokens and don't ever give change, turn the tokens in at the end to the cashier, and then they receive a check from the market. So the same way that the EBT program works, the Double Your Bucks token process works the same way. We needed to recruit more vendors. We didn't have a lot of our Asian vendors who were participating. And we realized that it really was probably just not understanding what the program was. So I brought a cultural broker who was able to really communicate this to the vendors at our training, and it was really fun to see how, after one vendor decided to sign the agreement and sign up, then they pretty much took care of it. And by the end of our training, we had, I think, 18 of them who had signed up. So they helped educate each other on the benefits and why we might all want to be participating in this program. So whenever we have outside funding, you know, we need to be able to document the impact of our work. And our funders did want to know, is the Double Your Bucks program that we're providing funding for really making a difference for families or not? So we did have a survey of 150 customers, and we had questions that addressed perceptions of the EBT and Double Your Bucks programs at the farmers' markets. And so we surveyed customers, vendors, and market managers. And we also had EBT transaction information. So as a result, we learned that the customers feel that EBT and Double Your Bucks should continue, 95%. 88% feel that Double Your Bucks greatly increases their likelihood to return to the market. And 99% of the shoppers are purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables, what, which is what we wanted to have happen with our Double Your Bucks program. Their perceptions and behaviors, when asked if families were eating, or would eat more fruits and vegetables, 81% responded Yes. If they've tried at least one new fruit or vegetable, 45% responded Yes. 63% reported that they are saving money at the farmers' market. And 68% now said they're feeling more included in the community, and that was evidenced by the video as well. To be able to participate in the farmers' market fully and to be able to shop through the vendors and to be able to purchase the food that everyone else is purchasing is a feeling where you feel more a part of your community at large.

So looking at our sales data

With our EBT transactions, you can see that we had an increase between 2013 and '14. It's a 38% increase. We don't have our sales data in, because last week was our just, our last market for 2015. But when we look at our EBT sales, we know that, if we look at our mid-year, mid-summer sales from 2015, it's up another 25% from 2014. And you can look between 2013 and 2014 that our sales doubled, which was the goal of our county health improvement plan committee was to, over a two to three year period, to double our EBT transaction in sales. And you can also see that the Double Your Bucks program really helped us to obtain that increase in sales. The two divisions at the top are from our two funders from United Healthcare was the, is the blue and the green was from Green Bay Community Foundation. And then with our total sales, we have doubled our unique users, as you can see, from 313 to 631 between 2013 and 2014. And our repeat users have increased nearly four times. So now, Amber Canto, Wisconsin Nutrition Education Program State Coordinator will talk about opportunities for markets to improve food access. Thank you. All right, thank you, Karen. As we've seen, we have several very successful farmers' market programs operating in our state that are really targeting access to our FoodShare users. And believe it or not, we have many farmers markets in the state who maybe do not have an EBT, Electronic Benefits Transfer, program, or do, and is not perhaps reaching our intended audience to the extent that they are interested in reaching. And so what we did in acknowledgement of this if you build it, will they come dilemma, is we applied for a USDA famers' market promotion program grant, which we are titling Extending the Reach of EBT in Wisconsin. And the overall purpose of the grant was to get a better understanding of the barriers that SNAP participants, or FoodShare, as we call it in the State of Wisconsin, face in accessing and using their federal food program dollars at Wisconsin farmers' markets. Ultimately, we strive to develop a set of outreach strategies for farmers' markets to engage the SNAP audience and increase participation in the market. As I mentioned, we got our funding from the USDA Farmers Market Promotion Program grant, and our funding cycle started in October of 2014 and will continue through September of 2016. We have two phases in this project. We call Phase One a formative phase, which we just finished up pretty quickly, where we've been doing some key informant interviews with county extension agents, as well as community partners in our target populations or geographic areas rather, where we're working on this grant. And then we also did some SNAP participant surveys with individuals who we've coined as non-farmers market users. And we wanted to be very intentional about reaching a non-farmer market user audience, so that we could get a richer understanding of why individuals may or may not consider using the farmers' market in their community versus going to the farmers' market and targeting SNAP and FoodShare users who have already gone to the farmers' market with the assumption they've already overcome any barriers or perhaps reduced some of the barriers that they may face to participating in that market. We then wanted to use the findings of those surveys to inform Phase Two of our project, which we'll be gearing up for here in a few short weeks, to work with our farmers' market partners in the development of outreach strategies to target that audience. So we've got five counties and four community partners involved in the project. Some of them you've already heard from today. Brown County at the Downtown Green Bay Market, Portage and Wood counties, with downtown Stevens Point Market and the Wisconsin Rapids Market in partnership with Central Rivers Farmshed. Milwaukee County we're working with Fondy Food Center, and Rock County, the Janesville Farmers' Market. So we've got some of those county partners designated with an apple on our Wisconsin map here. And I'm really excited to be able to share some of our preliminary survey findings with you today. We've, we're in the midst of deeper analysis, but we did feel like it would be worth at least sharing some of the things we've learned from our SNAP participant and non-farmers' market surveys. And I would say that, before I dig into the findings, we were actually really surprised with some of the things we were learning. We developed our survey based off of some of the scientific and gray literature in this area, saying, these are identified barriers that individuals who are on SNAP have cited to using the farmers' market. And our survey actually debunked some of those findings, and I'll show you that in a little bit here. So we worked with food pantries and WIC clinics, primarily across these various geographies in the state to identify our target audience. And we reached 272 survey participants in total. And you can see the, the breakdown across our various geographies. So here is just a snapshot of some of the findings. In terms of market habits, 71% of our survey respondents had shopped at the farmers' market in the past. So even, you know, and despite of our best intentions to reach our non-farmers' market users, we still got a pretty big sample of individuals who had been to the farmers' market at least one time in the past. 17% of our shoppers had not shopped in over a year at the farmers' market. Most individuals, when they shop at the farmers' market, are using cash. So 35% used cash, 22% used WIC farmers' market nutrition program checks or vouchers. 18% used their FoodShare card, and 8% used incentive vouchers. So these would be things tied to, like, the Double Your Food Bucks or the token incentive programs that were discussed previously. For those that weren't using FoodShare, but that had participated at the farmers' market, we said, "Well, why? "Why didn't you use your FoodShare benefits?" And 23% said they didn't know they could. So that sort of reinforces that idea that we need to get the word out that the program exists and that people can use their benefits at the farmers' market. And 61% of our respondents who shopped at the farmers' market in the past year did say they had some intention to shop again, which is great because we have a market to continue to reach and to capitalize. And 75% of those respondents that said that they knew there was a market in their community, which is important because we, we were trying to distinguish, you know, the users of farmers' markets from non-users and their overall knowledge of the farmers' market. So the majority of our respondents said they knew we had a farmers' market, but they didn't necessarily know that they could use their benefits. So then we dove a little bit deeper into trying to get a sense of some of those barriers. And as I mentioned, we used findings in the grey and scientific literature to target some of the barriers that we thought could be an issue. And then we also used perceptions of our key informants in each of these communities to include as we looked at the barriers. So one of the things that people often say is, "Well, the farmers' market products are too expensive, "and FoodShare users wouldn't be interested in shopping." We actually found that that's not really the case. Less than 30% of our survey respondents felt that way. The biggest barrier, or it, this is actually response in terms of agree or strongly agree. So another thing that we often hear is, "Well, people who use FoodShare "may not like the products that are at the farmers' market, "or they may not know how to cook it." And when we looked at our respondents, so the next graph line over, the response, the question was "Does your family like to eat the products "found at the farmers' market?" Nearly 85% of our survey respondents said, "Yes, my family likes to eat the products "that are found at the farmers' market." When we asked if people who were not, or survey respondents if they knew how to use the products at the farmers' market, we see less than 15% said, "Yeah, we don't know how to use it." So it's a small percent of the actual FoodShare population that we reached in our survey. Sometimes one of the barriers that people will cite is, "Well, the market is not open at a time "that's convenient for these individuals to shop, "or may not be at a time that's convenient." By and large, we saw over 80% of respondents saying, "Yep, it's a convenient time." Location is a huge factor. So is it located in a community or in a neighborhood that's accessible? And we thought for sure this was gonna be a big barrier. And it really wasn't. So over 80% of our survey respondents said, "Yep, it's in a location that's convenient for me." We then asked, "Do your transportation options "make it difficult for you to get to the market?" Only about 23% of survey respondents said transportation was an issue for them. Still a significant number in terms of overall accessibility and use of transportation options, but it was minor compared to some of the other responses. One of the things we did note was that there was a preference, so over 40% of survey respondents said, "I prefer to shop and spend my food dollars "where I can purchase all of my food items "that my family needs." So that was an important barrier. And this notion of feeling comfortable in the market was about 10% of our survey respondents said they did not feel comfortable. So when we, when we think about marketing SNAP at the farmers' market, this, the, the power of word of mouth and getting word out through social support networks was incredibly prevalent in our survey respondents. So 40% of all respondents knew that they could use SNAP at the farmers' market, and 59% did not know that they could use SNAP at the farmers' market. Those who did know, 16% found out through word-of-mouth, and 12% found out from a friend, a family member, neighbor, colleague, or some other part of their social network. Just under 10% found out at the farmers' market, again, just under 10%. 8% found out through other means. So, through various community channels or community agencies. And then there were a few other places where people found out, but by and large they did not hear through a poster or a flyer or a radio advertisement that use of their EBT at the farmers' market was an option. We're really looking at people power here. So as we think about moving forward in this project, we really want to dig deep into this nuanced idea of marketing versus outreach. So examples of current marketing strategies that we saw, or that we do see in our participating markets, are things like text alerts or billboards, use of social media, posters and flyers and pamphlets. We really want to encourage our markets and our market partners to move beyond that. So those channels are still really important. And, how do we engage our communities, engage our SNAP participants beyond the dissemination of materials to more of a coordinated effort through local partnerships and organizations that are reaching our audience of interest? So Christy talked a lot about this in Janesville and Beloit where they're working with those local partners through various different channels and trying to get the word out and trying to spread knowledge of the use of EBT at the farmers' market. So how do we further imbed the farmers' market into the community and into the community that supports our ultimate audience of interest with this particular program, which is the SNAP or FoodShare audience? So that's what's up for us next. No big feat, but we are looking forward to the challenge. And with that, we conclude today's presentation. I do want to put a plug out quickly for the UW-Extension Community Food Systems Team website, which has a flurry of resources that target all of these EBT-at farmers' market programs, including links to many of the resources in the programs that you heard in today's talk. So I'll refer you to our website for more information and resources to support you in your programs. And with that, thank you very much. And we'll take questions here in just a minute. (applause)