Farmer's Market Coalition

Sustainable CAPE’s Farmers’ Market Coalition – Offering Nutrition Incentive Programs, HIP, and more…

  • WHICH FARMERS’ MARKETS have vendors who accept HIP (up to $40 per month or more earned in reimbursements directly on a SNAP card for produce purchases) here on Cape Cod?
  • Bass River (S. Yarmouth), Falmouth, Osterville, Orleans, Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet
  • CLICK FOR MAP to see who offers the HIP program

Through the FREE Fruits & Veg Programs up to a $10 bonus is added to SNAP Card purchases, (WIC & Senior Discount Coupons as well), effectively yielding up to $20 worth of Farmers’ Market tokens to spend on healthful local food. We’ve also helped our local vendors to offer the Healthy Incentive Program (HIP) so that fruit & vegetable purchases are refunded immediately on SNAP cards. Project Gratitude thanks veterans with a weekly gift of $10 in tokens to spend with local farmers. In addition, we created a pilot and study “fruit & vegetable prescription program”, called FLAVORx, in partnership with Emerald Physicians – member Cape Cod Healthcare. Doctors wrote prescriptions to diabetic and pre-diabetic patients for fresh farmers’ market produce. Our Fresh Kids Awards, for children who garden with us in our Farmer-in-the-School Program, awards up to $10 in farmers market tokens to school children and their families, familiarizing families with their local farmers’ markets and applicable nutrition incentive programs.

When nutrition incentives are used, funds are driven to our local vendors, local food is more affordable, and we benefit our region’s longterm health. We believe it’s a win-win-win.

What does the Sustainable CAPE Farmers Market Coalition do?

The Sustainable CAPE Farmers Market Coalition works together to help interested markets more easily understand, implement and run nutrition incentive programs. Nutrition incentive programs are designed to increase affordability of local foods for those on SNAP (food stamps) and those using WIC and Senior Discount Coupons, as well as veterans, schoolchildren and certain eligible patients of local doctors’ offices.

The Coalition acts as a guide and sounding board. We share best practices and expertise, as well as offer tracking forms and literature to make implementing and running nutrition incentive programs easier for market managers, customers and vendors alike. We support markets in getting nutrition incentive programs up and tracking data as they operate. In addition, the coalition jointly promotes those markets offering FREE Fruits & Veg Programs. Benefits for those running these programs include:

  1. Coordinated print marketing and promotion – increasing public awareness of participating markets’ nutrition incentives
  2. Assistance in implementing Nutrition Incentive Programs – increasing affordability for all
  3. Sharing printed materials – increasing comprehension of programs for vendors and clients
  4. Market education for the public via press, social media, etc.
The coalition has no membership fee.

Please Note: The poster and print materials created to date have been designed for those markets offering a FREE Fruit and Veg Program that reached out to us prior to June 2019. We’d love to include more markets as we grow!

 

History

The Orleans Farmers’ Market (OFM) deserves credit for being the first on the Cape to offer nutrition incentives. The Sustainable CAPE Coalition was born of  the desire of the Truro Educational Farmers’ Market & OFM to work together to grow nutrition incentive programs, making local food affordable for all. The sharing of knowledge and joint promotion made each individual market more effective in reaching a broader socio-economic group of Cape Codders. In 2014 Sustainable CAPE wrote and won an MDAR grant to begin the work. In 2015 we were awarded a USDA grant to expand the Farmers’ Market Coalition across the Cape to nurture and sustain farmers’ market food justice programs. In 2016, we were asked to serve on the State Steering Committee to offer strategic assistance in implementing the Healthy Incentive Program (HIP) throughout the State of Massachusetts. In 2019 we were asked to join the Food is Medicine Policy Council at Harvard Law School. Together with our coalition and its partners we work to expand the use of nutrition incentives across the Cape and Islands, focused on the health of this beautiful community we call home.

We look forward to supporting the work of our individual and unique Farmers’ Markets in ways that work best for each market. Sustainable CAPE educates about local food, promotes and facilitates local food access and develops effective ways to engage children, families, veterans and seniors in support of the Cape’s physical, community and environmental health. For further information please contact info (AT) SustainableCAPE (DOT) org.

If you are a part of a farmers’ market on Cape Cod, please contact us if you would like to be a part of our coalition. We’d love to include you!

Coalition Gratitude:

Please thank Cape Air and the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank with your business. These locally based organizations have been instrumental for many years in providing funds to support these programs and to assist us in increasing local food access and local food awareness for all. The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, the USDA and many private individuals have also partnered with Sustainable CAPE in developing this work over the past years. Please support our sponsors with your business and gratitude!

Cape Cod 5 Tile

Cape Air Sustainable Cape

2016 Coalition Flier
Coalition Winter Flier