Ross E. O'Hara: Food insecurity at New England colleges

Via The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

Food insecurity—defined by the nationally respected Wisconsin HOPE Lab as the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner—is a troubling trend on college campuses across the country, including in New England.

For example:

• A 2016 survey by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education found that 24 campuses operated or partnered with a food pantry, and a third saw an increase in the number of students utilizing that service.

• A 2018 report by the HOPE Lab found that 44% of Massachusetts students at two-year colleges and a third of students at four-year universities were food insecure.

• A 2018 study of nearly 1,000 students at the University of New Hampshire found 25% had experienced food insecurity in the past year, with first-generation students and students who receive financial aid at higher risk.

• A 2017 study of several thousand students at the University of Vermont found up to 25% were food insecure, with significantly higher rates among students who identify as first-generation, persons of color, and transgender/queer/non-conforming.

As higher education becomes available to many who never before had access, more students than ever are forced to choose between meeting their basic needs and the costs of attending college. While institutions devise strategic solutions to avert this burgeoning crisis, one avenue of support that many students are not taking advantage of is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

In January, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report, titled Better Information Could Help Eligible College Students Access Federal Food Assistance Benefits, which acknowledges for the first time at the federal level the problem of college food insecurity.

The GAO goes on to recommend SNAP as a way to help many of these students cover their basic needs. Although a 1980 federal law bars college students from accessing SNAP—based on the outdated assumption that students’ parents will support them—it does grant exemptions for students who demonstrate need, for example, by working at least 20 hours per week or having dependent children. The GAO estimates that these criteria cover over 3 million low-income students nationwide, yet nearly two thirds of those eligible do not access SNAP benefits. How can we get more students who need assistance to sign up for SNAP?

The GAO puts its answer right in the title: Better Information. Many students are unaware of their eligibility, and many colleges are confused by the byzantine rules set forth by the federal Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). The GAO’s main recommendation to remedy this situation is for FNS to clarify the eligibility criteria on its website and make that information easier to find. While these steps will no doubt help, we now know too much about human psychology to think that better information is sufficient to solve this problem. We need to leverage behavioral science to nudge more students to access SNAP.

Behavioral science uses evidence-based strategies to frame and disseminate “better” information in a way that motivates action. These techniques are especially valuable when confronting food insecurity, a problem hidden by many students out of shame. Examples of these behavioral techniques include:

• Social norms. The GAO reports that 80% of colleges surveyed struggled with “overcoming the stigma some students associate with accepting help for their basic needs.” Messaging that normalizes seeking help (e.g., “Many college students need help paying for food …”) can ameliorate that stigma by letting students know that they’re not alone in their challenge and move them to access needed resources.

• Loss aversion. According to prospect theory, losing $10 is more painful than winning $10 is joyful. An MDRC study that leveraged loss aversion (e.g., “Don’t miss out! Ends April 29!”) increased attendance at an eligibility meeting for an income-supplement program by 73%. Messages that reframe SNAP as a benefit that can be lost, rather than something to be acquired, could motivate student uptake.

• Removing hassle factors. Every step in applying for public benefits is a hurdle that can trip people up. A recent experiment by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that eliminating a prescreening form increased completed applications to adjust child-support payments by more than 12 percentage points. Colleges can remove hassle factors for students needing SNAP by housing related offices (e.g., financial aid; food pantry; counseling) within a single building, using student data already in their possession to automatically prescreen students for benefits, and streamlining application processes as much as possible.

Do techniques like these actually help students with food insecurity? Yes. My colleagues and I at Persistence Plus work with colleges across the country to enhance their student success initiatives through behavioral science. With regard to basic needs insecurity, colleges have witnessed firsthand how behavioral science increases the number of students who benefit from valuable campus resources, like food pantries and emergency aid. For example, an Ohio community college saw a 51% increase in use of the food pantry in just one month after students received a text message from us, such as “Some students miss meals due to $ but they’ve found help at the food pantry. Do you face this challenge?” Students who responded in the affirmative were provided with further social norming to reduce stigma and information on how to access emergency aid.

Behavioral science could enhance the impact of the myriad efforts of New England colleges to support students facing basic needs insecurity.

For example, Bunker Hill Community College, in Charlestown, Mass., has been a national leader in addressing food insecurity. Bunker Hill now houses New England’s first Single Stop location. This “one-stop shop” for connecting students to public benefits has been shown to increase persistence at U.S. community colleges by up to 11%. Bunker Hill is also evaluating a food voucher program that provides eligible students with $25 per week to spend at on-campus food service venues.

Many other colleges have now opened food pantries, such as the Magic Food Bus at Middlesex Community College, in Middletown, Conn. This renovated school bus (minus Ms. Frizzle’s pet lizard) has provided hundreds of students with non-perishable food, toiletries and other essentials. The University of Vermont this year piloted a meal-sharing program, operated by Swipe Out Hunger, where students with unlimited dining hall plans can donate meals to students with limited access. As these programs continue and expand, colleges should keep in mind how their messaging around basic needs insecurity could benefit from behavioral science to drive students to these resources.

The GAO’s recommendation to revamp the FNS website and make college students’ SNAP eligibility easier to understand is an important step, but behavioral science can take us further by enhancing the impact of better information using low-cost and evidence-based strategies. Stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels should consider not only how to raise awareness of SNAP among colleges and students, but also how to leverage behavioral science to increase use of these funds so desperately needed by so many.

Ross E. O’Hara is a behavioral researcher at Persistence Plus. He shares his thoughts on behavioral science in higher education monthly in his blog, “Nudging Ahead.”

Michelle Andrews: New food stamp contractor upsets farmers markets' carts

In the Haymarket farmers market in downtown Boston.

By MICHELLE ANDREWS

For Kaiser Health News

When the woman stopped by Phil Munson’s stall at a Rochester, N.Y., farmers market recently, he noticed a change. A regular customer, she browsed his Fisher Hill Farm vegetables as usual and selected a few to buy. But this time, instead of offering cash for her produce, the woman paid with the wooden tokens available for people using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps.

Because the market accepts SNAP benefits, the woman could make her regular purchases with no difficulty. She also qualified for New York’s FreshConnect program, an incentive for SNAP beneficiaries to improve their access to fresh food. So, she got an extra $2 for every $5 she spent at the market, boosting her purchasing power by 40 percent.

Munson said the customer bought eggs that day in addition to her usual vegetables.

“She was really happy to get the benefit,” Munson recalled. “She said, ‘I can’t believe how much they gave me.’”

Federal and local officials have long said they are eager to get farmers’ produce to low-income families’ dinner tables, but for people like Munson’s customer, the ability to use SNAP benefits in the future is uncertain. While using food stamps to purchase vegetables at a farmer’s stall may seem like a simple exchange, it depends on complex government contracting requirements and increasingly sophisticated technology.

A change this year in federal contracts has left some market operators and advocates nervous. The company that provided the technology used by roughly 1,700 of the more than 7,000 farmers markets that accept SNAP benefits said it is pulling out of the business.

Earlier this year, federal officials announced they had picked a new contractor to provide equipment to help expand the number of markets that handle SNAP transactions. That contractor, when choosing the companies it would work with, did not include the Novo Dia Group, whose “Mobil Market+” app is used by those markets. Following that, Novo Dia announced it would, as of the end of July, no longer provide that service even to existing clients.

The announcement, coming at the height of the market season, took many operators and advocates by surprise and set off an urgent scramble to avoid a disruption in service. The National Association of Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs stepped in to fund the processing platform’s operations for one month, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo later announced a short-term agreement with the company to provide service nationally through the end of February.

What happens after that remains unclear.

For some farmers, SNAP customers make up an important part of their market business.

“I think it would be noticed if it went away,” said Anita Amsler, whose family sells produce and eggs from their Oldhome Farm at the Rochester Public Market year-round.

Some advocates, however, see the current situation as an opportunity to improve the long-term prospects for the acceptance of SNAP and other nutrition benefits at farmers markets.

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” said David Sandman, president and CEO of the New York State Health Foundation, who has written about the SNAP processing problems. He said his organization and others are interested in options for continuing to make the Nova Dia app available nationally through a public-private partnership.

The markets’ popularity among SNAP users is growing. SNAP benefit redemptions by farmers and markets grew by more than a third from 2012 to 2017, to $22.4 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“They are important touchstones and places for people to access their food the way other consumers do,” said Ellen Vollinger, legal director at the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group that works to reduce hunger among the poor.

When farmers market customers want to use SNAP benefits, their first stop is typically at a central market office — like a tent or a trailer — to swipe their SNAP electronic benefits card for whatever amount they want to spend. They are generally given wooden tokens or paper scrip in small denominations of $1 or $5 to spend at the market. They may also get incentive coupons — like those from New York’s FreshConnect program — to boost their purchasing power.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which oversees SNAP at the federal level, has long championed farmers markets as an important way to provide people with nutritious food while also supporting farmers economically.

Every few years, that agency awards a contract to a firm to manage the wireless processing equipment program for farmers markets and farmers who want to begin accepting SNAP benefits. In March, it selected Financial Transaction Management of Reston, Va.

The Farmers Market Coalition, the previous contractor, had offered equipment to markets through three providers, including .

The new contractor opted not to work with Novo Dia. When choosing equipment options, Financial Transaction Management focused on cost effectiveness and compliance with standards that protect farmers markets from liability in the event of a data breach, said CEO Angela Sparrow by email.

“It did throw Novo Dia into a tailspin,” said Diane Eggert, executive director of the Farmers Market Federation of New York, who helped put the stopgap funding for the company in place and is seeking a long-term solution. “They needed to continue growing to maintain operations.”

Novo Dia didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Mobile Market+ app works with a smartphone to enable processing of SNAP benefits. The smartphone technology enhances markets’ ability to track sales and transactions through the app and allows for frequent technology updates, Eggert said.

The current equipment provided by the new contractor is a standard wireless point-of-sale device that uses older, outdated technology, critics say.

Financial Transaction Management is processing applications from farmers markets for its equipment. As of Sept. 24, 140 applications were in the review-and-approval process, and 46 pieces of equipment had shipped, according to USDA officials.

The Food and Nutrition Service said it is interested in modernizing its approach. It wants to employ a “bring your own device” model for the market operators who want to begin processing SNAP in which “markets and farmers would use a smartphone and FNS would facilitate provision of [an] app,” officials said.

To that end, the USDA is testing a mobile application and encryption device that could be used with a smartphone to accept SNAP benefits. The new app, which will require a separate PIN-encryption device, is “not as streamlined” as the Novo Dia app, according to USDA officials. Still, “this is an option that could provide additional flexibility for farmers and markets while also reducing cost to the federal government.”

That option may be available by year’s end.

In addition to federal efforts to promote SNAP purchases at farmers markets, some states, such as California, have taken an active role in providing their markets with free wireless equipment to process transactions.

But the current upheaval has sown uncertainty among many farmers markets about their ability to handle SNAP transactions next year.

Last year, the Rochester Public Market processed more than $800,000 in SNAP benefits and $300,000 in incentives, said Margaret O’Neill, program director for Friends of the Rochester Public Market, a nonprofit that runs the market’s SNAP program. She said she has tried to reassure her vendors and customers that a solution will be found: “It’s a huge market for us.”

Michelle Andrews: andrews.khn@gmail.com, @mandrews110

Jill Richardson: Food-stamp recipients probably to lose right to use the stamps at farmers markets

Via OtherWords.org

People on food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), receive their benefits on a card that can be read like a credit card. Crucial to allowing recipients to use food stamps at farmers markets are card readers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture just canceled its contract with the company that makes the card readers. As a result, food stamp recipients will likely lose the ability to use food stamps at farmers markets.

I was all set to write about this terrible mix-up. But then I realized it’s not the part I really care about.

Of course, food stamp recipients should be able to shop at farmers markets. But it’s a tiny part of a much bigger issue.

The diets of food stamp recipients lie at the intersection of two issues: our food system and economic inequality.

On one hand, you have a system of food that uses industrial methods to produce a cheap and abundant but often unhealthy food supply. Healthier foods tend to cost more, whereas junk food is cheap. And low-income neighborhoods often lack outlets that sell healthy food in the first place.

The answer to this isn’t to pay farmers less. Farmers are struggling — and if anything, higher prices paid to farmers for food and fiber would benefit rural communities in much needed ways.

The other way to help the diets of low-income people is to reduce poverty and inequality. Ideally, this will require large scale social change.

For example, schools in Detroit are so bad that students are suing the state because they weren’t taught to read. How is a kid who graduates from a school like that, even the smartest and most motivated kid, able to keep up with one who graduated from school that actually teaches its students?

In my perfect world, we’d find a way to ensure all Americans have an excellent education, affordable health care (including mental health care), affordable housing, and safe cities in which they don’t have to fear that calling the police will result in their own victimization. Workers will be able to organize to defend their rights as well.

In that world, fewer people would live in poverty, and more could afford good food.

One quick and efficient way to help reduce poverty is to raise the minimum wage. The 1968 minimum wage would be equivalent to $10.90 in 2015 dollars. The national minimum wage is only $7.25. Workers have lost ground over the last 50 years.

Meanwhile, since the early 1970s, as workers’ wages have stagnated or grown only slowly, productivity more than doubled.

Workers today do more than they did five decades ago but they make less money. The profits for the increased productivity go to the top 1 percent.

Accepting food stamps at a farmers market is nice. No doubt it’s more than nice for those on food stamps who shop at farmers markets. That contracting snafu should be fixed.

But to really help all Americans access fresh, healthy food, we need to either fix the food system or address economic inequality. Or, better yet, both.

Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. 

Jill Richardson: Pols tell poor what to eat

Republicans may like to rail against big government. But here in Wisconsin — where conservative lawmakers just introduced a bill to dramatically restrict what people can buy with their own Food Stamps — Republicans want to cook up a new kind of nanny state.

This isn’t a new idea altogether.

Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) already can’t buy prepared foods or booze with their benefits. More recently, some conservative politicians and policy wonks have suggested restricting Food Stamp recipients from using government aid to buy soda or junk food.

But now, Wisconsin Republicans want to bar people from using their Food Stamps to buy shrimp, lobster, and other shellfish, and require them to use at least two-thirds of their SNAP benefits on items found on a specific and arbitrary list of products.

If the bill were to pass, bulk dry beans — a very affordable and nutritious choice — would be out, but canned beans would be in. That is, unless they’re green beans, in which case they’re off limits. Fruit juice is allowed, as long as it’s not organic. Canned tomatoes are in, but spaghetti sauce is out.

The Food Research and Action Center says the proposal would create a “grocery nanny state.”

As a former Food Stamp recipient myself, I can’t even imagine what a trip to the grocery store would be like — or how humiliating it would be to check out and discover that half of my purchases weren’t allowed. Imagine holding up an entire line of shoppers as a clerk goes through your groceries, sorting them into “yes” and “no” piles.

And with only $70 to feed an adult woman for a month, how much lobster do the Republicans think I would’ve been buying anyway?

Like the rest of our fraying social safety net, Food Stamps are intended to help Americans out when we’re down on our luck. To qualify, you have to be incredibly poor — so poor that nobody would be tempted to avoid work to obtain public assistance.

My $70 a month for food was definitely helpful. But when I was that poor, I had a hard time paying for gas, rent, utilities, and everything else in my life. I was eager to earn more money and get off Food Stamps — and I did after a few months.

If you want to see what an average Food Stamp recipient looks like, look in the mirror. Anyone can fall on hard times. Every single person I’ve met who’s fallen that low has worked their tails off to get back on their feet.

Being poor is stressful enough without being kicked while you’re down. The last thing Food Stamp recipients need is a handful of rich politicians telling them what they can and can’t eat.

Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. This piece originated at otherwords.org.