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

Maine fights 'Big Sugar'

The official name of the Food Stamp program.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

Maine deserves a lot of credit for seeking to improve the health of low-income people on Food Stamps while trying to cut the cost of the state-federal program in the Pine Tree State. (The federal government pays 100 percent of Food Stamp benefits  but shares administrative costs with the state.)

The state wants to ban the purchase with Food Stamps of candy and soda. New York, Illinois and Minnesota  have also sought approval from the U.S. Agriculture for similar bans.

Sadly, as anyone who watched checkout lines in supermarkets can confirm, many people buy lots of candy, soda and other junk food with Food Stamps. But consuming candy and soda, whatever the quick pleasure they provide, do far more harm than good, among other things in raising the incidence of obesity and diabetes, which are epidemic in America, where poor people tend to be fatter than more prosperous ones. The science is clear.

When Food Stamp recipients get sick because of their over-consumption of this junk, the taxpayers must pay for much of the cost of their care through Medicaid.

As Maine Gov. Paul LePage (a Tea Party Republican!), said the other week: “The time has come to stand up to Big Sugar and ensure our federal dollars are supporting healthy food choices for our neediest people.’’

Seems very fair and reasonable.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Food Stamp program, has rejected Maine’s request, using  such vague excuses as concerns about administrative costs for retailers and the alleged difficulty of deciding on which products to take off the Food Stamp list. But seems to me that these problems, especially in the computer age, can be very easily overcome. And again, the science on the effects of consuming large quantities of candy and soda are clear.

I suspect that the USDA’s opposition to Governor LePage’s proposal reflects the Trump administration’s disinclination to displease the powerful U.S. sugar lobby, based in swing state Florida, and other players in the junk-food world.

Trump's 'pluto-populism'

Adapted from an item in Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com

The Trump budget proposal is filled with so many bogus assumptions and so much creative accounting it’s hard to take any of it seriously. Indeed, people in both parties on Capitol Hill are treating it as a joke.

But there is a central, cohering direction – make America’s put-upon rich people even richer while sticking it to poorer people, many of whom, deluded by Trump’s demagoguery and such right-wing propaganda organs as Fox “News,’’ voted for the mogul. (Meanwhile, many Democrat-inclined people were too lazy tomake it to the polls.) You have to give the  hateand fake-conspiracy peddlers at Fox credit – the network has very good production values.

Of course, the richer the rich get, the more they control the government and the more that they’re able to further enrich themselves in a vicious or at least lucrative circle.

An essential part of the Trump budget is the assumption, or, rather, assertion, that it will somehow be paid for by increased economic growth – more of what George H.W. Bush used to call “voodoo economics.’’ The promise is that annual gross domestic product growth will rise to 3 percent, even as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects only a 1.9 percent rate. That’s because the CBO technicians wisely take into consideration, among other things, our aging population and falling productivity.

Most administrations – including Obama’s – havecooked (or massaged?) the books and often projected considerably higher GDP growth than happens. But the assumptions in the Trump plan are particularly egregious given the Niagara of retiring Baby Boomers and the big proposed tax cuts.

For  many Boomers, by the way – especially the richer ones -- Trump is relatively kindly. Older white Baby Boomers vote heavily Republican, and he has vowed not to touch gigantically expensive Medicare or regular Social Security – by far the two biggest entitlement programs – which of course benefit them.

He promised in the campaign not to cut Medicaid. Now he wants to slash Medicaid, Food Stamps and Social Security Disability Insurance. That isn’t to say that Medicaid can’t use some major improvements, such as reducing the amount of unnecessary care and in some cases including work requirements for recipients. And Social Security Disability Insurance has long been rife with abuse. But the fact is that most of the people who benefit from these programs are honest and truly needy. Indeed, most are far more honest than Donald Trump.

Martin Wolf, a Financial Times columnist, described Trump’s “ideology’’ well when he called it “pluto-populism” -- “policies that benefit plutocrats, justified by populist rhetoric.”

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.