In many parts of the world, autumn is a time for harvest festivals celebrating the end of the growing season and laying up stores for the winter. One example is the recent celebration of Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, known in Hebrew as Succoth. That’s also part of the basis for the American Thanksgiving holiday.
In the Bible, harvest time demands special consideration for the poor. In Leviticus (19:9,10) it says, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.”
Unfortunately, many low-income West Virginians lost out on the chance to glean and store up for winter when the popular SNAP Stretch program was suspended in mid-August due to lack of funding.
SNAP is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP Stretch is a program that boosts the purchasing power when people use SNAP benefits at participating farmers markets. It provides a dollar-per-dollar match to buy locally grown fruits, vegetables, herbs, plants, and seeds. The matching rate goes up for seniors and families with children.
SNAP Stretch is a winner all around, but let’s start with those for hungry people. Regular SNAP benefits aren’t nearly as generous as some people tend to believe. They average around $6 per person per day, an amount many people spend on fancy lattes at a coffee shop. The boost in buying power from SNAP Stretch can make a big difference.
There are also health benefits. While heavily processed foods can be a cheap source of calories, they are often high in sugar, salt, fat, and other ingredients associated with increasing risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other ailments. That’s a sharp contrast with fresh local foods.
There are the economic gains. I’ve read that the average food item purchased by Americans comes from around 1,500 miles away, usually made and distributed by (publicly subsidized) food conglomerates. God knows what’s been done to it by whom by the time it gets to us.
And that “food product” is often sold in big box retail stores that siphon money out of the local economy. There’s a huge difference between that and putting money directly into the hands of neighbors in exchange for healthy homegrown food.
According to the Food Research and Action Council (FRAC), each dollar’s worth of SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity, supporting local farmers, markets, businesses, and jobs.
There are other benefits. Eating fresh locally grown food helps us reconnect with the turning of the seasons. There’s a big difference between opening a bag of frozen corn versus shucking a few ears grown by neighbors. If you eat animal products such as dairy, eggs, or meat, chances are that those from small local farmers were produced more humanely than those from huge factory farms where many animals never see the light of day.
SNAP Stretch helps build community. You can spend hours wandering the aisles of big box stores without a lot of human interaction. You can even check out with a machine without as much as nodding at the checkout clerk. That’s not going to happen at a farmers’ market. At my local market, it’s not unusual to see people hit every truck and table, talking to growers and fellow shoppers as well.
The influential food writer Michael Pollan said it well:
…there is a lot more going on in them than the exchange of money for food. Someone is collecting signatures on a petition. Someone else is playing music. Children are everywhere, sampling fresh produce, talking to farmers. Friends and acquaintances stop to chat. One sociologist calculated that people have ten times as many conversations at the farmers’ market than they do in the supermarket. Socially as well as sensually, the farmers’ market offers a remarkably rich and appealing environment. Someone buying food here may be acting not just as a consumer but also as a neighbor, a citizen, a parent, a cook. In many cities and towns, farmers’ markets have taken on (and not for the first time) the function of a lively new public square.
In times like these, we need more of that.
This program was developed by the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition and funded by a mixture of USDA and local funding, sometimes provided by a mix of philanthropy and COVID-era public money. It has reached nearly 80,000 families and put around $3 million into local farm economies. When funding dried up this summer, activities, 26 markets in 21 counties lost out.
One way to make sure this doesn’t happen again—and to do so before the next growing season—is for the legislature to provide annual funding to match federal contributions in the next session. A few hundred thousand dollars a year is decimal dust in a $5 billion state budget, but it would benefit families and farmers statewide. We’ve spent much more on stranger things with less public benefit.
Since I started with a Bible verse, I might as well end with one. In chapter 6 of Matthew, Jesus said “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)
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