Finding places to effectively spend those food stamps is another story. A large percentage of the 1.7 million occupy food deserts, neighborhoods where bodegas and other high-priced, low-quality stores are the only options, and fresh fruit and vegetables may be only a rumor. And despite the recent explosion of farmers markets, community supported agriculture projects and the city's own new Green Carts, many of these food sources still remain off-limits to food-stamp shoppers.
Farmers markets might have a reputation as a haven for upscale foodies, but it was not always so. In the 1990s, say nutrition experts, food stamps were widely spent at the farmers markets that were then available. That all came to a screeching halt in 1999 with the advent of Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, which Congress mandated that states use in place of paper food stamp coupons as an anti-fraud measure.
"When they did away with paper food stamps and went to the EBT card, it pretty much wiped out the use of food stamps in the farmer's market, which was very robust," says Marcel Van Ooyen, director of GrowNYC, which oversees the city's 51 designated Greenmarkets. "Since then, there have been real struggles to try to connect shoppers with farmer's markets."
New York has been slowly clawing its way back toward pre-EBT levels of food access for low-income shoppers, thanks to a combination of city and state initiatives. In 2002, the state agriculture department got federal funding for a pilot project to provide wireless EBT readers to New York markets, a project that went full-scale in 2006. (The federal government provides only wired machines, which are useless to an outdoor market.) This year, for the first time, a majority of the city's 51 Greenmarkets accept EBT cards, which can be used to purchase wooden tokens at a central kiosk; the tokens, in turn, can be redeemed at any stand throughout the market.
The result has been a surge of low-income shoppers to markets. According to GrowNYC, city markets did $250,000 in EBT sales last year, up from a mere $1,000 in 2005--and food-stamp transactions are expected to rise in 2010, with the number of EBT-friendly markets up from 23 to 27. (GrowNYC says it plans to expand EBT acceptance to 40 markets by the end of the summer.) Statewide, farmers markets did $600,000 in food stamp transactions last year, tops in the nation.
Andy Fisher, director of the Oregon-based Community Food Security Coalition--which last week released an extensive report on the difficulties farmers markets face nationwide in accepting SNAP benefits--calls New York City a "beacon for the rest of the nation" in its efforts to increase access for EBT cardholders.
