I am a huge fan of the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at the Vermont Law School. This activist center has already added a great deal of thoughtful research to the field of community food and their impact continues to grow exponentially. It is my honor to be working on one of their projects, a legal toolkit for farmers markets, along with the good folks at NOFA-VT.
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One of the great restauranteurs of our age, and found right here in New Orleans. She speaks of her work with such love and respect, yet clearly suffers no fools. And yes, she is a supporter of local farmers and fishers with countless sightings at area farmers markets to her credit.
I absolutely love this reminder of gifts of food as a source of comfort to those grieving or healing. I remember well how my pals put together a schedule of healthy food after I had surgery a few years back, as well as food being dropped off by my friends and work colleagues when family members passed in the last few years, and how much those very special gifts from all of those busy people meant to me and to my family.
I wonder if markets could assist their customers (and make some income too) by stretching this idea with “winter cold” baskets, full of greens, carrots, garlic and chicken or a “welcome to summer” baskets with flowers, fruits and light foods or by printing cards with room for a note and a list of what is being dropped off for the basket?
Source: The Gift of Food: What to Give to Those Who Have Lost | Cooking Light
This is (basically) the same system that Crescent City Farmers Market (CCFM) in New Orleans has used to gather data from incentive users (incentiv-ers?) since they began doing them some years back. They call their incentive Market Match.
As one of the staff who was responsible for doing it when it began and was part of the discussion about it, I really liked it. It is on a pad that is pulled off to have the person fill out and then each slip is added to the clipboard (or put in a container) to be entered into spreadsheets at a later time. The darker grey is filled out by the market staff person after the other part is completed by the shopper. What I know is that the system was designed with both the shopper and the market staff needs in minds, which as we all know is important and yet not always done. I’d like them to be numbered chronologically so as to know that none were lost. Maybe they are numbered, I’ll check to see.
Sorry for the wrinkles- it ended up in my market bag under the citrus. I’ll get some more pics of their system-including a better version of this and maybe the other collection forms if they will allow me to continue to peek over their shoulder.
The first is Senate Bill 184 – the “Small Purchase Threshold” bill. Up until now, any food purchase a school made larger than $30,000 was subject to a complicated bidding process, known as a “formal bid.” This made it difficult for schools to get seasonal and local foods because the process is often challenging for smaller-scale, local farmers. The passage of SB 184 increased the small purchase threshold to meet the federal standard of $150,000, enabling schools to work more closely with small-scale farmers to serve local food to Louisiana children.
The second is House Bill 761 – the “Urban Ag Incentive Zone” bill. This bill creates urban agriculture incentive areas and reduces taxes on land used for urban farming. It greatly reduces expenses associated with acquiring urban agricultural land, and in turn encourages Louisianans to grow more local food.
But though the need for seed banks is often associated with more stereotypically environmental, even futuristic, cataclysms (climate change; disease; pesticide-resistant insects) their history is inextricably tied up with something more banal and present-day—war.
…virtually no conflict has gone by without a devastating loss of seeds, often mitigated by a heroic rescue or underscored by a tragic attempt. Afghani mujahideen destroyed Kabul’s national seed collection in 1992. (Local scientists managed to smuggle some seeds into the basement of a few city houses, but by the time they returned to check on them a decade later, looters had dumped them on the floor in order to steal the storage jars.) During the Georgian civil unrest of 1993, just before the country’s Sukhumi Seed Station was destroyed, an 83-year-old botanist named Alexey Fogel escaped into the Caucasus Mountains with its entire lemon collection. Scientist Alexis Rumaziminsi, now known as the “bean boffin of Rwanda,” protected the many varieties of beans in his research plots during 1994’s civil war and genocide. The US-led invasion of Iraq resulted in the razing of the country’s national seed bank in Abu Ghraib—not to mention the implementation of American-style seed laws, which mean that if Iraqis want to buy new seeds, they will have to pay for yearly usage licenses.
Source: From WWII to Syria, How Seed Vaults Weather Wars | Atlas Obscura
POP (Power of Produce) is an excellent example of gamification, which simply put means using game tactics to increase participation. Other examples of this include online voting for funding exercises with the top vote getters winning grants or those systems that score your knowledge. “How Much Do You Know About Your Farmers Market?” might be a good one for a local market to send out in the slower part of the year.
Source: How Nonprofits Can Increase Engagement Through Gamification | Jim Pugh
This week is the deadline for all merchants to have new machines with chip and pin technology. RE-reposting to remind everyone to remind everyone to ask for updated machines.
(and here is some detailed background info about credit cards and how the fees are designed that was posted on an electronic bulletin board site recently. Warning-VERY detailed!)
*This is a reposting to remind markets to check in with vendors and with your own credit card processor to ensure your readers are up to date. NOFA-VT leader Erin Buckwalter asked me about Square readers on a call today which reminded me to repost this information. And so yes, Square has an updated version as well, so make sure anyone using that or any other older card processing technology for credit cards is updating it!
*original post*
Was fortunate to be on a call with market state and network leaders today and to hear speakers including Kim Lyons, a long time supporter of small retailers at MerchantSource®; she gave us a great overview today of the chip and pin enabled devices/aka EMV devices/aka smart card technology that is coming down the pike. Here is what I heard, and as I get updates I’ll post them here and if what I wrote here needs to be corrected by my more able colleagues, I’ll also update. But since I know many markets don’t have state or network support systems, I felt it was necessary to get this on radar screens asap.And do remember, this is also important for market vendors that have their own credit card machine to address, so feel to print this out and share widely.
Chip and pin technology has existed for many years in Europe but had not been pushed in the US market- that was, until some of the worst security breaches of cards seen happened in the past year, including the Home Depot and Target breaches. So, whether or not those issues would be solved by it, chip and pin technology is coming and coming soon.
This technology means credit and debit cards contain an embedded microchip and are authenticated automatically using a PIN. When a customer uses a card, it is placed into a “Point of Sale” (POS) terminal, which connects to the chip on the card. To complete the transaction, the customer enters a 4-digit PIN. These new technologies are meant to reduce the likelihood of breaches, especially at the merchant level. This is also true of new app-based systems (also called “contactless systems”) like Apple Pay which allow a user to upload credit cards to their iPhone 6 and use encrypted “near-field technology” to just tap or wave the smart phone at the merchant pad. The card itself never leaves ones wallet in those cases.
This chip and pin technology directly relates to all debit and credit but not to EBT only technology because EBT uses a different software kernel (system). However, many expect FNS to address this issue with changes in their technology sooner or later.
Important to note: This technology is for “card present” (CP) transactions and so internet or phone based transactions aka card not present (CNP) transactions will need their own version of chip and pin; some exist already. Of course, markets are not usually running CNP transactions so this is less of an issue right now for physical farmers markets.
There is a great deal left to learn about these issues as markets move into the next generation of technology. What is crucial to understand right now is the expected deadline of October 2015 for having this emv/pci compliant technology will shift liability of any breach on to merchant’s shoulders rather than the merchant providers of Mastercard/Visa etc. After that expected date of October 2015, in order for liability of any breach to stay with the merchant service providers, it will be necessary for any retailer to have these integrated pin pads or systems at that point. That means either adopting brand new card technology or app-based services like Apple Pay or upgrading their existing magnetic stripe only capabilities.
Once again, this technology is not directly related to EBT right now as a different type of technology so EBT only machines are not affected at this time but rumors abound of possible changes…
A recap of what is written above: Markets or state associations need to know if their merchant service providers or app-based solutions are emv/pci/contactless compliant. This new technology needs to be embedded into their pin pads or new technology by October of 2015 or the liability for any breach shifts to the merchant (read market). That entering into any lease system for readers at this point may mean getting technology that is “end of life” and cannot be upgraded or may mean paying for equipment after its technology is outdated. (Leasing versus renting contract language also needs to be understood by the buyer!) So, state associations, national partners and advocates for farmers and markets are working hard to understand these issues and to find resources for markets and farmers to understand the issues that will arise.
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What was also raised on this call was Farmers Market Coalition’s new contract with FNS to administer 3.3 million in support grants to markets for EBT systems and 700,000 in replacement equipment. I am sure that system along with the existing Marketlink system (which is an entirely separate program from FMC’s contract and supports NEW EBT systems for markets and for market farmers) are both going to work diligently on making sure these new systems are addressed.
Start reading up, folks.
After reading through the thumbnails on the USDA site a few times (and they are added at the end of this post), you’ll find some of my takeaways on this round of successful grants. I combed through this list a few times, and did my best to collect data correctly (!) but do realize my numbers are not precise and may be off since I just took the data from the summaries listed.
USDA expected to fund around 190 with this round of funding and, by their count, ended up funding 163 projects.
47 states, districts and territories are represented.
California has the largest number of grants with 14 (one was listed with KS projects)
The majority of the proposals focus on simple marketing and outreach for markets. Here are the grants that specifically mention one of the following:
Farmer/vendor assistance/expansion
Marketing outlets
Market upgrades
Strategic planning
Marketing/Outreach
Some other odds and ends of creativity to share that showed up at least once: inclement weather supplies for shoppers and vendors, SNAP advisory committee made up of SNAP recipients, a road show that will highlight regional farmers via traveling through region, DRIVE (Demo, Ride, Incentivize, Vary, Eat) and FORAGE (Food Oases’ Role to Advance and Generate Economies), door-to-door outreach, meal-kit CSAs, online discussions, a Latino ambassador program, expanding shoulder season products (early Spring and Fall), a pre-purchase system that allows for the use of (SNAP) benefits, a financial analysis to review market budgets, creating easy-to-use fillable templates for managers, direct mail campaign regarding artisan meats, a partnership with library to offer educational opportunities for vendors and consumers, culturally-appropriate public service announcements, TANF workforce assistance in production, WiFi addition, assessing agritourism readiness, a farm-to-work week, technical support for U.S. Veterans to become farm entrepreneurs, best practices of university farmers’ markets.
Some specific outcomes written into the description: fresh produce and healthy living cooking experiences to 100 neighborhoods, strategic community development action plans for each FMNP market county, two new retail options (pop-up markets), three thriving, community-run farm stands, extending the farmers’ market to year-round, a financially self-sufficient farmers’ market, eight new points-of-sale, collaboration between fifteen Latino owned farm enterprises and five local farmers and three local food businesses.
wow. I wish everyone good luck in this round of funding and will look forward to reading the results.
Awards List, listed by state
Some very exciting projects in here. Congratulations to all of the successful organizations.
As approved by Congress in the President’s FY 2014 budget request for FNS (The Food and Nutrition Service: 2014, Explanatory Notes), these funds are intended to support “the participation of farmers’ markets in SNAP by providing equipment and support grants to new markets and those currently participating in the program.” The goals of the FMSSG program are to increase SNAP accessibility and participation at farmers’ markets, and support the establishment, expansion, and promotion of SNAP/Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) services at farmers’ markets. This is a new program, which may continue in subsequent years.
Some of you may remember the 3-part Big Data and farmers market posts I did a few months back. Here is another article from Next City that talks of a Big Data partnership for city planners to understand how people move about, to shop and to work.
What is great about this type of big data is that many markets can be a part of this data since a significant number of them accept MasterCard cards, either at the Welcome Booth or among vendors. Think about a funder doing this, using the number of and dollar amount of transaction metrics to analyze with transportation data; it could illuminate the need for more buses during market hours or simply to show the cluster patterns of market shopping among card users. That data could then pinpoint outreach.
By combining MasterCard’s transactions data (they process 43 billion per year) with Cubic’s transportation data, analytics and visualization technology, the platform — dubbed the Urbanomics Mobility Project — will yield insight into the way transit and economic activity are linked in cities.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/how-human-is-big-datas-newest-city-planning-tool
Seems to me that at least 12 of these are primary to the market movement’s goals too:
In September 2015, the United Nations are launching global goals, a series of ambitious targets to end extreme poverty and tackle climate change for everyone by 2030.
Source: The Global Goals
A recent Centers for Disease Control survey of 5,000 American children and adolescents age 2 to 19 offers proof that poor people not only don’t consume more fast food than those with higher incomes, they actually consume slightly less. The study, which looked at figures from 2011-’12, found that “no significant difference was seen by poverty status in the average daily percentage of calories consumed from fast food among children and adolescents aged 2 to 19.” In fact, the poorest children surveyed got the least amount of their daily calorie intake from fast food, at just 11.5 percent. That number rose to 13 percent for their more affluent peers.
And a Gallup poll from 2013 found “[t]hose earning the least actually are the least likely to eat fast food weekly — 39% of Americans earning less than $20,000 a year do so.” Conversely, more affluent Americans — “those earning $75,000 a year or more — are more likely to eat [fast food] at least weekly (51%) than are lower-income groups.”
Source: The Truth About Poor People’s Eating Habits Will Surprise You | Alternet
In addition, Beth will be co-teaching Agriculture and Food Entrepreneur Lawyering Skills with Amy Manzelli (left) in the spring. Amy currently collaborates with CAFS on two USDA-funded projects. She is a partner at BCM Environmental & Land Law, PLLC in Concord, New Hampshire, specializing in environmental, conservation, and land law.
On September 25, 2015, Ristino gave the presentation “Food, Agriculture, and Drought: Implications of Water Supply Scarcity on Food Production and Policy Solutions at the Federal, State, and Local Levels” at the 
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 