2016 SNAP retailer report

Fascinating.
 This is from the 2016 SNAP retailer data report from USDA/FNS, found here. This is the kind of data that we need to pore over and gather data at the market level to compare and contrast.
Some quick data and my thoughts:
• 53 percent of the 366,972 households that shopped at a farmers’ market or direct marketing farmer made one purchase; another 18 percent made two purchases; and 29 percent made three or more purchases within the year. These percentages have remained relatively unchanged over the last five fiscal years.
So 53% only made a single purchase using their benefit card… This may correspond with the analysis from my 2013 VT Market Currency report that markets were then using a whole bunch of money and time to attract shoppers who are either at the end of their time on the SNAP rolls, or are new to SNAP and need more assistance in using their benefits, or that markets have not yet made enough changes to be welcoming for that shopping base to use their benefits at markets. So this data should be crunched with what part of that 53% has been enrolled on SNAP for ___ period of months.
The other way we should analyze this would be compared to our cash/credit shoppers too, which means we need to collect that data too in the same way. That is the kind of comparison that would tell us what the best initial strategy is for SNAP shoppers.

• In fiscal year 2016, program recipients made 1,095,107 purchases at farmers’ markets and direct marketing farmers nationwide. The average purchase amount was $18.60.•

Almost 1.1 million purchases has a nice ring to it. Of course so does 10 million.That would be a great goal for the market field: 10,000,000 purchases at markets and with dmfs in a single FY by 2019. Sometimes the obsession over only measuring total dollar amount spent limits the strategy for increasing actual uses of benefits in ways that are more useful in retail terms…

•  366,972 SNAP households made at least one purchase at a farmers’ market in fiscal year 2016. Households shopping at farmers’ markets spent $55.51 on average over the course of the year.

 • More SNAP benefits were redeemed at farmers’ markets and direct marketing farmers in fiscal year 2016 during August than any other month of the year.

 

Some of this data needs to be released per state, as the August spike is likely not true in the Southern states. It’d also be great to see here which week or days of the month it spiked as well.

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How “healthy” confuses people

As a secular retail anthropologist and a farmers market consultant, this article is like a bite of my market vendor’s satsumas right now:

DE-lightful!

 The healthy = expensive intuition is just one of “a universe of mental shortcuts” that we rely on to choose food, and many of those shortcuts also appear to be flawed. Previous research has described a “supersize bias,” for instance, in which consumers ignore calorie counts and other health information when presented with a meal that seems like a good value. The majority of Americans also embrace what’s called the “unhealthy = tasty intuition” — the belief that food must be unhealthy to taste good.

Obviously, that last line is the one markets should consider and maybe even draw part of their marketing strategy from it. If used properly, a message like “delicious tastes found here” can be an inviting message and could draw a wider audience to markets than the buy local messages that our field has long employed. And clearly better than using “healthy” to entice eaters who are not in the grips of a healthy living focus.

From the report mentioned in the article:

Schulte-Mecklenbeck, M., Sohn, M., de Bellis, E., Martin, N., & Hertwig, R. (2013). A lack of appetite for information and computation. Simple heuristics in food choice:

According to our findings, people are inclined to rely on simple strategies that limit search when making food choices. In addition, our participants paid more attention to the dishes’ image and name at the expense of nutritional information such as caloric and salt content… However, previous investigations (using, for instance, self-reports and eye tracking) have also concluded that many consumers are reluctant to make use of food label information.

I saw this very thing during my days as a buyer at Whole Foods, and as an office building convenience store chain general manager and even before that, when working back in the 1990s on a campaign to increase the number of organic items in Giant Eagle stores. In all of those instances, I noted how people would evaluate the healthy food with a confused look, often moving with almost a sleepwalker’s mien. In contrast, their physical behavior became very purposeful and focused once on aisles with less choice or less scientific data to absorb (like soda or paper goods). That the amount of data to process for many was simply too much was my takeaway. As an example, I remember a farmers market coworker who had come to healthy food late in life told me that “all” he bought was organic produce and since Whole Foods “only carried organic” he bought all of the produce he could not get from farmers at that store only. I shared the news that no, Whole Foods didn’t ONLY carry organic produce and that the pricing signs were color coded as to whether they were organic or not (and that most was not organic).  He was in shock to find that out; turns out he had never noticed the color coding or the words organic or conventional on the signs, probably because there was so much for him to learn as he began to shop there.

So that was a good example of shopper overwhelm. And from someone who was savvy enough to work at a market too.

So this is the type of aha that I wish for each of you. I also suggest that spending some time on research like this will be helpful to understanding what and how to dole out the info that is vital to any successful marketing/outreach campaign.

The Washington Post

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Helen Hill

Today is the sad anniversary of organizer/writer/filmmaker Helen Hill’s murder. New Orleanians, Canadians, South Carolinians, Californians and a slew of other oddballs and creative types are thinking of our dear Helen today.

Helen was daughter, sister,  mother, wife, friend. Her murder sent shock waves through dozens of communities that many will never recover from, partly because there was not a more loving or angelic human (although with a sensible streak of mischief when needed) than Helen. Partly because in true New Orleans fashion, the police never even turned up a suspect. Partly because her work was stopped, work so important that it has since been added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

Helen and her husband Paul came to me because of food, so that’s why this is here. I became active in the local Food Not Bombs actions which they had helped to “organize” or more appropriately, to encourage.  I had many fascinating conversations with them about tactics we might employ to be able to wrest food scraps from stores, including from Whole Foods. That conversation was ongoing because I worked there part-time, along with my other then part-time job at the farmers market. (That’s not as odd as it seems now because that WF location’s beginning actually predates the Austin behemeth’s ownership, back when it had been a New Orleans-only coop called Whole Foods Company. Even after the corporation bought it, it remained a funky local treasure, so my working there and at the market at the same time for a short time was not that farfetched.)

Their vegan potlucks were legendary, as were her vegan tea parties. Paul and Helen also knew my market boss, fellow vegetarian activist Richard McCarthy, and through him had begun to bring their pig Rosie to our market events. I remember once Helen called me before a scheduled visit to ask details as to where Rosie would be set up; turns out she was worried that Rosie would be within sight of meat vendors and would be distressed. I was at first amused, thinking she was slightly joking, but of course she was not. Sobering up, I assured her that every precaution would be taken for Rosie to be happy and comfortable that day. Forever after, Helen treated me as Rosie’s protector.

I was thrilled like many others when news came of their return to New Orleans after Katrina. Helen had asked many to send postcards to Paul to convince him to return. Happily, he did; sadly, that return was so very short.

This link is to a film Helen made for Rosie about her genealogy. This one is about the life of chickens, a motif  she often used  in her art.

From her award-winning film Scratch and Crow:

HelenHillDustyAngels.png

There are dozens and dozens of tributes to Helen, but viewing her films and hearing about her Poppy growing up under the wise and gentle hand of his father is the tribute she’d like  most of all. So please enjoy and share her lovely films whenever possible.

 

 

 

 

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Winter/Spring 2017 FM Conferences

This is the best list that I could muster from researching online for a few hours. It only includes published events that have a specific farmers market management track or focus as described in their materials.  If your meeting meets that criteria,  is not listed and will be held before May 2017, email me at dar wolnik at gmail.

Missouri FM Association: January 20, 21 • St. Louis
Arkansas Farmers Market Association 2017 Annual Meeting:  January 20 • Little Rock
Wisconsin Farmers Market Association Conference: Jan 22 – Jan 24: Wisconsin Dells
Maine Farmers’ Market Convention: January 29 •Hinckley
Washington State FM Association: Feb 2-4 • Blaine
Pick TN: February 16 – 18 • Franklin Tennessee
Oregon Small Farms Conference: Saturday, February 18 • Corvallis
Oklahoma FM and Agritourism Conference: February 23 • Oklahoma City
2017 Alaska FM Conference: MARCH 2-4 • Homer
2017 Ohio Farmers’ Market Conference: March 2 and 3 • Dublin

British Columbia FM Association: March 3-5 • New Westminster

2017 Michigan Farmers Market Conference: March 7 and March 8 • East Lansing

2017 KANSAS :Farmers’ Market Conference: March 16 and March 17 • Wichita
Colorado FM Association Annual Meeting: MARCH 17 and MARCH 18• Longmont
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One business shares a gratitude index

In what has to be the most common topic in this blog for 2016, I offer another illustration of how data collection can be simply managed, yet offer meaningful data for a wide variety of audiences.
The elegant metrics from a small value-added business in Charlottesville VA are below. It seems important to note that Stacy was my comrade for the original creation of the FMC Farmers Market Metrics work (and FMC’s founding executive director before our current excellent Jen Cheek) , and did a incredible consulting  job in 2016 assisting FMC with metric refinement, data collection research and devising the workbooks that are at the core of the FMM program. Those tasks are in addition to what the output shows in the metrics below, her devotion to fitness as a student and a leader and (along with her ever cheerful husband Joe) raising their energetic son.

2016 was good phyte foods’ first full calendar year of operation, after our first humble sale at Charlottesville City Market in May 2015. Since January this year, the business has made from scratch and sold 57,024 crackers, 1,003 bars, 157 pounds of granola, 978 pumpkin muffins, 533 kale cookies, and a motley assortment of odd-looking experimental snacks. In so doing, we have bought sustainably grown (and often certified organic) vegetables and herbs from at least twelve farms² in Central Virginia. We are grateful not only to our loyal and patient customers at City Market, but to our enduring local partners at The Juice Laundry, Random Row Brewing, Blue Ridge Country Store, and ACAC Downtown. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It is a humbling honor to be part of this evolving local food economy.

And for those who think cottage industry producers only care about their own cash flow:

In the coming year, we want to expand our reach to more retail partners, reinvest in new equipment, train some cracker apprentices, experiment with early summer cracker flavors, and give back to community organizations that are helping kids eat more vegetables. I have recently been appointed to the Advisory Council of the Urban Agriculture Collective of Charlottesville, which, among other things, teaches children of limited economic means how to grow, use, and appreciate fresh organic vegetables.

Go Stacy Miller; Keep the goodphyte going.

Source: getting specific: gratitude counts in our 2016 index

Health issues topped the list of scientific studies reaching wide audiences in 2016

In general, health-related studies… had more reach on social media and other online platforms than other scientific studies. Seven of the top 11 most-discussed scientific studies for the year focused on health, as did fully 59 of the top 100. Together, these studies covered a wide spectrum of health-related subjects.

The second-most-discussed health article after the one by Obama was about the prevalence of hospital medical errors, a problem the authors determined was the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

The fifth ranked article was a historical analysis claiming the sugar industry had sponsored research dating back to the 1950s aimed at downplaying the possible links between sucrose and coronary heart disease.

 ft_most-read-journal

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Hark!

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Dear Market community,

The work that all of you do to offer physical comfort as well to create deeper connections may not be noted every week but I hope that you are sure that it results in great things. Those great things revolve around the market’s vital role as the town square which we talk about often on this blog but still may take in stride too easily. No matter how you feel about recent events, it is clear that democracy is in fragile shape. What too many Americans think of as their only duty as citizens begins and ends on election day; After that is done, the other activity is focused on name-calling and silly memes on social media. If that is the sum of one’s civic engagement, the result is often naive cynicism, an unhealthy view of others and a further tearing of the fabric of democracy.

How else can we help democracy prosper but by thoroughly shaking out and airing ones citizenship in public regularly? And when we talk about doing this in public, we cannot mean those narrow retail aisles where one or two corporations have decided that only some are welcome,  valued mostly by the largeness of their purchases. In these restricted places, too many of our neighbors are left out. Those neighbors need to be allowed in AND allowed to find real ways to engage as citizens too.

Because citizenship is not the same as consumerism, even though many confuse the two.

Or as Wendell Berry says, “I think an economy should be based on thrift, on taking care of things, not on theft, usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.”

In answer to that, you’ve designed markets to not only be about the buying and selling of well-made thrifty items, but also about the sharing of ideas and talents used for the safeguarding of our shared and precious resources; an economy of taking care of things and of each other.

That makes you the mayors and leading citizens of your village, creating an town square of good, busily entertaining strangers who may be some of those angels unaware.

So here’s to your health in the New Year to able to do even more of it.

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Book review: The Invention of Tradition

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I find this to be a fascinating subject. The traditions that we follow offer clues as to which tribe we want to join or those to which we already belong; they also indicate which authorities we follow.

As pointed out in the excellent introduction, tradition is a different matter than customs. Tradition is what has become unvaried or fixed, while customs “serve the double function of motor and fly-wheel.” Customs have more to do with the delicate give and take of civil society, and can become tradition and often do. For example, the author points out that much of what judges do is included under customs, but what they wear is tradition.

This collection covers some great examples of invented traditions from different colonial systems, the British monarchy and the European industrial age after 1870 to the start of World War 1. The term invented tradition in this book includes those constructed to assert authority or dominance, and those that simply emerged over a brief period of time. With those definitions, one can easily see how knowing how to untangle which is which (and devised by whom) is vital before adopting or defending them.  For example, it seems that recently the singing of the national anthem has become a place of protest at sporting events. While writing about the issue, many reporters began to examine this tradition and found it only became the custom around WW2,  with the song itself protested by citizens from its adoption as our anthem in 1931. Even Jackie Robinson wrote of his inability to stand and sing the song in his 1972 autobiography.  No matter how one feels about the protesting, one can see how it has been hardened into tradition that is now so dearly held by some that the flouting of it is seen as an unpatriotic act.

Upon investigation, it may  turn out that some of these dearly held traditions began from pure myth or even from the cooptation of another culture. But knowing which invented traditions are problematic may be difficult to uncover and in many cases,  may not really matter.  After all,  all traditions are manufactured by people and their meanings changing with the times.

In terms of community food systems, it seems to me that its invented tradition and customs should be at least understood before adopting. The adoption of some customs (old-timey signage for example) may presume an allegiance to a past that not everyone is excited about repeating or even remembers. Or the tradition of Saturday morning markets meant a smaller audience for our farmers than the modern world could offer us, yet still felt appropriate for the first founders to honor it by adopting it. Since then, by acknowledging that tradition and finding ways to pay homage without being wedded to it, the market field has vastly expanded its number of days and therefore its reach. Another example may be the traditional audience of the farmers market field: in almost all cases, our markets serve family tables and not larger entities. Could we invent a new tradition where we use the  weekly open-air market model to build another that serves intermediate and wholesale customers exclusively? As long as we made sure to  build transparency and  payment options for bulk purchasers, restaurant, grocery and wholesale customers couldn’t  the market serve the same role as curator and connector that it does in the traditional model?

In any case, installing meaningful traditions and customs into food system work is vital. After all, a generation is around 30 years in span;  this means that the kids and grandkids of the original visitors and farmers are using this new tradition of markets, and assuming the customs and routines of it. The more that those traditions are made to fit the values of the people that are using them, the more that we can clearly indicate the role we want the places of good food to play in civil society.

Book availability

 

 

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SNAP Update:  “Twinkies can no longer be considered bread”

      “I’m disappointed that the rules don’t go as far as what was proposed early this year,” said Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a nutrition advocacy group. “USDA has missed an opportunity to increase the availability of and access to healthier foods for low-income Americans.”

The earlier proposals also recommended leaving food with multiple ingredients like frozen pizza or canned soup off the staple list. The outcome is a win for the makers of such products, like General Mills Inc. and Campbell Soup Co., which feared they would lose shelf space as retailers added new items to meet the requirements.

But retailers still criticized the new guidelines as too restrictive. Stores must now stock seven varieties of staples in each food category: meat, bread, dairy, and fruits and vegetables….

…More changes to the food-stamp program may lie ahead. The new rules were published a day after the House Committee on Agriculture released a report* calling for major changes to the program, which Republicans on the committee say discourages recipients from finding better-paid work.

Source: Regulators Tweak SNAP Rules for Grocers – WSJ

*Some of the findings from the 2016 Committee on Agriculture Report “Past, Present, and Future of SNAP” are below.

    • Program participation nearly doubled (up 81 percent from FY 2007 to FY 2013) as a result of the recent recession. In an average month in FY 2007, 26.3 million people (or about 9 percent of the U.S. population) were enrolled in SNAP. That increased to 47.6 million people (or about 15 percent of the U.S. population) in FY 2013, owing to the fact that the economy was slow to recover and many families remained reliant on SNAP. Even now, with a 4.6 percent unemployment rate (compared to a 9.6 percent unemployment rate for 2010), there were still 43.4 million SNAP participants as of July 2016.
    • SNAP is now a catchall for individuals and families who receive no or lower benefits from other welfare programs, largely because the eligibility criteria in SNAP are relatively more relaxed. As a result, the net effect has been to increase SNAP enrollment. For example, in the welfare reforms of 1996, the cash welfare program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was converted into a block grant known as TANF, which has rather rigorous work and activity requirements and includes a time limit. Another program available to those who are laid off from work is Unemployment Insurance (UI). These benefits require individuals to have a work history and to be fired through no fault of their own to be eligible for assistance. UI benefits are also time-limited, typically lasting six months. A third program, Federal disability benefits, requires individuals to prove they are unable to work. For many families who have not collected SNAP in the past, SNAP is now a default option for filling in the gaps.
    • USDA data shows that spending on SNAP remains three times what it was prior to the recession ($23.09 billion pre-recession average compared to $73.99 billion post-recession in FY 2015). However, SNAP spending is now projected to be significantly lower than it was estimated at passage of the 2014 Farm Bill.
    • For FY 2017, the maximum monthly benefit in the 48 contiguous states and DC is $194 for a one-person household, $357 for a two-person household, and $649 for a four-person household.17 In determining a household’s benefit, the net monthly income of the household is multiplied by 30 percent (because SNAP households are expected to spend 30 percent of their income on food), and the result is subtracted from the maximum benefit to determine the household’s benefit.
    • Seniors have the lowest rates of SNAP participation among eligible households of any demographic. While the low participation rate has a variety of causes, a prominent explanation is the stigma associated with SNAP and welfare in general. Many factors contribute to a lack of access to food among seniors, including a lack of a substantial income, the gap between Medicaid and the cost of living, limited income with specialized diets, and mental and physical illnesses.  The issues facing these populations must be viewed holistically, with SNAP as one piece of a larger solution to solving hunger for seniors.


According to research by the AARP Foundation—a charitable affiliate of AARP—over 17 percent of adults over the age of 40 are food-insecure. Among age cohorts over age 50, food insecurity was worse for the 50-59 age group, with over 10 percent experiencing either low or very low food security. Among the 60-69 age cohort, over 9 percent experienced similar levels of food insecurity, and over 6 percent among the 70+ population.

• The operation of the program is at the discretion of each state. For instance, in California, SNAP is a county-run program. In Texas, SNAP is administered by the state… Dr. Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute cited a specific example in New York City where SNAP, WIC, school food programs, and child and adult care programs are all administered by different agencies and the result is that each agency must determine eligibility and administer benefits separately.

K. Michael Conaway, Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture. Hearing of the House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture. Past, Present, and Future of SNAP. February 25, 2015. Washington, D.C.  Find report here

From CNN this week:

The number of people seeking emergency food assistance increased by an average of 2% in 2016, the United States Conference of Mayors said in its annual report Wednesday.

The majority, or 63%, of those seeking assistance were families, down from 67% a year ago, the survey found. However, the proportion of people who were employed and in need of food assistance rose sharply — increasing to 51% from 42%.

 

CNN Money report

 

Slow Food in a Trump world 

Glad to see Richard’s take on the election and on our food organizing future even if it seems bleak:

I am very much on edge that the hard-fought battles for greater transparency, greater community engagement and shaping local control over foods … could be wiped out….

…there is no longer a consensus about social, economic and political obligations to one another…we need to build mechanisms for social cohesion….

Still, leave it to Richard to find the cracks in the sidewalk for shoots to grow:

While Trump and Brexit signal a “hard-right nationalism,” they also represent “votes against large, faceless, unresponsive institutions or political blocs … a vote against large imperial elites,” McCarthy said from Slow Food’s Brooklyn, New York headquarters.

Trump’s popularity outside cities and the coastal elite, he said, also means a rejection of an “economy that treats rural economies as places that we extract resources from rather than as places where we grow wealth and community….

Other quotes:

…Food continues to be this persistent wormhole in the universe between people who are otherwise divided.

..we still have all of this baggage from the second half of the 20th century; growth-driven economy, globalization, ultra-specialization where we don’t even know or have to know where our food comes from as long as it comes in cheaply. That system is unraveling; in the unraveling, it’s no longer functioning for people.

there is a sense that I want a different kind of relationship in my community with my food…there is an instinct to reach out and there is an instinct to want to withdraw. I can’t do anything about the withdrawing although I fully understand why one would want to…(but) food is a fairly benign gateway for us to forge relationships, connections….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen here

27 days…or less

Bloomberg: On average, the companies surveyed have just 27 days worth of cash reserves – or money to cover expenses if inflows suddenly stopped – according to the JPMorgan study, which analyzed 470 million transactions by 570,000 small business last year. Restaurants typically hold the smallest cash buffers, with just 16 days of reserves, while the real-estate sector boasts the biggest, at 47 days.

I’d like to see cash reserves and other business practices as metrics for Farmers Market Metrics in a later iteration. My sense is that the internal data of a market’s (and of its businesses’) bookkeeping and accounting-norm practices can be collected under the term “Resiliency” and offer advocates some wonderful data in order to extend the lifespan and/or decrease the learning curve of new or expanding farmers markets and its businesses.

It has long seemed to me that many small businesses within markets mistake cash flow for profit which often leads to surprising exits from  those markets. Therefore, the more  a market understands the difference between these two for itself and can begin to assist its types of business with establishing baselines for this data, the more that the USDA and other supporters can be encouraged to offer even more detailed assistance.

Bloomberg

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