Making your farm’s food more accessible to your community is a free, no-brainer that feels great.
By Lindsey Lusher Shute
The process of accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits as a farm has always been a lot of work: a lot of work to understand the program; a lot of work to figure out how to get a card reader; a lot of work to get reimbursed for the costs and any “double up” dollars on fruits and vegetables.
Let’s be honest — any government program that is so complex that it requires the creation of a separate currency to be usable (wooden tokens) leaves something to be desired.
The success of SNAP for farmers up to this point is largely the result of tireless farmers market and food security advocates creating all kinds of workarounds in service of a very simple goal: to make locally grown food affordable to all.
The Future of SNAP
The good news is that SNAP is going through a fundamental transformation that aims to accomplish better food access with much less effort: SNAP is now online!
Our family farm, Hearty Roots Community Farm, was one of the first farms in the United States to be authorized to accept SNAP benefits online. It feels great to make our farm food more accessible to families in our community. We are part of a small yet growing list of producers who have also embraced the transition to SNAP Online: River Queen Greens (Louisiana), Footprint Farm (Vermont), Massaro Farm (Connecticut), and Sleeping Lion Farm (New York).
As a farmer and technology provider, I participate in the new SNAP Online program. I co-founded GrownBy, a free and farmer-owned app for farm sales. We partnered with the National Association of Farmers Market Nutrition Programs (NAFMNP) to be the first farm app to accept SNAP benefits electronically. On GrownBy, customers can save their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card as a payment method (like a credit card) and pay for an order online. We offer this service free of charge.
SNAP Transformation
SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps, began in 1964. The program was originally intended to make best use of agricultural overproduction and to improve access to food for low-income families. The benefits were in the form of actual paper “stamps.” In the late 90s, these paper coupons were replaced by EBT cards and, in 2019, the USDA launched a pilot for online purchases with these cards.
While large online retailers - with significant engineering budgets to spend - jumped at the new sales opportunity, farms and smaller retailers were largely left behind due to the cost and complexity of implementation.
In early 2022, the National Association of Farmers Market Nutrition Programs (NAFMNP) was awarded a USDA grant to help farmers participate in the SNAP Online program. Funding was provided to build an integration with the payment processor, FIS/Worldpay, and farm sales software. Funding was also provided to offer technical support for farmers as they navigated the application process and monies to pay for any software and payment processing fees.
Farmer Cooperative Goes Toe-to-Toe with National Retailers
NAFMNP partnered with GrownBy to be the first software for farmers to support SNAP Online. GrownBy is owned and run by the Farm Generations Cooperative.
Farm Generations Cooperative was co-founded by myself and fellow farmer Mike Parker. We were working together at the National Young Farmers Coalition. We launched Farm Generations with the mission of building fair technology for farmers that would accelerate sales and streamline the complex marketing logistics. Figuring out how to integrate SNAP payments was on our early feature wish list, as we knew the challenges of accepting SNAP first-hand on our own farms. We also believed that accepting SNAP benefits on GrownBy would have tremendous potential for many growers. SNAP participants spent $119.2 billion in 2022 alone.
Integrating SNAP Online with GrownBy took over a year, starting with documenting lengthy technical requirements and then rigorous testing and vetting by the federal government. USDA holds GrownBy to the same standards as the big retailers, and we embraced the challenge of overcoming the technical hurdles. We knew that SNAP Online integration would open up SNAP Online for thousands of farms nationwide - farms that wouldn’t have the capacity or resources to build a solution independently. The beauty of a cooperative (and a platform) is our fundamental ability to pool resources and work together to achieve a goal that might be difficult or even impossible alone.
How Farmers Access SNAP Online
The process of accepting SNAP Online at your farm is straightforward. It involves an initial intake form, creating a store on GrownBy, and some paperwork. The teams at GrownBy and NAFMNP are ready to answer your questions and make the process easy.
Step 1 — Marketlink Eligibility Quiz
The first step is to take the Marketlink eligibility assessment. Marketlink is a NAFMNP program that manages many SNAP and farmers market incentive programs. Their short quiz will determine if your farm is eligible for the USDA grant that covers the cost of SNAP Online.
Step 2 — Join the GrownBy Marketplace
Getting started with GrownBy is easy: just go to grownby.com and click “Start Selling Now”. With GrownBy, you can process your EBT/SNAP sales and all other transactions. You can accept credit card and offline payments and sell anything from CSA shares on subscription to one-off custom orders.
A farmer dashboard provides sophisticated inventory tools, financial reports, and harvest lists to streamline your work. My favorite new feature is app-based sign-in sheets for distributions or delivery routes, so you can track who has received their farm shares and what was donated.
Step 3 — The Paperwork
After Marketlink approves you, there’s one more step: officially apply for SNAP Online with the USDA. You must be an authorized SNAP retailer for in-person sales before you can accept online sales. For farms that are already authorized as SNAP retailers, you can move right to the SNAP Online application. As part of this process, you will make an account with FIS/Worldpay to process the EBT transactions.
Step 4 — Set up and Testing
Once USDA receives and accepts your application, they will notify you when you’re ready for testing. At this point, our team at GrownBy will create test products for sale in your online GrownBy shop and USDA’s testing team will make purchases with live EBT cards to make sure everything is working smoothly. The GrownBy team manages this testing process for you.
Step 5 — Go Live and Tell Customers!
The most exciting moment will be an email letting you know your shop is ready to go live! USDA will want to know when you start selling SNAP-eligible products in your shop and then they’ll add your farm shop on GrownBy to the national list of SNAP Online retailers on that date.
Options for CSA and Double-Up
Now that Hearty Roots Farm can accept SNAP Online on GrownBy, the next step is to make our CSA program work for SNAP participants. We’ll accomplish this in a couple of ways: by creating a CSA share that can be paid for on a weekly basis with benefits and by applying to partner with Glynwood on their innovative CSA is a SNAP Program.
Glynwood will help us raise funds in the beginning of the CSA season for members paying weekly and they can also help us access New York’s Double-Up Food Bucks program. In many states, the double-up program subsidizes a 50% discount when SNAP customers purchase fruits and vegetables.
Our farm also raises funds with other local partners and CSA volunteer groups to reduce the costs of our CSA shares for customers in need. We hope to continue that program this year and further expand food access. Many great programs across the country go beyond SNAP, which you can find on the Fair Food Network.
Be a Food Security Leader
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us realized how critical local farms are to food security - as did many of our customers. Food security isn’t just about the availability of food; it is also about the affordability and accessibility of our products. With double-up programs, SNAP Online, and more, it is now possible to run a viable farm and get your food to the community members who need it most.
Participating in SNAP Online is one more opportunity for the farm community to demonstrate our leadership and our vision for sustainable, healthy, and food-secure communities.
Lindsey Lusher Shute (she/her) is the CEO and co-founder of the Farm Generations Cooperative and GrownBy. Her family owns and operates Hearty Roots Community Farm in Clermont, New York. She can be contacted at lindsey@farmgenreations.coop.
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