State Budget Includes Funds for Better Access to Healthy, Local Foods

Low-income families will have better access to fresh, healthy foods, and local farms will have more sales, thanks to $1.35 million in funding for the Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) included in the FY2018 Massachusetts state budget, signed yesterday by Governor Charlie Baker.
When SNAP recipients use their EBT cards to purchase fruits and vegetables at participating farmers markets, farm stands, mobile markets, and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs, HIP automatically credits their account with a one-to-one match of up to $80 per month, depending upon household size. Earned HIP incentives can then be used towards any future SNAP purchase. HIP is a project of the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, in partnership with the Department of Agricultural Resources and the Department of Public Health, along with a coalition of more than 40 organizations including Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), Project Bread, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, the Federation of Massachusetts Farmers Markets, and the University of Massachusetts’ Stockbridge School of Agriculture.  
Massachusetts is the first in the nation to offer a statewide healthy incentive to SNAP clients issuing the benefit on an EBT card, and the program is already showing signs of success. While HIP is still being gradually rolled out statewide, more than 150 retailers are already set up to process the new benefit, and more are being added each week. In past years, SNAP sales at these types of retailers have totaled less than $400,000, but that will almost surely be exceeded this year, since just a month into the market season more than $250,000 of HIP benefits have been earned.
Only one-quarter of Massachusetts adults eat the federally recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day, and the gap is significantly higher in low-income households. Disparities in access by race and ethnicity exacerbate the problem further in many communities. This nutritional deficit contributes to increases in obesity and its related chronic preventable diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. HIP’s goal is to improve health outcomes for some of the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable communities, by making fresh, healthy food more accessible.
“Now that I know what HIP is, I’m making sure to buy fruits and vegetables first each month,” said Marie Loranger of Monson, who was one of the first people to receive HIP incentives when she purchased vegetables in April. “My doctor has told me I need to eat more healthy fruits and vegetables, and my response has been that it’s too expensive. Now I have no excuse! I’m buying more vegetables and freezing them so I can use them all year.” HIP incentives can also be used to purchase vegetable plants, which Loranger has done as well, and she is looking forward to harvesting her own healthy food later in the summer.
More background about HIP can be found at http://mafoodsystem.org/news/#hip-launch and at www.mass.gov/hip.
The success of HIP was identified as a priority in the 2015 Massachusetts Local Food Action Plan (mafoodsystem.org/plan/), a comprehensive food system plan developed for the State. The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative (mafoodsystem.org) is a network of Massachusetts food system stakeholder organizations, working to promote, monitor, and facilitate implementation of the Plan.