Celebrating the Forest Grove Farmers Market

By Skye Cornell

To continue the celebration after the press release from Wholesome Wave and Kaiser Permanente, we wanted to share highlights from a trip to Oregon. Ashley Fitch and I visited Forest Grove Farmers Market, located in one of seven Kaiser Permanente regions throughout the U.S. where Wholesome Wave worked with community-based partners to begin or expand the Double Value Coupon Program (DVCP) in 2011. See more pictures from our visit on Facebook.

Our first lesson? The people of Oregon are incredibly polite. A local shared an expression with us: “out-nice.” As in “Of course a stranger at the airport noticed that you looked lost and stopped to help you figure out the best way to get to your rental car. We try to out-nice one another here.”

So it was no surprise that the staff at Adelante Mujeres planned an incredible day for us to meet community members, tour La Esperanza Farm, visit a local health care center, and see the DVCP in action at the Forest Grove Farmers Market. In addition to managing the Farmers Market, Adelante Mujeres runs several other initiatives to support the education, empowerment and economic development of low-income Latina women and their families.

At the Adult Education class, Violeta tells us DVCP “is a good opportunity to expose [her] kids to fresh fruits and vegetables.” Her classmate Artemisa says, “the program means I know I’ll be able to count on a consistent way [to afford fruits and vegetables] for my three children. My [11-year-old] daughter wants to have fruit for snacks, but sometimes I can’t afford it.”

Later in the day at the market, Market Manager Kaely Summers tells us about a recent rapid response survey: “in addition to fresh fruits and vegetables, participants love the community at the market.” (That sounds about right to us – we found similar results in our national survey conducted last year.) That day, a man riding a piano-bike and singing, plus two women who spontaneously joined in on the fun with a hula-hoop, entertain the community. Another key ingredient in this community? The farmers who are part of Adelante Mujeres Micro Enterprise program, focused on small-scale, sustainable agriculture.

“I call the market and the farm ‘twins’ because they were born together in 2004,” says Alejandro Tecum, Director of Adelante’s organic farming program, Adelante Agricultura. Many of the new farmers involved in the program receive SNAP benefits or have received them in the past, making them both vendors and customers at the Farmers Market. This year the farm has 16 beginning farmers, each growing on a quarter acre. There is room for more growth. Alejandro’s goal is to “graduate” the farmers so they are self-sustainable. The previous plot of land Adelante Mujeres worked on now has five “graduate” farmers.

Adelante Mujeres recognizes that DVCP can help to increase sales for all of the farmers at the market – by encouraging federal benefit spend on healthy, local food, which is good for the local economy: research has shown that $1 in SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in economic impact.

Rhoda, an Adelante Mujeres board member and volunteer, is at the market each week to process federal nutrition benefit sales while distributing matching DVCP tokens. In between DVCP transactions at the market, Rhoda summed up the day nicely: “I feel lucky that we were able to provide $10 in match this year and keep the program running consistently.”

So do we at Wholesome Wave!