“Everyone wants good, healthy, fresh food,” Jan Kozak protested. “It’s not just a desire of the rich and the affluent, it’s everyone.”
Access is the issue.
As program director at Wholesome Wave Georgia (WWG), Kozak works to facilitate access to locally grown food through partnerships with farmers markets statewide. The organization’s flagship Double Value Coupon Program (DVCP) doubles the value of all federal and state nutrition benefit dollars spent at participating farm-to-retail venues. Essentially, this initiative is leveraging existing government food nutrition programs to encourage the consumption of wholesome food within underserved communities.
Since WWG was founded in 2009, the organization has doubled $350,000 in food stamp dollars across the state. That value equates to $700,000 in fresh food for those who need it most—not to mention directly raising the income of small-scale, local farmers.
Today, EBT cardholders account for 20 percent of sales at the Athens Farmers Market—one of the markets to show the greatest success with DVCP— and that percentage has increased every year since the program’s launch.
“But it’s just a drop in the pan. There’s so much more work to be done,” Kozak insists.
Although nationally Wholesome Wave programs are viable in 28 states and at over 400 farm-to-retail venues, only 0.012% of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are spent through DVCP.
While statewide divisions work locally to increase awareness, the national nonprofit organization, founded in 2008 by Chef Michel Nischan, is focused on food policy, including the contentious Farm Bill, which directly affects government nutrition programs. They are also developing new programs.
These innovative initiatives are creating infrastructures that are “so simple but they make so much sense,” said Kozak.
Their Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program (FVRx) was designed to fight diet-related disease in at-risk overweight and obese children. It fosters partnerships that enable healthcare providers to prescribe vouchers to farmers markets in place of blood pressure or diabetes medication, for example. The Healthy Food Commerce Investments (HFCI) initiative functions to create “food hubs”—essentially centralized facilities where local farmers or food producers can receive assistance with storage, processing, distribution and marketing of regional goods. All farmers struggle with excesses of perishable product; this program can extend that product beyond a Saturday at the local farmers market.
Ultimately, the power of Wholesome Wave’s work is that it’s people giving back to people. As a 100 percent privately funded organization, the producers, consumers and financial supporters involved with these programs are creating a food system outside of the national system.
“We’re kind of counter-cyclical. We’re outside the commoditized, large-scale, multi-national system,” Kozak said with pride. Fortunately for all, Wholesome Wave has shown growth throughout the years of economic struggle.
When the economy turned south in 2008, the government’s Recovery Act temporarily increased SNAP benefits. This year, benefits returned to prior levels, but the fact is that the economy hasn’t truly recovered.
“When you go from $4.50 a day to $3.50 a day per person, that’s significant,” Kozak said.
By doubling the value of SNAP benefits, Wholesome Wave is working to resolve financial access to good food. But there are many hurdles to contend with yet. Many people who would benefit from the program still struggle with physical access to the market. Others lack education about unfamiliar produce and how to consume it once back in the home kitchen. Still, some may be uncomfortable with the often skewed demographics of a farmers market and the change from the anonymous grocery store.
According to one of Kozak’s favorite sociological studies, ten times more conversations take place at a farmers market than in the grocery store. “It’s sort of like an opening process, like opening up yourself to that experience and completely shifting the way you think about shopping for food, ” he said.
Illona Stewart is a mother, a vegetarian and a SNAP benefit recipient in Athens, Ga. She values spending her money locally, and she values the cross-socio-economic connections her family makes with the community at the market.
“We don’t ever plan to stay the whole time, but we always do. It’s a revolving door of people we’ve known from all parts of life,” Steward said in her speech at the WWG Harvest Feast fundraiser this year. She has become a community leader for the organization.
It is powerful to see a person who has struggled with hunger and food insecurity change their perspective on food. For a large segment of the population, it can be a luxury to view food as an element of the good life, as something that can add pleasure and fun instead of merely as a part of survival.
“You see the looks on their faces when they taste something that they either haven’t tasted in a long, long time, like maybe when they were growing up and their mom had a garden, or they just haven’t tasted it at all before, and you are giving them a whole new experience,” Kozak said with promise.
It’s these experiences that inspire him to keep his head to the ground and continue working to spread the word. This organization doesn’t have an endgame.
Wholesome Wave has always been about the producers and the eaters, the underserved and the affluent, the chefs and physicians, the community as a whole. It’s critical for everyone to be contributing, benefiting and participating to make it all work. A diverse, vibrant market leads to a more sustainable market—and an increase in access to fresh, healthy, locally grown food for all.
Story by Erin Wilson
Photographs by Paige French