By Oran Hesterman
As we all know, the past 18 months brought disruptions that none of us expected or could have predicted. Significantly, Covid-19 stimulated a national hunger crisis. Nearly one in four households experienced food insecurity in 2020, many for the first time in their lives, as those impacted by pandemic-related shutdowns and layoffs struggled to afford enough food for their families. This surge undercut a decade of progress in reducing food insecurity, particularly among children.
As the coronavirus fundamentally upended communities, our mission at Fair Food Network to support communities in harnessing the power of food to grow community health and wealth never felt more fundamental or urgent. And so, we summoned all of our creativity to ensure we continued to meet the urgent and emergent needs of the families, local farmers, and food entrepreneurs at the heart of our work.
Key to this was pivoting our Double Up Food Bucks program, which matches SNAP, or food stamp, dollars on fruits and vegetables. For those locally, we may know Double Up as a Michigan program, but over the past decade it has blossomed into a national model for SNAP incentives active in 25+ states from coast to coast. As nutrition incentive programs like Double Up became more necessary than ever as an immediate emergency response with simultaneous benefits, practitioners stepped up to meet the acute needs in their communities.
Read related article: Dr. Oran Hesterman — Championing Healthy Food for All Through the Fair Food Network
Across sites nationwide, families spent a total of $11.74 million Double Up dollars on healthy food in 2020 — a 98.9% increase from 2019. And in Michigan, Double Up use in 2020 was more than double that of 2019—resulting in an estimated reach of more than 200,000 Michigan households.
Because Double Up also focuses on locally grown produce, it boosts families’ limited food dollars, making healthy food within reach while supporting local farmers; and the program has stimulated our economies during this economic downturn.
In response to the pandemic, we lifted the $20/day earning cap to provide families increased food dollars. We also fast-tracked the onboarding of new retail markets and worked with partners to develop a new smart phone app, which shoppers can download to enroll in the program, check their balances, find a participating location, and earn/spend Double Up dollars. All of this reduced the need for in-person contact. Finally, we ramped up marketing efforts to get the word out, including the launch of a new website: DoubleUpFoodBucks.org
And while Michigan is home to the largest Double Up program in the country, we have connected with local partners and markets across the country to ensure Double Up remains a strong community resource and is keeping pace with increased demand, especially in grocery stores.
We’ve also expanded our reach to support the broader national network of nutrition incentive practitioners through our new role serving as USDA-designated lead for technical assistance and innovation for the Nutrition Incentive Hub, an entity founded to increase the impact of healthy food incentives and produce prescriptions. As part of this work, we recently hosted a national online convening that brought together 1,000 practitioners from across the country to learn how to more effectively expand their programs.
Impact Investing
While Double Up programs stepped up, our Fair Food Fund worked to provide financing and business assistance to food entrepreneurs which has been equally critical in supporting healthy food access, local farmers, and a stronger, more resilient economy. It’s never been more important as businesses across the food system, from farm to fork, have experienced tremendous economic hardship.
Here, too, we moved quickly. We took steps to support our existing portfolio of businesses while accelerating new investments and business assistance to support entrepreneurs in pivoting their businesses in order to maintain food access in the communities they serve. We are proud to have closed 2020 with four new investments including businesses in Michigan and the Northeast United States.
As part of our work with the Michigan Good Food Fund, a statewide loan fund we now administer, we brought together 13 early-stage grocers from across the state to explore how to elevate locally sourced food in the grocery setting.
Helping us was Argus Farm Stop, a local hybrid café and year-round farmers market here in Washtenaw County.
Finally, we launched a Collateral Initiative, which utilizes a pool of grant capital, to partner with other lenders and enable investments in businesses that do not have the reserves to weather this moment.
It is truly an extraordinary time we are living through, one whose full impact has yet to be fully felt as more fault lines in our society become apparent. Today, more than ever, it is important for all of us to do all we can to support those most destabilized.
At Fair Food Network, we are privileged to do this necessary work and deeply appreciative of the partnerships and support that makes it possible.
Oran Hesterman is the founder and chief executive officer of Fair Food Network.For more information about Fair Food Network, or how you can get involved, visit them online at fairfoodnetwork.org.
Related Content:
In late April, on a mostly sunny, cool morning, with the temperature in the low fifties, I drove out from Ann Arbor on Whitmore Lake Road to Slow Farm. I found Bayer and co-farm manager Magda Nawrocka-Weekes standing at the edge of a large field on the west side of Whitmore Lake Road, near the farm’s gate.