Grant opens online market to 'food deserts'
Started as an online gateway to local foods, FarmieMarket was Sarah Avery Gordon’s way for small, Hilltown farmers like her father to reach customers who increasingly shop online.
With a provision for processing government benefit payments through the Internet in the 2014 Farm Bill, Gordon’s business was approved for a grant that will open its potential customers to roughly 95,000 people in the Capital Region who use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, known as the food-stamp program, that help low-income people afford food.
The Value Added Producers grant from the United States Department of Agriculture, announced last week, will pay for half of the $49,000 cost of a payment system on the FarmieMarket website and an advertising campaign. Most of the money will go toward the advertising placement — including radio, television, and a quarterly newsletter — starting with the 2015 harvest season.
FarmieMarket delivers to shoppers who select and purchase food or farmshares online. Gordon said it has 1,200 customers in the Capital Region and the Mohawk Valley.
She wants the advertisements to appeal to children. “So that they see the fun and the colorfulness and the value of eating local and really trying to translate that in a way that captures the whole family, not just the person that purchases the food for the whole family.”
Field Goods, a subscription service for the capital region and Hudson Valley, is FarmieMarket’s most direct competition. The not-for-profit Capital District Community Gardens has since 2007 brought fresh foods in a box truck to neighborhoods that lack them. Gordon says her business is unique for its strict focus on organic growing practices.
She said she was encouraged to apply for the grant a second time by the USDA and the offices of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congressman Paul Tonko. Gordon said she first began discussing the use of Electronic Benefit Transfer credits through the Internet with Gillibrand’s office more than two years ago.
“It also invests those federal food-stamp dollars with local farmers so that that money continues to circulate in the local economy,” Gordon said.
The USDA grants total $25 million this year, meant to help rural entrepreneurs expand or bring new products to market.
