Michelle Obama, a passionate urban gardener and fresh food advocate, should be proud of her adopted community. On March 10, the DC Department of Health held a training for farmers to accept both the existing WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) coupons and the new WIC Cash Value Vouchers for fruit and vegetables (FVCs).
Farmers filled the room. Those who attended were registered to start accepting these coupons on May 1, thus making local fruits and vegetables more accessible to D.C. mothers and their young children.
Indeed, this brings us closer to the message of Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which urges parents and policymakers to get vegetables on every child’s plate.
Unfortunately, like the effort to bring more vegetables into D.C. school cafeterias (and as reported on this very blog), this one may not live up to its potential. In D.C., farmers had just this one chance to get authorized—on one day, in one location.
From reports of the training, it seems like virtually every produce market will have at least one vendor registered to accept coupons. So that’s good–but who knows how many more rooms they could have filled?
Consider the options in other states, each of which is able to implement this program in different ways. Maryland set up a schedule of more than 20 trainings on 15 different days at multiple locations. New York and Alabama offer online trainings that farmers can take any time and anywhere. Connecticut’s Department of Agriculture does group trainings throughout the state, but will also visit individual farms whenever a farmer would like to join the program.
The room for D.C.’s one training session was reportedly packed with farmers–which suggests the demand is great. Could it have filled several rooms in several trainings? Could some flexibility in this new program yield a bumper crop of participating WIC/FMNP produce vendors?
Photo: Produce at the Dupont Circle FRESHFARM Market, courtesy of FRESHFARM Markets.
