Every Saturday, year-round, community members head to downtown Duncan to visit the farmers’ market. Tents filled with local goods and locally-grown food and food products line the streets of the downtown core while people of all ages connect with vendors and each other.
Some of the purchases made at the market on Saturdays are paid for using Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupons. The coupons, distributed by Cowichan Green Community, support nearly 400 people in the community who likely wouldn’t otherwise have access to locally-grown and raised fruits, vegetables, meat and more. They also help support local farmers by putting cash — to the tune of $56,709 in 2023 — directly into their hands.
After years of success, the Duncan Farmers’ Market is joining the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets and several others to call on the federal government to match provincial funding for the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon Program.
A petition to the Government of Canada to create a national nutrition coupon program fund was launched in December and submitted by Courtenay-Alberni Member of Parliament Gord Johns. It has received more than 800 signatures from across the country, with more than 300 coming from B.C.
The hope in Duncan, according to Duncan Farmers’ Market executive director Janice Roberts, is that this increase in funding will allow more community organizations to partner with the coupon program so the coupons can be distributed to a variety of clientele who are facing food insecurity.
“There’s more food insecurity happening across the board,” Roberts says. “I think a program like this doesn’t require a lot of diving into to realize how wonderful it is. It’s a winner on all fronts.”
Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon program supports and builds community
According to the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets, the coupon program operates in 96 different communities in the province, with a total of 1,259 farmers accepting the coupons. More than 12,000 households in B.C. have received Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupons to put towards purchasing healthy, local food. The demographic of people served by the coupons includes lower-income families, pregnant people and children and seniors, and one quarter of the recipients are Indigenous.
In Duncan, a total of 160 households receive the farmers’ market coupons. They come in $3 denominations and recipients get $27 per week for up to a total of 16 weeks to put towards food purchases made at the Duncan Farmers’ Market.
Roberts says the coupon program helps reduce barriers for people to access locally-grown and produced foods, and gives them the opportunity to pick what they want to purchase. The normalcy of being able to go to the market, connect with the community and access food is what makes the program great, she says.
“I have seen people in all walks of life, all ages, all demographics utilizing these coupons,” Roberts says. “It is an asset to our market and our agricultural identity of the Cowichan Valley and the community as a whole.”
While there are other resources in the community to support food accessibility and security, such as the food bank, Roberts says the coupon program creates a niche opportunity for buyers to connect directly with the farmers who have grown or produced their food. The Duncan Farmers’ Market is also unique because it has vendors selling honey and cheese, which isn’t available at every market, according to Roberts. She says she is working on finding someone to provide milk at the market, too.
“People have a choice … They can really just experience the joy of getting fresh food and not having there be a stigma around it,” Roberts says. “And that’s something that a lot of our vendors have said has changed a lot in this last year. People are not shy handing over coupons. They are involved in the community. I think that itself should be championed.”
Food insecurity on the rise
In the last year, food bank usage in Duncan has doubled as food insecurity is on the rise.
“Household food insecurity is when a household worries about or lacks the financial means to buy nutritious, safe, personally acceptable foods,” the BCCDC says, and on the South Island, the cost of food is the highest in the province according to statistics from Island Health.
In January, the Cowichan Valley Basket Society food bank provided nearly 600 food hampers to community members. That’s double — if not more than double — the usual 200 to 300 hampers given out per month in previous years.
In previous reporting by The Discourse, Cowichan Valley Basket Society manager Henry Wikkerink said more seniors and families are accessing services at the food bank as the cost of food and living continues to rise. There have also been consistent new registrations at the food bank from people who have never been there before.
Cowichan Green Community executive director Judy Stafford said that while need is increasing, funding isn’t, and is calling for more funding to support local food security programs. The organization is the only community partner in the Cowichan Valley administering the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon program.
Funding would support program expansion across B.C.
Currently, the Province of B.C. puts $4 million into the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon program. The money is distributed across B.C., with different communities receiving different amounts of funding.
Now, Roberts says people are calling on the federal government to match the $4 million the province is providing and to fund the same program in provinces and territories that don’t have it already. This is through a petition, submitted by Courtenay-Alberni Member of Parliament Gord Johns. The petition is collecting signatures until April 9 after which it will be presented or tabled in the House of Commons and receive a government response no later than 45 days after.
Peter Leblanc, program manager for the Farmer’s Market Nutrition Coupon program with the BC Association of Farmers’ Markets, says the program has grown significantly since it launched 12 years ago. In the first year, the association worked with approximately 12 different communities to administer the program. Now, it operates in 96 different communities with more than 100 farmers’ markets and 227 community partners.
Funding is distributed to each community farmers’ market based on a number of different factors. When someone purchases an item with a coupon, the farmers’ market reimburses the farmer using the funding it receives.
The amount that a person receives has also increased from $15 per week to $27 per week thanks to an increase in funding from the province over the years, Leblanc says. But he’d like to see that number increase some more.
“Food costs aren’t going down, they’re going up,” Leblanc says. “That’s what, in part, leads us to ask the federal government to step up and supplement what the province is doing.”
Leblanc says there are two other things on the BCAFM’s wish list for the increased funding to go towards, if it comes through.
Many community partners have waitlists of people hoping to access the coupon program. Leblanc says they’d like to try and clear the waitlists.
The second thing on the list is to expand the community partners that help administer the program. In Cowichan, the only community partner is Cowichan Green Community, which provides coupons to its clients. If the coupons can be distributed through a diverse range of partners, Leblanc says a variety of populations could potentially be served.
Individual donors and organizations can also support the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon, Leblanc says, and any extra funds raised locally stay in the community.
“We just feel like we’re delivering on things that society wants to have delivered. [The program is] making sure that people have access to healthy, nutritious food, it makes them feel more connected and increases their ability to improve their health. So all those things that are kind of bundled up in preventative care, and allow for the weight on the health system to be decreased,” Leblanc says. “And we’re giving [farmers] an extra layer of customer base, thus improving their situation as small-scale farmers which we feel is helpful in maintaining our ability to feed ourselves.”
The next round of applications in Duncan for the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon program should be in March, Roberts says. More information will be shared on the Duncan Farmers’ Market website when it is available.
