On a typical Thursday, Katie Alanis Barnhill goes to the Mission Community Market on 22nd Street to pick up a week’s worth of produce. These days she fills her basket with vegetables, mushrooms and plums, but soon her weekly market budget may be cut.
Alanis Barnhill, like 500,000 other Californians, uses Market Match. The program allows shoppers enrolled in CalFresh benefits, the state’s food assistance program for low-income people, to double the portion of their spending money they can spend on produce at farmers markets.
For the $15 she paid through CalFresh, Alanis Barnhill received $30 worth of food. But later this year, without her extra $15, she may have to pay less out of pocket.
Gov. Gavin Newsom in January proposed state budget cuts that would effectively eliminate funding for the California Nutrition Incentive Program, which funds market matches. You may also be left with additional funds. The program has raised more than $30 million in matching federal funds since 2017.
“That would be a fatal blow to the Market Match program,” said Mini Forman, who oversees the program and works for the Berkeley-based health and environmental nonprofit Ecology Center.
This is a further blow to low-income households. In 2023, about 70,000 San Francisco households (population: about 100,000 people) saw their CalFresh budgets cut by an average of $160 a month as pandemic-era food benefit increases expired.
“Programs like Market Match are even more important now,” Forman said. This program has served as his statewide safety net for 15 years, providing low-income families with access to affordable local produce.
Since January, Forman and others have been lobbying against budget cuts. “We’ve been in kind of a desperate situation ever since,” Forman said.
Every Thursday, 80 to 100 shoppers stop by the Foodwise stall at the Mission Farmers Market to deposit their EBT payments in exchange for wooden tokens. Green tokens (matched funds) can be used for fruits and vegetables, and red tokens can be used for any food item.
Over the past three years, Mission Markets has distributed more than $73,000 in matched funds alone.
“No market match? No customers. No customers? No sellers? No sellers? No market,” said a market operations associate at Foodwise, the nonprofit that runs the Mission Farmers Market.・Director Andrea Akers said.
Akers agreed that budget cuts would have a negative impact on the market. Not only does this allow customers to get the most out of their money, but it’s also important for sellers, as it gives customers an incentive to come in first.
Sergii Gavelovsky sells 17 varieties of tomatoes, peppers and zucchini at his stall Gabel’s Farm. Just an hour and a half after hitting the market on Thursday, he had already received a $38 wooden token.
Gaberowski said this has really helped their business. This was his second time selling at the Mission Farmers Market. Usually he has a shop in the Ferry Building. But he had already noticed that there were more Market Match shoppers within the Mission compared to areas frequented by tourists.
While the matching funds can only be used to generate sellers, for other sellers, the program will result in more foot traffic and overall sales.
“It’s definitely having an impact on the whole market,” said Phil, a vendor at Winter’s Fruit Tree.
Phil sells a variety of nuts and nut butters, as well as some fruits. In most cases, a CalFresh customer can only use red tokens at his stall. This represents an individual’s direct expenditure from his EBT allowance, rather than matching funds. Still, every Thursday he earns about $50. He said this adds up if you count that his farm sells at 17 markets a week.
Of the approximately 290 markets that offer Market Match, 17 are in San Francisco. Heart of the City Market, located near the Civic Center, is the largest in the state in terms of CalFresh spending. Steve Pulliam, who manages the market, said $2.57 million was distributed in 2023, with an additional $1.91 million in market match funds distributed.
During the pandemic, when office workers vacated downtown, the program attracted customers and kept them afloat, and still does, Pulliam said. “It’s very important to us,” he said.
And so is the Mission Farmers Market. Some come to double their money, while others stay for the community and atmosphere. On Thursday, the streets were filled with live music, shoppers carrying bunches of kale and baskets of strawberries, dogs and even a group of fire department personnel practicing CPR.
“There’s a good energy in this market,” said Pamela Osgood, a regular market customer.
That energy is what Forman and others are trying to maintain. They will continue lobbying in hopes of getting the national budget revised next month. “We’re all holding our breath until the May revision,” Forman said.
