FMC Spotlights: Texas Center for Local Food

      Posted On: August 7, 2024

Welcome to FMC Spotlights! Where we share the work of our incredible partners and members. In this first spotlight interview, FMC’s food access project manager Nino Budabin McQuown talks to Sue Beckwith, Yelitza Garcia, Anna Wright Smith, and Susan Barker of the Texas Center for Local Food (TCLF).

TCLF is FMC’s state partner in Texas, and for years we’re worked together, most recently on TCLF’s Fresh Look project, where they support Texas Farmers Markets to start and grow their capacity to accept SNAP so that more Texans can have access to fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables in their own communities.

Learn more about TCLF at https://texaslocalfood.org and check out their FREE online courses for market managers and staff here! Be sure to also follow TCLF on Facebook and Instagram at @texaslocalfood.

*This interview has been edited for length and readability.

FMC: Welcome everybody! So, to start with, I wanted to ask a little bit about Texas Center for Local Food. How did the organization get started? What kind of work do you all exist to do? And and what’s that journey been like?

Sue Beckwith: Well, I’ll take a swing at that one. The Texas Center for Local Food was founded in 2016 by a small group of sustainable and organic farmers in Central Texas, and the purpose was really to increase the amount of sales of locally grown food here in the State. And this team does that really well. And SNAP at farmers markets is really the front line of increasing those sales. So that’s why we were founded. We’re the only organization in Texas really focused on the economics of local food.

FMC:  What are some of the reasons that you felt like that was a mission that really needed to be focused on in Texas?

Sue Beckwith: Well, there’s too few farmers in Texas, and a part of the reason there’s too few farmers is the market is too small. You know the same customers over and over again remain this pretty small bunch. And so what can we do? We need to do something to increase the size of the pie. You know. Look at States like Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Vermont and others where local food is really a habit and a way of eating for so many households across the demographic and economic spectrum. And that hasn’t been the case in Texas, in part because no one was really focusing on promoting it. So it was sort of self-fulfilling cycle, and so we’re working to increase the size of that market base.

FMC:  Fantastic. Yeah, so what are some of the other challenges and opportunities that you see in working on local food specifically in Texas.

Sue Beckwith: Well, the big one is. There’s too few farmers. It’s a system, right? So where do you find ways in to break the cycle? To open it up and accept SNAP at farmers markets is one of them. Because SNAP at farmers markets not only is in alignment with our values of community health, individual health, equity, and Texas grown foods, but also serves our mission, which is more money in the farmer’s pockets. So they’re still here, farming for us in their communities next year. 

In addition to SNAP at farmers, we also provide direct business development services for farmers, and we do a lot of work through the USDA business center on the whole supply chain. Because it is a system, and if there’s not the sales outlets at farmers markets, the means of access, and the production and the processing and distribution, that is all in between. No one piece is going to be able to grow without the other pieces growing at the same time.

FMC: Oh, fantastic. So it sounds like you’re really thinking about the big picture and complex systems that support local food in Texas. And so how does the Fresh Look Project fit into that?

Yelitza Garcia: We recognized the need for this project after the 2020 census data came up for SNAP sales at farmers markets. And with direct marketing, Texas ranks 47th in the nation. So we saw a pretty big need to increase our SNAP sales through that. We saw this opportunity for an intersection between business development, a new market, a new audience for farmers, and community building by increasing access, local food access for all shoppers, and then just general development of the local food system within Texas. So that was a pretty big selling point for us at the intersection of all of these great values.

FMC: And so what are some of the challenges that y’all have seen farmers face. When they’re looking to accept SNAP in Texas?

Anna Wright Smith: Well, that’s a big question. The challenges facing farmers! You know, I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone in FMC’s audience that there are several! And you know, in Texas we’ve got over 200 farmers markets, so that’s over 200 different sets of challenges. But we definitely notice some patterns, and a lot of those boil down to not enough money, not enough time.

With SNAP specifically, we kind of see two big buckets of challenges. Number one is just on the operational side, getting set up to launch a program. You know, there’s the whole application. There’s setting your procedures for record keeping. There’s figuring out what the customer experience is like. And at this point we’ve helped 17 markets start accepting SNAP. So we’ve done this 17 times. So a lot of the support we offer is navigating the pretty labyrinthine USDA process that we’re more familiar with than our partners are, connecting markets to funding sources for their equipment, and even just sharing ideas for how you organize your procedures, what kind of staff people you need. Just kind of being like the more experienced guide with them on the side.

The other kind of big bucket of challenge that we’ve seen with our partners is promotion and reaching folks who use SNAP, letting them know that, not only can you use SNAP benefits at the market, but, like, this is a welcoming place. This is an open community. So we do that promotion in a lot of different ways. A big one is signage. So when someone shows up at the market, they know how do I swipe my card? Where do I get tokens? What is this about? We also do online training for creating a welcoming farmers market and some cultural competency for like market staff and volunteers and vendors.

Another big one we do is social media support. So we run Meta ads on markets’ behalf that we target within their communities. We also provide social media content. So especially for smaller markets who are less social media savvy. We provide content that they can use that promote SNAP that does customer education around seasonal fruit and veg. And then we support with outreach to traditional media. We’ve gotten stories picked up in the news when and markets launching SNAP.

The last thing we’ve done for promotion recently that we’re really psyched about is we ran a survey at five different markets across the state of the people who were shopping with SNAP. So we have really recent, really good on-the-ground data about how people who use SNAP learn about using that at the market, and what kind of messaging, and what kind of fruits and vegetables they like—then markets can use pictures of those in their ads! So we’re really delighted to have really good data to inform our TA and the advice that we give to our partners. So basically, that was a lot but that’s because we really try to be like an extra member of the market team, like the most competent, easy to work with volunteer that our markets have ever had.

FMC: I love that framing. I feel like that speaks so much to one of the kind of just needs that we hear all the time from market operators. Extra capacity, like you talked about, it coming down to money and time. And for so many support organizations. Yeah, being that extra team member, feels like the the most effective thing that we can do to support market operators, just actually to take some things off their plates. And if there are other support organizations out there that are looking to do a similar program to support authorization for farmers markets, do you have any advice or any anything that you’d want to share with them.

Anna Wright Smith: Oh, my gosh! That is such a good question! It’s sort of like you all have been saying. Remember that a sale requires the willing participation of two people and building your own capacity is one thing, but if you don’t tell anyone, and if you don’t specifically—I’ll say—take the TXFed course on how to create a welcoming farmers market, your staff and your vendors may just be unaware of ways that they’re behaving that may kind of turn people off. And then those people are going to go to church Sunday and tell eight people. So remember that! 

FMC: What’s the story you want people to tell about you? What are some of the impacts that you’ve seen from the Fresh Look project across Texas?

Anna Wright Smith: Well, I’m so glad you asked! Like FMC, we’re big fans of data monitoring our impact. Right now we are working with over 50 different markets. We’ve helped 17 markets start accepting SNAP. We have an additional 12 that we work with, who are going through the process, who will also be accepting SNAP before long.  Over the course of our project, we’ve reached over 800,000 people just through our social media and other social marketing promotions. And then, you know, as Sue mentioned, the economics of this, are really what’s central to our mission. Over the course of our project, more than 500 SNAP participants have shopped with their benefits at our partner’s markets. And they’ve spent over $200,000 with our partners. And that’s money that is going to farmers. That’s money that’s staying in communities. And that’s strengthening local economies. So we’re really happy with those numbers that we’ve seen, and we’re looking forward to where they go in the future.

FMC: What are some of the really cool things that your partners have done? That you’ve seen as part of the fresh look program?

Yelitza Garcia: The first thing actually that popped to mind was the recipe project. One of the needs that has popped up through data, honestly, through storytelling and data is that a couple of my partners have had the same problem in very different areas of the State, which is people come and they don’t know what to do with the produce that we have. They’re so used to going to big box stores where they could get bananas at any time of the year and know lots of things to do with that amount of variety. But when it comes to seasonal food we’ve heard it over and over: There’s a lot of consumer education that needs to be done.

So an idea that I came up with actually, with a lot of the input from my wonderful partners like Galveston farmers, has been to provide recipes at the same time as you are handing out SNAP tokens. And that way there’s sort of an immediate, “here is something you can make. With the produce that you are buying, and that incentive to buy more of that thing that’s abundant.” So Anna over the years, and also now I have compiled a bunch of recipes using produce. And we’re working on putting them all together and really digestible forms and accessible forms for markets to use throughout the year. 

One of the other things that I’ve done and really taken up as a pet project—understanding and knowing that there’s a really big Hispanic population that loves fresh food and wants to be welcomed at a farmer’s markets—is creating Spanish-first media kits and recipes. So these are recipes that highlight cultural ingredients. And were also written in Spanish as opposed to in English and then translated so that way they have cultural and linguistic nuance that is usually—pardon the pun—lost in translation. And so I’ve created a ton of low-printing-impact, black and white, double-sided recipes for farmers markets to distribute. And that’s been a really fun project to see and to see how now farmers markets are really asking me, okay, based on my demographics—I have a lot of families—so I need recipes that are under 30 minutes. What do you have? How can we sell more of anything that they’ve got at the moment?

FMC: Very cool. So that’s great. So now you’re getting feedback from markets about who the people they’re serving are and how that can feed into this program. That’s so awesome.

Yelitza Garcia: Yeah. And that means that the farmers markets have gone beyond just sort of being welcoming right. Now they’re engaging. Now they’re listening and talking back and forth. So it’s a deeper level of engagement that really supports community.

FMC: That’s such a good point, and so so valuable to think about that kind of difference between merely welcoming and like, forming community, and what it means when the community is truly integrated, what is it to say like you can come here versus you are part of this. So speaking of those impacts. And speaking of data. Can you share a little bit more about kind of why data, collection and data sharing are such important parts of the work that you all do, both as part of Fresh Look, and maybe in TCLF in general?

Sue Beckwith: Data is really important to inform our decision-making about our strategy and about our operations. So we track data every month. So, for example, Susan might see that a farmers market has had really low SNAP sales for the past few months. She may say well, we need to maybe get hold of that farmers market, and see what’s going on. So day to day operations view that data as really valuable. And from us, from an organizational point of view, we track metrics on participation. We track metrics on customer satisfaction. We do client surveys. I think we survey the farmers markets either once a year or twice a year.  And that tells us how we need to modify our services to better meet their needs. So data is really important. And the work that we’ve done with FMC on the bigger trends of SNAP in Texas, and how we compare to the rest of the nation is super valuable when we think about strategically, as an organization, where do we need to be going? So, for example, right now, we’re only funded to provide SNAP education for farmers markets. We’re not funded to provide other services. But by seeing some of that other data and looking at the States that are doing really well, like Michigan does really well. What are they doing, and that that’ll help give us data to support finding that additional funding to be able to broaden our services. 

FMC: I wondered if I could ask you all a little bit, just sort of generally, about Texas markets, and this is the 25th anniversary year of National Farmers Market Week. What are some of the things that you’ve seen farmers markets across the state doing to celebrate or planning to celebrate?

Susan Barker: National Farmers Market Week is really fun, because here in Texas, in August our market managers are looking for any excuse to celebrate something. It’s hot! So it’s fantastic. You know, our markets plan festivals and celebrations. And we start seeing the National Farmers Market Week Toolkit everywhere on social media. And we even see other events hosted during the week, since the focus is really on farmers markets. So National Farmers Market Week is used to attract not only new customers, but also kind of reward the regular customers with some extra fun stuff, and it’s so great for attracting new sponsors or donors depending on the business entity type of the market and drawing volunteers—so like building this momentum for the coming months, and even the coming year.  

The other thing is, it’s fantastic to show off the markets’ impact in their own communities. So for example, Grow Local Farmer’s Market down in Corpus Christi is using the toolkit to share about their impact. So you know, they share from the toolkit about how farmers markets stimulate local economies. And then they share well, at our market, all the producers are within 200 miles. And so that’s keeping dollars in our local community. And that means that the produce for our customers is extra fresh. So we appreciate the toolkit, and we see lots of markets using it to find ways to share their own stats, their own data we were just talking about. So really super sweet and exciting to see fun ways that it can be used.

FMC: Thank you so much, Texas Center for Local Foods Team. It’s been such a pleasure to get to talk to you about the work that you do, and it’s always a pleasure to work with you and to see you. Thanks for joining us for this spotlight for National Farmers Market Week!