Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience reached by the Double Up program this year were Utahns receiving SNAP that were able to access a farmers market, CSA,farm stand or grocery retail redemption site. The majority of these sites are located in urban/suburban areas in the Salt Lake Valley, although we were able include more markets this year that are located in rural/frontier areas of Utah than in previous years. Many of the SNAP customers in these areas are from marginalized communities. Changes/Problems:This year has felt challenging to to theuncertaintyabout federal dollars potentially being pulled and other federal farm and food programs being cut. We have been able to contine opperating without any interruption- but have had to develop talking points for market mangers, vendors and the public about the state of our program due to the onslaught of questions and concerns recived from stake holders about funding and longevity of the program. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The Community Food Security Program staff provided training to market managers on how to implement the Double Up program including how to work with vendors accepting Double Up incentives. Staff provided additional training on using the Produce Path platform for data reporting. Our program staff organized three onboarding training sessions to farmers market and farm stand staff participating in the Double Up program. These training sessions included information on how to implement the program as well as how to make markets more welcoming to SNAP populations and provided troubleshooting and technical assistance for markets experiencing issues or roadblocks. Staff expanded the use of the Google drive folder for market managers, which was created in response to feedback in pervious years, for easy access to all program materials, training and resources on implementing Double Up. Our program staff collaborated with the USU FMPP team to maintain a statewide farmers market manager listserv and are advisig that team as they develop additional training materials for market managers and vendors. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The Community Food Security Program works with a large network of diverse partners that includes anti-hunger advocates, program participants, academic institutions, local government agencies and other stakeholders. We regularly send program updates to partners throughout the year. We also provided quarterly program updates and an end of season report to the legislative and voting members of the Utah Food Security Council. We will be sharing out the end of season market manager survey results with market managers and other stakeholders before the end of the calendar year. Program impact data is available to the public on our website. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Goal 1. We will continue efforts to support current markets and produce growers to offer eligible produce that is culturally relevant at participating firms and to continue to expand participating locations to reach additional customers. Goal 2. We will continue to refine our marketing strategy based on evaluation results solicited from participant data collection and market manager surveys to reach as many eligible customers as possible. We also plan to spned extra time working to conduct outreach in geographic areas that have significant SNAP populations but see a low turn out at the market. Goal 3. We willcontuinue conduting outreach to farmers markets, farm stands and CSAs. We will develop additional outreach methods for grocery retail.Goal 4: We will continue to refine our reporting process with market managers; we are working on switching to Qualtirics as our reporting platform which will be more sustainable and more cost effective.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1. Our tracking period was November 1, 2024- October 31, 2025when the summer market season ended).The amount of Doublew Up incentives spent on qualifying fruits and vegetables was $ 214,052.21. Total SNAP dollars spent at markets was $235,352.67 Goal 2. The total number of transactions SNAP were10,682.Transactions with SNAP and Doubel Up were10,217.DHHS and program partners implemented a comprehensive marketing strategy in 2024similar to the marketing strategy we have implemented in past years outlined in our core marketing strategy. Our team is pleased to find that Double Up has become a more widely recognized program among community stakeholders working with SNAP populations around the state. Years of consistent messaging, logo usage and outreach seem to be paying off in familiarity with the program. 3.60 firms implementedthe Double Up program in 2024. This is the most that have ever participated in a single year. This increass is due to expansion onto southern Idao markets and 3 grocery reatal locations. We launched the implementation of Double Up in grocery retail in May in 3 stores located in rural Utah areas that do not have access to exisitng Double Up programs. 4.We have continued to require participating firms to track weekly market data using the FM Tracks web application. That application was purchased by new administrators and we have been working with the new administrator team to solve some of the limitations of the current application. On a more analog note, the program team decided to pilot the use of a $5 token in addition to the $1 tokens that we have been using since the program's inception in Utah. This was spurred by issues with markets running out of tokens part way through the season because participants were saving them up to spend later on in the season. The team hoped that the addition of the $5 token would help alleviate this problem by increasing the amount of Double Up redemption value in circulation and benefit participants and market managers from having to manage less individual tokens. The preliminary feedback about the change has been very positive and the team plans to utilize them again next year.

Publications