Progress 07/01/22 to 12/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Approximately 4,025 people live within the Concrete School District (CSD), which covers 1,879 square miles and includes a handful of small towns including the incorporated Town of Concrete. Students in the CSD have grown up in an economically depressed community with persistent levels of poverty, food insecurity, chronic health conditions, and poor educational outcomes. The economic recovery achieved by much of the nation after the 2008 recession did not extend to eastern Skagit County; in 2018, 42% of CSD families utilized SNAP benefits. American Community Survey data from 2019 show Median Household Income for CSD residents to be $37,433 (half that of Washington State). The rate of Persons Below Poverty is 22.8% (more than double the Washington rate); the Unemployment Rate is 7.4% (higher than Washington and National). The pandemic has further stressed local households, as evidenced by 2021-2022 school year data showing that 82% of CSD students in grades K-12 are low-income homes (receive free and reduced school meals). Community food insecurity is at an all-time high. Concrete Farm to School attended the Concrete Saturday Market weekly with produce and flowers from the school garden/greenhouse, supplemented with additional produce purchased wholesale from local Long Hearing Farm in Rockport, WA. The market, which is able to accept EBT and other nutrition benefits, consists of between 12-20 vendors and attracts approximately 100 customers/week, with between $2000-3500of nutrition benefits redeemed in a typical season. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Market vendors, leadership, and staff were provided training opportunities around marketing, promotion, and data collection. Members of market leadership and staff attend the Washington State Farmers Market Association Bootcamp (a total of three individuals over two years). Students employed by the Concrete Farm to School program were provided workplace training, including customer service, farm planning, maintenance, and other tasks, and vocational skills such as communication, conflict management, resume writing, and interviewing. In 2023, additional high school employees were hired through funding from the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, expanding these opportunities to underserved youth with 504, IEP, or other disability. Farmers were provided opportunities to collaborate, share knowledge, challenges, and strategies. The Program Coordinator received professional development through a workgroup of non-profit and business leaders in Eastern Skagit County, meeting quarterly to collaborate on marketing and share successful strategies. She also received professional development provided by United General District 304 to employees, including Pryor trainings on communication and leadership, and access to TechSoup courses on non-profit management. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Regular updates on the project's progress were provided to the Concrete Saturday Market Board of Directors. Final conclusions and recommendationsof the project will be presented at the Board of Directors meeting in February 2024 and to the CSM vendors at the annual vendor meeting in April. The project coordinator will continue to meet with participating farmers to plan for the 2024 market season and forthcoming collaborations on a one-on-one basis. In addition, the local paper, the Concrete Herald, featured a cover story about the Concrete Farm to School program in their September 2023 issue, celebrating the program's 10 year anniversary and describing its role in the community, including touching on its collaboration with the Concrete Saturday Market. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: The program coordinator joined the board of directors of the Concrete Saturday Market (CSM) in 2022. She worked with the market leadership and board to establish marketing baselines and goals for the 2023 season. CSM had received funding during the COVID pandemic from the Washington State Farmers Market Association was able to supplement funds left from this grant with funds provided by the Community Food Project grant to enhance their marketing materials for the 2023 season, including purchasing roadside banners targeting tourism traffic, advertising in the local paper and targeting food insecure customers, and increasing their engagement on social media. In addition, program coordinators worked with high school leadership students in Spring 2023 to map the local food system and identify gaps between current availability and demand. Over the last three years and especially since the end of restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, the Concrete Saturday Market has become a reliable source of a variety of produce for community members. The continued presence of small market gardeners and farmers, including Concrete Farm to School, has increased the number of customers returning to the market for weekly produce. The CSM introduced "East County Fresh Bucks," a privately funded program to provide vouchers for fresh fruits and vegetables to low-income community members. Redemption of this program dropped off steeply in 2020 and 2021, but has regained ground since to pre-pandemic levels. In addition, the market accepts EBT/SNAP Market Match and the local Skagit Fruit and Vegetable Prescription bucks, and individual vendors accept WIC/Senior FMNP. In the 2024 season, the market will fundraise specifically to support the East County Fresh Bucks program and will also utilize the fresh bucks to incentivize shopping at the market, including a family-oriented market scavenger hunt rewarding children with fresh bucks if they complete the activity. Goal 2: The program coordinator was able to leverage the Concrete Farm to School (F2S) summer employment program to increase access to produce from local Long Hearing Farm at the Concrete Saturday Market. In our model, Concrete Farm to School purchases produce wholesale from Long Hearing Farm to supplement the F2S Farmstand at the market. While Long Hearing Farm would not make enough profit to support paying an employee to cashier their own booth at the CSM, F2S is already paying high school employees to manage their stand as a part of their summer employment program. We are able to share the benefit of this labor with Long Hearing Farm through the re-sale of their produce at the F2S booth. In addition to the small amount of income generated by these sales, Long Hearing Farm benefits from the exposure of the community to their product and farm brand at the F2S booth. One of the major non-financial benefits of participating in farmers markets for small farms is the engagement of new customers, who can then develop deeper relationships with the farms, moving from occasional market customer to CSA member or bulk purchaser. F2S has the resources and capacity to staff a CSM booth and help farmers make those initial connections with customers, without the outlay of labor or time for the farmer. In addition, CSM was able to recruit Lopez Bros Farm, Skagit Gourmet Mushrooms, and Mountain Song Meadows Farm as vendors for the 2023 market season. This greatly increased the variety of produce available at the CSM in the last market season. However, these new farmers eventually came up against the same challenges this CFP planning grant seeks to address- namely, that the profit doesn't cover the time spent at the Saturday Market. In 2024, F2S will work with Mountain Song Meadows to include their produce at the F2S booth. Lopez Brothers and Skagit Gourmet Mushrooms anticipate returning to the CSM in 2024, though possibly not every week. Goal 3: Demonstrate the viability of the Concrete Saturday Market to improve local conditions for food security while maintaining economic feasibility. This project demonstrated that the Concrete Saturday Market continues to be an important source of local produce, and point of connection with local growers, for this rural community. There is only one full-service grocery store serving the town and wider community of Concrete, with extremely limited and expensive produce offerings. The Concrete Farm to School Program's work with students and families is increasing the demand for locally grown, fresh produce and we're seeing a number of families visiting the CSM to purchase produce grown by students and other local farms. Inflation and a change in ownership have further decreased quality and community trust of produce at the local grocery store, providing an opportunity to divert customers to the CSM in the upcoming season. The challenge remains the economic viability of the market itself. In 2023, market leadership increased membership and vendor fees, however, without a substantial increase in sales for all vendors, the market will continue to operate at a deficit, currently covered by WSDA grant funding, and eventually be unable to support a market manager or EBT clerk, both necessary positions. In light of these limitations, and the reluctance of market members to adopt new advertising methods or policies that would support produce vendors, the conclusion of this project is that a co-operative farm stall operated by Concrete Farm to School high school employees, and selling produce from multiple small farms will be a solution to providing access to local produce to the community as long as the market remains viable. If the market should cease to operate, Farm to School will remain well-situated to leverage existing farm partnerships and systems to create an independent weekly seasonal farm stand, located either on the school district campus or at some other central location. At that time, the only remaining challenge would be to develop a system for F2S to accept SNAP/Market Match directly (in the current system, the market reimburses vendors for payment received as SNAP, Market Match, or other non-cash currencies). However, changes are already being made to how SNAP users interact with farmers markets at a state level that would move the point of sale to the individual vendor booths, rather than a central cashier.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/22 to 06/30/23
Outputs
Target Audience:Approximately 4,025 people live within the Concrete School District (CSD), which covers 1,879 square miles and includes a handful of small towns including the incorporated Town of Concrete. Students in the CSD have grown up in an economically depressed community with persistent levels of poverty, food insecurity, chronic health conditions, and poor educational outcomes. The economic recovery achieved by much of the nation after the 2008 recession did not extend to eastern Skagit County; in 2018, 42% of CSD families utilized SNAP benefits. American Community Survey data from 2019 show Median Household Income for CSD residents to be $37,433 (half that of Washington State). The rate of Persons Below Poverty is 22.8% (more than double the Washington rate); the Unemployment Rate is 7.4% (higher than Washington and National). The pandemic has further stressed local households, as evidenced by 2021-2022 school year data showing that 82% of CSD students in grades K-12 are low-income homes (receive free and reduced school meals). Community food insecurity is at an all-time high. Concrete Farm to School attended the Concrete Saturday Market weekly with produce and flowers from the school garden/greenhouse, supplemented with additional produce purchased wholesale from local Long Hearing Farm in Rockport, WA. The market, which is able to accept EBT and other nutrition benefits, consists of between 12-20 vendors and attracts approximately 100 customers/week, with between $2000-3500of nutrition benefits redeemed in a typical season. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Students employed by the Concrete Farm to School program were provided workplace training, including customer service, farm planning, maintenance, and other tasks, and vocational skills such as communication, conflict management, resume writing, and interviewing. The program coordinator participated in a workgroup of local business and non-profit leaders interested in sharing resources around marketing, collaboration, and community outreach. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The program coordinator reports out regularly to the Concrete Farm to School Advisory Team, Leadership Team at United General District 304, and Concrete Saturday Market Board of Directors. At this time, no information has been shared with the general public. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Program coordinator will meet with local farmers to assess their ability to either attend the market themselves, or their interest in joining a cooperative stall run by Farm to School. She will also work with CSM leadership to develop marketing strategies ahead of the 2023 season, as well as planning for Farm to School participation and student employment program.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Concrete Farm to School participated in the 2022 Concrete Saturday Market season, collecting baseline data on their own and other vendors' sales & marketing. United General District 304 (UG)purchased advertising space in the Concrete Herald to promote the use of SNAP and nutrition incentive matching programs at the Concrete Saturday Market. United General worked with the Saturday Market to ensure usability/acceptance of the Skagit Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program bucks (a program administered by UG). Goal 2: Concrete Farm to School (F2S) piloted purchasing produce wholesale from local Long Hearing Farm for resale at the F2S Saturday Market booth several times throughout the 2022 season, laying the foundation for a consistent relationship in 2023. Goal 3: Program coordinator joined the Concrete Saturday Market board of directors and requested that they collect more data about customers, vendor sales, and marketing to establish a baseline to measure against changes implemented. Program coordinator assisted CSM in designing new outreach materials to be used when recruiting new vendors and advocated for farmer- and grower-friendly market policies.
Publications
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