PORT ANGELES — Call it the local-food divide: Many shoppers, believing prices are much higher at the Port Angeles Farmers Market than at the supermarket, stay away from the farmers market entirely, figuring they can’t afford those organically grown carrots, winter squashes, apples and tomatoes.
Another thing keeping local produce off of families’ tables: Many young moms and dads haven’t the cooking-from-scratch skills to make tasty meals at home.
So says former City Council member Betsy Wharton, a registered nurse, farmers market board member and the project manager for a $79,408 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant recently made to Clallam County.
One of 77 awarded
The grant, one of 77 awarded across the United States, is aimed at giving very low-income families better access to fresh, local food — and introducing them to local farmers at the Port Angeles Farmers Market, which sets up every Saturday, year-round, under The Gateway pavilion at the corner of Front and Lincoln streets.
Administered by the North Olympic Peninsula Resource Conservation and Development Council, the grant funds four facets of the 24-month project.
Some $12,500 will go toward setting up an electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, system at the market.
This will enable people who receive food stamps, a form of government assistance now delivered via EBT credit cards, to spend them on produce at the market.
The grant will pay for installation and management of the electronic system, which includes a phone line, card-swiping machines and food-stamp tokens, for the next two years.
After that, Wharton said, the farmers market can opt to absorb the costs.
Cooking classes
Another $33,700 will go into new cooking classes at the First Step Family Support Center, 325 E. Sixth St. in Port Angeles.
These sessions for parents and their children will include field trips to the farmers market, said Cherie Reeves Sperr, First Step’s development director.
Family home support workers from First Step will take clients on tours of the market so they can meet the farmers who grow food in Clallam County year-round.
Then, back at First Step, the classes will teach hands-on preparation of meals with the produce that’s in season.
This isn’t about fancy gourmet dinners, Sperr said; the sessions will demonstrate practical, low-cost meals.
With the USDA grant, “more than 300 low-income families will get great exposure to different foods, to cooking local food and to going to the farmers market,” Sperr added.
Sperr and Wharton, meantime, see the USDA grant as a communitywide benefit.
Use fresh food
The cooking classes, market tours and EBT system make it easier for lower-income families to bring home fresh, healthful foods from local growers, Wharton said.
She emphasized too that produce from farms to the east and west of Port Angeles is allowed to ripen to its flavorful, nutritious peak, in contrast with fruits and vegetables picked green in other states and countries and shipped hundreds or thousands of miles.
But those who shop with food stamps, and anyone on a tight grocery budget, may feel forced to instead choose, cheap, packaged foods that are loaded with fat and sugar.
The effects of such foods are visible in the younger population, said Kathy Hennessey, a family doctor in Port Angeles.
“We are seeing more and more childhood obesity in our clinic. And a lot of those children come from homes where parents simply don’t know how to cook,” she said.
Wharton has seen this, too.
She is working temporarily as a family home support staffer at First Step, covering another staffer’s maternity leave, and recently visited a single parent who had little more than a microwave oven.
She knows, however, that such parents may be taken aback by the cost of produce at the farmers’ market, which appears to be a lot more than that of an armload of supermarket frozen dinners.
Why prices higher
“I think it is important to explain,” Wharton said, “why the prices can be higher for locally grown food.
“It’s not that our small farmers are getting rich and pocketing big profits. They are working long hours and scraping by. It’s often times a labor of love and idealism that motivates our farmers.
“Small-scale agriculture usually relies much more on labor rather than on chemicals and machinery,” she added.
Local family farmers hire people to plant and harvest; they and their workers live here and participate in the local economy.
So choosing to make a soup from locally grown vegetables sets in motion the “local multiplier” effect, Wharton said.
The dollars spent on produce from here stay here in Clallam County; they’re put back into farmers’ fields.
Another $25,000 in the USDA grant monies will go into coordination and staff time at First Step and at the farmers market over the next two years, Wharton noted, adding that this organizational part, which includes choosing which kind of EBT system to install at the market and conducting trial runs of the cooking classes, will take until spring.
The remaining $7,500 of the grant will go toward advertising and promotion of the farmers market itself.
Some of that will go toward targeted outreach to low-income families, to let them know about the cooking classes and EBT system.
Ideally, the grant will nourish families with food stamps as well as the local farmers Wharton considers a vital part of the local economy.
The Port Angeles Farmers Market is growing its share of the grocery dollar. A projected $310,000 will be spent on foods there in 2010, up from $246,000 in 2009, Wharton noted.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.