Berkshire County — Earlier this month, Berkshire Agricultural Ventures (BAV) started its annual Market Match Fund campaign.
The Great Barrington-based organization was founded in 2017 and provides multiple support programs to local farmers and food-based entrepreneurs in Berkshire County; Litchfield County, Conn.; along with Columbia County and Dutchess County, N.Y.
Since 2022, BAV’s Market Match Fund has provided grants to farmers’ markets to support low-income households enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). BAV’s Market Match Fund provides participating markets grants that match SNAP participants for each dollar they spend at a market, up to $30, effectively doubling the buying power for SNAP participants.
According to the organization, the fund has supported over $602,000 in SNAP sales for farmers and $337,000 in SNAP-matched purchases for low-income shoppers since its inception.
This year, BAV intends to raise $30,000 from donors to help support its programs at 10 farmers markets in Berkshire County, including markets in Great Barrington, Lee, Pittsfield, Sheffield, Stockbridge, and West Stockbridge.
On Monday, April 7, BAV announced that the organization received a matching gift of $15,000 from an anonymous donor. To properly fund its campaign, however, the organization still needs to raise an additional $15,000.
The campaign comes at a time of uncertainty about food-aid programs being cut or eliminated. This includes the state cutting its Healthy Incentives Program back in November. Farmers are also facing instability due to various United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) program freezes.
“BAV is in a relatively strong position as a small not-for-profit organization, compared to some of our other partners,” BAV Program Manager for Market Match Jake Levin told The Berkshire Edge. “We rely on federal funding, but we have a diversified enough donor and funding stream that we don’t feel freaked out or see an existential threat to our organization. But some of our partners are reeling [uncertain] right now due to the federal cuts, and our client base is affected and freaked out. The bigger effect is the emotional and psychological effects of what is happening. But the challenges because of these cuts are all real.”
Levin said that cuts to programs that have assisted farmers with climate-smart adaptation and mitigation, including cuts to the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program [REAP], have affected farmers. “The other side is that farmers will lose a lot of sales due to the elimination of USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement [LFPACA],” Levin said. “Farmers were using that program to sell their products to local food-access points, and those were meaningful to farmers. Now they’ve lost funds from these programs, it will be hard for farmers to make up the difference.”
Organization Communications and Development Manager Audrey Hackett said that, in light of the chaos and uncertainty with both state and federal cutbacks to agricultural programs, BAV’s Market Match Fund is more important than ever. “There have been so many effects that are rippling across different areas of local agriculture due to these cutbacks,” Hackett said. “We at BAV, along with our local partners, including the farmers’ markets, farmers, and donors, are all very focused on stepping up, stepping forward, and supporting local farmers. The Market Match program strengthens the sales of local farmers at these markets, and it benefits residents who require SNAP benefits for them to access local food. We want to continue to help people access local and fresh food, and continue to have farmers’ markets as viable sales channels for farmers, and also as community places where all of us can go and no one is excluded based on income.”
“For the farmers who are losing a sales stream that the LFPACA gave them, our program is how farmers can make up for some of that lost funding,” Levin said. “With this program, farmers will still be able to provide food to those with financial and food insecurity.”
For more information on the program and how to donate, visit BAV’s website.
