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Puerto Rico’s Exploding Fruit and Vegetable Demand: Innovative programs by island’s ag leaders
Story Date: 6/30/2016
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Source: NATIONAL ASSOC. OF STATE DEPTS. OF AGRICULTURE, 6/28/16
Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Agriculture and the Administrator for the Department of the Family’s Socio Economic Development (ADSEF) are fixtures at 52 farmers markets in 44 municipalities in the Commonwealth. Ag leader Dr. Myrna Comas Pagán and nutrition innovator Marta Elsa Fernandez Pabellón are quickly recognized by dozens of farmers at farmers’ markets, praised and asked, “When are you going Island wide” with the “El Mercado Familiar” (Family Market) Program?
Visiting the farmers market in Camuy on Puerto Rico’s northwestern coast, Myrna and Marta Elsa and members of their staffs spoke easily with both farmers and shoppers, shoppers who packed the market stalls, using their Tarjeta de la Familia cards to purchase fresh, just picked, local fruits and vegetables. The Tarjeta is an electronic benefit card (EBT) that is loaded monthly with funds to buy food for eligible low-income families, Puerto Rico’s version of the SNAP program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps).
The market stand of farmer Guillermo Molina was three deep with shoppers. His market revenue has tripled with the Puerto Rican government’s innovative program that adds about $4 for every $100 in benefits to a family’s Tarjeta that can be used to purchase local fruits and vegetables at 52 farmers’ markets in 44 municipalities organized and authorized by the island’s Agriculture Department.
The unique El Mercado Familiar program is a collaboration between Puerto Rico’s Agriculture and Family Departments and is designed to meet the dual goals of stimulating island food production while increasing low-income families’ consumption of healthy fruits and vegetables.
The program began in August 2013 and since then more than $40 million from fruit and vegetable purchases by low-income shoppers has flowed into Puerto Rican farmers’ bank accounts, $18 million in FY 2015 alone. More than 500 farmers benefit from the El Mercado Familiar program and they have created 540 new jobs, both on-farm and selling in the markets. Last year these Puerto Rican farmers markets accepted the same amount in SNAP purchases as authorized markets and farmers in the 50 states combined.
Jose Calderon, 28, began selling in El Mercado Familiar in 2013. He grows, bananas, plantains, white beans, yams, peppers, taro root, celeriac, onions, squash, passion fruit, papaya, chayote, and cilantro. He has almost doubled his acreage the two years and now sells in four markets. There is the potential to grow further as the program gradually expands to more of the island including the most densely populated San Juan area. One farmer reported nearly $685,000 in extra sales since the program started—he was pleased!
Dra. Comas anticipates that Puerto Rican produce farmers will be earning more than $60 million per year just in sales to low-income shoppers using the Tarjeta de la Familia when the program operates island wide by 2017.
Here’s how it works. The Puerto Rican Departments of Agriculture (PRDOA) and family development (ADSEF) received approval from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) mid-Atlantic office in New Jersey to add four percent to the monthly benefits for NAP program participants to be used only at authorized El Mercado Familiar, or farmers’ markets. These new benefits are added along with the monthly food and cash benefits and are embedded in the EBT card in a category, or “pocket”, of their own. Currently, more than 78 percent of NAP participants redeem the benefit that is exclusively for El Mercado Familiar.
When a participating shopper arrives at El Mercado Familiar her first stop is an information tent where an ADSEF staffer swipes the participant’s NAP card (Tarjeta) and provides a receipt showing the balance in the three categories on the card – food benefit, cash benefit, and farmers market benefit.
Shoppers can use their food and cash benefits for any NAP eligible food at FNS authorized supermarkets and retail food stores, but they can only use the farmers market benefit at one of the 52 participating farmers’ markets in the 44 participating municipalities organized, promoted and managed by the Agriculture Department, or PRDOA. Shoppers may also choose to use their food and cash benefits at the markets and many do. The markets also accept WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program coupons, adding another $5 million to farmers’ sales.
Each farmer has a point of sale (POS) EBT device to accept NAP cards at these markets. Transactions are smooth, quick and efficient, rarely taking more than 30 seconds as customers swipe their NAP cards on farmers’ hand-held EBT machines, punch in their PIN and take their receipt. The funds are transferred electronically into the farmers’ local bank account. There is no need for burdensome token systems at these Puerto Rican markets, with farmers waiting for a week or more for payment. Farmers do not have to pay service fees, transaction fees or licensing fees.
The PRDOA staff was careful in the design and rollout of El Mercado Familiar program, starting in a few municipalities in the south central agricultural region of the island in 2013 and gradually expanding as farmers were recruited and supplies grew to meet the strong customer demand. Farmers selling at the 52 markets are required to have at least five acres in production and be cultivating at least five different food crops to ensure a minimum breadth and depth of supply. Farmers are allowed – even encouraged – to add diversity to the markets by aggregating and selling products for other, smaller farmers in their regions. While there are 129 “authorized” El Mercado Familiar producers, more than 500 farmers are selling healthy, fresh food to these farmers to resell for them at the markets.
PRDOA staff coordinates the program in the field, making regular visits to farms to ensure quality and selection, train producers in the rules of the program and assign them to one of the 52 markets across the island. The Department also sets the market prices, ensuring they are high enough to earn the farmers a fair return but not too expensive for low-income shoppers to afford.
Increasing institutional food sales are a key part of the PRDOA’s approach and school and summer meals programs now use an average of 60 percent island-grown and raised food.
When Dr. Comas took office in 2013, 40 percent of the available land to rent through the public land authority was abandoned: now all but two percent of that land is in production. Applications to study Agronomy at the University of Puerto Rico have tripled in the last several years and the president of the Organization of United Farmers of Las Piedras and agriculture businesswoman Genoveva Lozado is working with the Department to try to find a way to access 910 acres in Finca La Hermosura for a group of 40 women the Association trained and who are ready to farm on their own.
The PRDOA also connects growers to USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Service Agency (FSA), and Rural Development programs and there are now greenhouses and hydroponic production starting across the island. The potential impact of the USDA’s Strike Force initiative is obvious on the island, where FNS and the USDA sister agencies regularly work together.
For Secretary Comas, El Mercado Familiar program is just one element of a wider effort to improve the Island’s food security. In 2014, she and her colleagues completed a “Food Security Plan for Puerto Rico” calling for investments and policies to ensure that enough food is available, accessible and affordable for all Puerto Ricans, that there is nutritional knowledge to consume a healthful diet and that there are adequate protections to mitigate risk and ensure a reliable food production and distribution system.
In crafting the Department’s Agricultural Development plan she discovered that Puerto Rico imports more than 85 percent of its food, a dramatic increase from 1980 when more than 40 percent of the food supply was domestically grown. Dra. Comas points out that the dependence on imported food not only makes the island vulnerable to both the vagaries of shipping (the sinking of the Faro ship disrupted the island’s food supply) and the volatility of climate change, but also represents a lost opportunity for the more than 12,000 Puerto Rican producers. Implementation of Puerto Rico’s Food Security Plan is well underway and with programs such as the Mercado Familiar and the extra four percent in food benefits flowing directly each week to hundreds of Puerto Rican farmers, farm income is on the upswing.
The effort appears to be successful, as farm income has grown islandwide.
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