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Food Security Update

We believe it is possible for all families in the Adirondacks to have access to healthy and sustainably-grown food. However, many residents face two major challenges: affordability and accessibility. AdkAction is focused on fighting hunger and supporting local farmers with several interrelated initiatives:

  • Fair Food Pricing 
  • Online ordering with SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
  • Fully-funded CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) memberships
  • Farmacy Food Stores
  • Community Gardens
  • Cooking Classes for food insecure residents

We hired a full-time Food Security Project Manager, Kim La Reau, to direct and manage this important work.

Courtesy Adirondack Foundation, (c) Erika Bailey.
Courtesy Adirondack Foundation, (c) Erika Bailey.

 

AdkAction’s Fair Food Pricing program brings the cost of eating local in line with grocery store prices, while ensuring farmers earn enough to continue their livelihoods. Participating households receive 30% off at all Fair Food Pricing vendors. In times of personal or collective crisis, the discount can temporarily be increased to 90% to provide even more support.

Fair Food Pricing is accepted at the Hub on the Hill’s farm store in Essex, or when ordering goods from the Hub’s website for home delivery. This summer, both the Saranac Lake Farmers Market and the Lake Placid Farmers Market also began accepting Fair Food Pricing for all vendors. The Keeseville Pharmacy and Cornerstone Drug in Rouses Point – both of which have storefront ‘Farmacy’ farm stores – will begin accepting Fair Food Pricing in the coming weeks. Tangleroot Farm (Essex) and White Rainbow Farm (Peru) partnered with AdkAction to make a number of farm share subscription boxes available to Fair Food Pricing participants. The Fair Food Pricing model will continue to build long-term sustainability and resilience in our regional food system as it expands.

Many Fair Food Pricing households also use SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits. This year, AdkAction funded development of software that allows SNAP cards to be used when ordering online from the Hub on the Hill and at farmers markets. Before this new software, Online Ordering with SNAP was only available in NY from Amazon, Walmart and ShopRite. This innovation will benefit farmers, food hubs, and locally-owned food retailers as well as food insecure families. AdkAction is now recognized as being on the cutting edge of fighting hunger, not just here in the Adirondacks, but across the country.

 

Learn more about our Food Security projects: Fair Food Pricing and the Farmacy.

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