Farmers Market Vouchers
By Bonita Wilborn
It is TIME to apply for Farmers Market Vouchers.
These vouchers are for low-income Alabama RESIDENTS ages 60 and up that meet the income guidelines. Each person 60 and older in the household that qualifies can register for a voucher booklet.
Voucher booklets include $6 coupons to purchase fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs from farmers who display the “Farmers Market Nutrition Program” sign.
Those that obtain the voucher booklets will receive them in the mail before June 1. They can only be used between April 15 – November 15 of that particular year.
No one is “entitled” to these Farmers Market Vouchers. They are first come, first serve to whomever registers on the website. You can call us at (256) 845-8590 to register for you OR you can register yourself online at https://bit.ly/2YLo3re.
To qualify, you must be an Alabama resident age 60 or older the day of your application and qualify within the income levels listed below (income before taxes):
$1,756.00 monthly……for a household of ——1
$2,371.00 monthly……for a household of ——2
$2,987.00 monthly……for a household of ——3
$3,604.00 monthly……for a household of ——4
$4,219.00 monthly……for a household of ——5
As stated above, the Farmers Market Vouchers can only be used with farmers who display the “Farmers Market Nutrition Program” sign. So we wanted to include information about how farmers can become authorized to display the “Farmers Market Nutrition Program” sign.
According to Don Wambles – Director of the Farmers Market Authority with the Alabama Department of Agriculture, “The farmers have to go through a short training, which tells them about the program as well as what they can and can’t do with the vouchers. We have that training available online at our website FMA.alabama.gov or we have a few Alabama counties that we are working with their Cooperative Extension holding some face-to-face grower trainings.”
The date for the DeKalb County face-to-face training session is scheduled for Thursday, February 18, 2021, at 6:00 PM at the DeKalb County Fair Grounds meeting hall located at 151 18th Street in Fort Payne. You do not have to be a DeKalb County farmer to attend this certification meeting, everyone is welcome.
“Once the farmer has completed the training, we have a form that we call a ‘Farmers Agreement” that they fill out. It just gives us their contact information, a little bit of background information about them and the farmers markets they intend to sell at, and they furnish us their current year’s grower’s permit that’s free of charge from their Cooperative Extension office. Then they are certified. If they’ve been in the program before they have a number that we’ve assigned them that they stamp on the checks (vouchers). They don’t have to sign their name on the checks they can just stamp a number on it when the senior citizen spends it with them. Then they take the voucher to the bank and deposit it goes through the Federal Reserve System just like any regular check does,” Wambles explained.
At press time, there was not a face-to-face training session scheduled for Jackson County, so those farmers can to the online session or attend the DeKalb County session if they’d prefer.
