This season, the Champaign Farmers’ Market is making it’s farm fresh, local foods even more accesible to the community. Starting June 13th, the market is offering Triple Link Tuesdays, a program where Link cardholers will be able to get up tp $40 more in the nutritious food offered at the market.
For more info, check out the release below:
This season the Champaign Farmers’ Market is offering a boosted SNAP incentive program to help low-income families afford more nutritious local food every week, thanks to a grant from the Link Up Illinois program.
Champaign County grapples with one of the highest poverty and food insecurity rates in the state of Illinois. Thousands of Champaign residents alone live in neighborhoods classified by the USDA as food deserts, meaning they have limited access to grocery stores, making it difficult to access nutritious foods. At the same time, we are surrounded by small farms who produce a wide array of local foods, but cannot always connect to enough customers to sell everything they grow, raise, or produce.
The Champaign Farmers’ Market seeks to connect these groups and make local food, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, more accessible and affordable to our whole community.
Every week, Link cardholders can swipe their card at the Market in exchange for tokens they can spend with the vendors, and The Land Connection will match their purchases up to $20/week. This allows Link cardholders to double their benefits and use them on fresher, local food. In addition, on the second Tuesday of every month, the market offers an additional match for Triple Link Tuesday, where Link shoppers can get up to $40 extra to spend with their local farmers.
Triple Link Tuesday at the market on these dates:
- June 13
- July 11
- August 8
- September 12
- October 10
The Link matching program not only benefits shoppers, but our local farmers and local economy as well. When consumers buy their food directly from the farmer, that money stays in our local economy and has 2-3 times the economic impact as buying from a grocery store and helping local farmers create more jobs.