Colorado program reimburses SNAP recipients up to $60 per month for fruits and vegetables

When customers use their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to buy food at any of Eden Valley Farm’s farmers market booths, market manager Isaac Livingood makes sure to let them know they’re eligible for a new benefit under the decades-old subsidized food program.

The SNAP Produce Bonus Program — which launched Aug. 1 in Colorado with help from a $7.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — reimburses SNAP participants for up to $60 worth of healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables and dried beans per month, on top of their normal food assistance.

Although the benefit is new, as many as 15 customers per day are already using the program to buy healthier foods at Eden Valley Farm’s locations, meaning business has increased by about 10% for the organization since the initiative launched, Livingood said. 

“The way I think this is helping them most is that if someone was going to use their SNAP benefits for a small purchase because they thought their SNAP balance was low, I tell them they have this extra $60 per month to use, and then they make a larger purchase because now they don’t feel as limited by how much they can afford to spend,” Livingood said. 

The produce program makes it cheaper and more motivating for SNAP participants to buy foods that improve their health and nutrition. It will also allow them to spend more of their SNAP money on other items, at a time when food insecurity is on the rise in Colorado and inflation is making it harder for people with lower incomes to buy organic fruits and vegetables, several people interviewed for this story said.

Colorado is one of three states, including Louisiana and Washington, chosen to pilot the Healthy incentive project. 

When participants buy eligible food items, they are issued a credit equal to what they spent on their SNAP benefits card.

SNAP participants do not need to sign up to participate. They are credited up to $20 per transaction at participating locations, which will grow in number during the coming months, said Abby McClelland, food and energy assistance division director at the Colorado Department of Human Services.

“This is the first technological advance in administering rebates that we’ve seen and we’re really excited about it,” she said.

The produce program is not the first incentive project launched to increase healthy eating among SNAP participants.

The Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 authorized and funded pilot projects to see if SNAP participants increased their consumption of fruits and vegetables when financial incentives were provided.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service used that funding to launch the Healthy Incentives Pilot. SNAP recipients who participated received 30 cents for every SNAP dollar they spent on certain fruits and vegetables.

About 55,000 Hampden County, Massachusetts, SNAP households that participated from November 2011 to December 2012 ate 26% more fruits and vegetables per day and reported spending more of their SNAP benefits on produce, according to the USDA.

“This pilot will test models run directly by states, which is expected to lower administrative costs, so more incentive dollars reach SNAP participants,” a USDA spokesperson wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun.

The new pilot incentive aims to reduce food insecurity among people with lower incomes. However, food insecurity affected most income groups statewide in 2023, according to the Colorado Health Institute’s most-recent Health Access Survey, indicating states should implement similar pilot programs to incentivize improved health among all residents.

The new pilot incentive aims to reduce food insecurity, which is increasing in Colorado, as the price of groceries climbs sharply, according to the survey.

“The rate of food insecurity jumped more than 3 percentage points since 2021 to 11.2% in 2023,” organization leaders wrote in a summary of their survey.

People working in ranching and farming communities are often not getting enough food to eat, the survey found. 

The San Luis Valley, southeastern Colorado and Weld County had some of the highest rates of food insecurity, even though agriculture drives the economy in those areas. Denver, Pueblo and El Paso counties also had above-average rates of food insecurity, according to the survey.