Exploring the Use of Seattle's Farmers' Market Incentive Program ("Fresh Bucks") by Household Food Security Levels

Area of Science:

• Nutrition security
• Consumer behavior
• Public health interventions

Background:

• Food insecurity remains a significant public health challenge.
• Farmers' markets offer accessible sources of nutritious food.
• Incentive programs aim to improve access to healthy foods for low-income populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine Seattle's Fresh Bucks program and its impact on shopping behaviors.
• To analyze differences in these behaviors based on participants' food security status.
• To understand how food security influences the utilization of farmers' market incentive programs.

Main Methods:

• Convenience sampling of Fresh Bucks users in Seattle.
• Classification of participants into food security categories (high/marginal, low, very low).
• Analysis of demographic data and farmers' market shopping patterns.

Main Results:

• Fresh Bucks users across all food security levels reported similar experiences at farmers' markets.
• No significant differences in program experience were observed based on food security status.
• Demographics and shopping behaviors showed variations across food security levels, but program experience remained consistent.

Conclusions:

• The Fresh Bucks program appears to be experienced uniformly by users regardless of food security status.
• Findings suggest the program effectively serves diverse populations at farmers' markets.
• Further investigation with larger, more diverse samples is warranted to confirm these observations.