This Agent along with a group of leaders identified the need to promote and educate healthy living to promote lifestyle modifications and interventions with the children of our community. This decision was made based on the fact that 29 percent of our children are living in a food insecure household according to Kentucky Kids Count. This, coupled with the fact that while the average life expectancy is 78, in our county it is just 69. In Kentucky, 23.8% of youth aged 10 to 17 have obesity, giving KY a ranking of 1 among the 50 states and D.C. and our Farmers Market WIC redemption rates are below 35% most years.

As a group we identified the need to promote healthy living and lifestyle changes among our communities children that includes nutrition, physical activity and economics while buying fresh food locally and supporting our local small businesses, to address this need we partnered with our farmers market and Farm Bureau to create the Kids Kash Program sponsored by Farm Bureau to be renamed Farm Bureau Kid’s Kash Program.

This program has impacted over 20 children each market day who received Farm Bureau Kids Kash (for a total of 640 interactions with children), two times a week for sixteen weeks directly with the Farm Bureau Kids Kash program.  Over 150 families have been impacted by the program every market day.  Approximately 30 teenage FFA members have interacted repeatedly each week with the program.  These numbers do not include the many farmers, artisans, farm bureau board, farmer’s market board and their families who have all heard and seen the program succeed. Our program has been featured at local school board meetings and in regional meetings. The Farmers Market social media posts are reaching approximately 8000 social media page reaches with each and every post.  They have over 1,000 following the market page. This Program was recently awarded the state and national achievement award through Farm Bureau Federation. Farmers Market WIC redemption rates were increased by 38.2% from the previous year.