The Carter County Extension Office receives over $20,000 each year through KDA’s Senior Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program for distribution to low-income senior citizens.    Previously vouchers were distributed as paper coupons that Farmer’s Market vendors cashed like checks at their local banks.    However, in 2022 the state issued vouchers on debit-type cards that had to be processed by the market vendors with a cell phone app called SoliMarket systems.    There are usually difficulties with most changes, but some of the vendors did not currently have cell phones or email addresses, so this change was very difficult for some as the app required a valid email address for setup.    

After receiving training from KDA, the Carter County ANR Agent worked with the office assistants to offer two trainings for the Farmer’s Market vendors.   The program assistant created a step-by-step guide for vendors to use as they learned the new system and accepted the voucher cards.   The agent and office staff answered numerous questions from vendors about the app (and cell phone use in general) throughout the market season.    Office staff made numerous calls to KDA and SoliMarket throughout the summer so that the vendors were able to take full advantage of SrFMNP program.       

During the same time frame, the ag agent and assistants also worked together to issue voucher cards to 425 local residents. (Carter County is in the top two counties in the state for the number of voucher cards issued.)  Each card contained $48 that could be spent on fresh fruits & vegetables at approved local farmer’s markets.   An additional change to the program this year required the Extension Office staff to manually load the $48 on each voucher card through the SoliMarket system website.   

The vendors who completed the training were also eligible to accept Farmer’s Market WIC vouchers.   As of September 30, 2022 the Farmer’s Market vendors had accepted over $16,000 in SrFMNP and WIC vouchers at the two Carter County market locations, including a 75% Senior redemption rate.