About half of certified farmers’ markets in Los Angeles accept Electronic Benefits Transfer cards, formerly known as food stamps. Now, activists are on their way to making that figure 100 percent, by force of law. L.A.’s city council has voted unanimously to draft regulation that would require all farmers’ markets to take EBT cards, KPCC’s Take Two reports.
Advocates have long hoped such laws would pass not only in Los Angeles, but all over America. What may happen if they do? Some emerging science supports the idea that they might improve the health of people who rely on food assistance, a stated goal of officials pushing for EBT card readers at farmers’ market stalls. “Low-income folks will often buy foods that are calorie dense. We want to try to nudge them in the direction of farmers’ markets and purchasing healthy, less-processed foods. This is part of that strategy,” Kevin Concannon, undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services at the United States Department of Agriculture, told USA Today in 2013. But the science is still uncertain, so any improvement could be quite small.
[For more of this story, written by Francie Diep, go to https://psmag.com/what-if-all-...118b3f341#.9rz29q9b2]
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