Governor Cuomo announced a plan Friday to keep food stamps working at farmers markets across the state through the end of the season.
It’s the latest temporary measure in a summer that began with the only company that makes mobile software to convert electronic food stamps to physical currency abruptly announcing it was going out of business.
Novo Dia, whose software is used by 40 percent of farmers markets across the country, and all 500 markets in New York state, said it could no longer stay in business when its contract with the Food and Drug Administration was not renewed in June.
That sent state agencies and farmers market associations scrambling. Last week, the National Association of Farmers Market Nutrition Programs, a non-profit group linking markets and vendors with state governments, came up with the funds to keep Novo Dia operational through August. But that still left a question as to what would happen in September.
Cuomo’s announcement staves off a shutdown of food stamp benefits at the Rochester Public Market for at least another few months. Margaret O’Neil, a program director at the market, says it’s not clear when the state’s assistance runs out, but she's sure there will be another more permanent solution in place by then.
O’Neil said the state moved fast. “I was just amazed at the lightning speed that the state acted in. We often lament how slow bureaucracy is. This was in a matter of weeks that they came up with a solution, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture, apparently, was not able to act,” she said.
The governor’s office said the state’s agreement with Novo Dia “lays the groundwork” for other states to continue accepting food stamps as payment.
It’s been a summer of concern at the Rochester Public Market, O’Neil said, with customers, farmers and vendors unsure about whether food stamps would continue to work. She wants to reassure them that the market has no plans to stop accepting those payments. “There may be some changes in the processing,” she said, “but the program is not going to end.”
