Saturday mornings in Athens are often synonymous with Bulldogs football, but for many, they are just as much about picking the right berries as they are about picking off the quarterback.
From 8 a.m. to noon, shoppers flock to Bishop Park to fill their baskets with all the fruits and vegetables they need.
Athens Farmers Market brings together local farmers and residents to promote healthy eating by making fresh food accessible through programs like FARMRx and SNAP. The market is open year-round at Bishop Park, but the organizers also put together a smaller Wednesday market outside of Creature Comforts in downtown Athens from March to November.
By turning the farmers market into a nutrition hub, organizers hope to improve public health outcomes while also supporting small farms.
Why It’s Newsworthy: The FARMRx program at the Athens Farmers Market aims to promote greater access to nutritious food for people living on limited budgets.“We have had people that come up and say that they’ve gotten off of their blood pressure medicine because they are able to get fresh produce here at the market, and it’s local, and you can taste the difference, 100%,” said Brian Strickland, the AFM market director.
That impact is a result of the market’s FARMRx program, a partnership with local clinics to prescribe fresh produce to patients with diet-related illnesses. Strickland said they have donated nearly $63,000 worth of produce via this program last year.
FARMRx is just one piece of the market’s effort to incorporate preventative healthcare into the community. Another key program is the SNAP doubling initiative, which helps stretch grocery budgets for local residents that qualify. When shoppers use their EBT card at the market, the amount they spend is doubled in wooden tokens. Market staff issue two types of tokens that can be spent on eligible food items.
Strickland said this not only improves food access but also keeps money circulating within local Athens businesses.
“All that money stays in Athens,” he said. “So we’re not just putting money back into the small businesses here at the farmers market, but also it circulates back into the economy here in Athens.”
Vendors like Chase Ritterbusch of Smyly Farms, who sell eggs and livestock products, have seen that growth first hand.
“It’s expanding all the time,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of art vendors come out, but we have very consistent veg farmers and our constant livestock and egg producers.”
For regular shoppers like Kyle Ebenstein, the quality of the products is what keeps them coming back.
“I have bought greens from the farmers market and left them in my veggie drawer, and it’ll be like two weeks later, I’m like, ‘Ooh.’ And then I looked at it, I was like, ‘Actually, these are still good,’ and they’re perfectly fine,” Ebenstein said. “So it just keeps for way longer.”
Andrew Otten is a fourth-year student majoring in journalism in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
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