You can use your SNAP benefits (food stamps) at the Greenfield Farmers’ Market to purchase any food item from any vendor, except for prepared foods such as single-serving baked goods or drinks.
Some vendors can swipe your EBT card right at their booths. For those who can’t, the GFM uses a simple receipt system. After you choose which items you’d like to buy from a vendor, the vendor will give you a paper receipt. Leaving your purchases with the vendor, bring your receipt to the Manager Booth, where the GFM Market Manager can look at the receipt, determine which items are SNAP- and HIP- eligible, and swipe your card. We’ll then sign your receipt, which you will bring back to the booth to pick up your purchases from the vendor.
HIP (Healthy Incentives Program) is a state-funded program that works like an instant rebate on purchases of fresh or canned fruits and vegetables without added salts, sugars, fats, or oils. If you have SNAP benefits, you will automatically receive HIP dollars to use every month depending on your household size ($40, $60, or $80).
You can use HIP benefits at the Greenfield Farmers’ Market just like SNAP. Some vendors will be able to swipe your EBT card right at their booths and will make sure you are utilizing your HIP benefits if your purchases are eligible. Otherwise, when you bring your receipt to the Manager Booth, we can help you determine whether any of the items you’ve purchased are HIP-eligible.
HIP works like this: If you use your SNAP benefits to purchase HIP-eligible fruits and vegetables, when the vendor or Market Manager swipes your card, the amount that would have been taken out of your SNAP balance to pay for the items is immediately refunded up to your HIP limit.
For example, say you have $100 in SNAP on your EBT card and purchase $25 worth of vegetables from Just Roots. Just Roots will enter the $25 as HIP, so immediately after the $25 comes out of your SNAP balance it goes right back in as if you spent $0. If you receive, for instance, $40 in HIP a month, you could buy an additional $15 of vegetables at Song Sparrow Farm. They would give you a receipt, which you would then bring to the Manager Booth where the Market Manger would run the $15 as HIP. At that point you’d have reached your monthly HIP limit, but your SNAP balance would still be $100.
WIC & Senior Farmers Market Coupons are accepted on a case-by-case basis, and we cannot process them at the Manager Booth. However, they are accepted by all farms that sell vegetables, including Just Roots, Red Fire Farm, Hart Farm, and Song Sparrow Farm.
If you have any questions at all about SNAP and HIP, please come visit us at the Manager Booth, or ask one of our friendly vendors who are always happy to help.