NEPM: Greenfield Food Access

Monte and Kaliis visit Just Roots Farm in Greenfield to take a walk with CISA’s Clarissa Adan, Food Access Coordinator; Meryl LaTronica, co-executive director at Just Roots Farm; and Taylor Lopatofsky, Market Manager at the Greenfield Farmers’ Market.

HIP, Healthy Incentives Program, is a Massachusetts program for SNAP users. When you purchase fresh fruits and veggies, you are instantly reimbursed with your SNAP dollars through state money, based on household size.

Lopatofsky explains, “The program supports farmers with income, and also planning crops for the seasons too. LaSo when budget cuts happen to HIP in the middle of the year, as happened in years past, it’s very detrimental to the farmers who have been planning on getting that money from HIP and have been growing to that end and then all of a sudden the rug gets pulled out from them from the state government.”

“That’s why there’s movement afoot to try to make sure that HIP stays funded to a certain specific level year- after-year,” continues LaTronica. “We are so thrilled right now because our state just solidified that we have $21.5M fully funding HIP, plus carrying over another $9.5M from fiscal year ’26. So we are thrilled to have over $30 million funded for HIP in Massachusetts this coming year.”

Lopatofsky explains, “Looking back at our income for 2025, when we saw that nine month gap in HIP funding, our income at the farmers markets went way down. We have already this year had more income from just SNAP transactions than we saw in all of that fiscal year time last year when SNAP was cut.”

Listen to the whole story about community, markets, farms, and how our food system takes everyone working together.

Photos: courtesy of NEPM, Just Roots, and CISA file photos.