Valley Bounty: Coolidge Hill Farm

Published November 9, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette

Coolidge Hill Farm: Hip to the Future of Local Food

By Jacob Nelson

Jared Duval built his farm around Massachusetts’ innovative Healthy Incentives Program (HIP). Since 2017, HIP has helped tens of thousands of lower-income households buy fresh produce grown by local farmers. By most accounts, it’s been a wild success, improving access to nutritious food and the economic outlook for local farms.

Yet funding for HIP is still much lower than the demonstrated need, putting the future of farms like Duval’s in question. Given recent rhetoric from state government, “we were really hoping HIP would be expanded,” he says. “Instead, it’s being cut. It feels like we’re being told two opposite things.”

Duval runs Coolidge Hill Farm in New Salem. He owns 25 acres and farms about five using integrated pest management (IPM) practices, which he describes as “a melding between organic and conventional farming.” After growing up on a dairy farm, he learned produce farming hands-on by working on several local farms, including Coolidge Hill, and through the Sustainable Food and Farming program at UMass. Eventually, life brought him back to Coolidge Hill, where eight years ago he was able to buy the farm.

Today, most of Coolidge Hill Farm’s land grows vegetables. “If you pick up a seed catalogue, we grow pretty much everything in it,” Duval quips. They also grow some fruit – mostly berries – and raise pigs.

During the growing season, Duval sells food at two farmers markets in Worcester plus the Orange Farmers Market, where he’s also on the steering committee. The farm also sells produce to a mobile market in Worcester and most of their pork to the Quabbin Harvest Food Co-op in Orange. Some of their remaining produce goes to a 20 week produce CSA of their own for a handful of customers, but the bulk goes to Quabbin Harvest’s Community Shares Program. This is a unique take on the CSA model, where customers can pay for year-round, biweekly fruit and/or vegetable shares with HIP.

HIP, run by the state’s Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), reimburses families for locally grown fruits and veggies each month bought with SNAP (formerly called food stamps) at approved HIP vendors. They simply pay using SNAP and see that money, up to a monthly cap, immediately reimbursed back onto their SNAP-EBT card. This innovative program helps people stretch food budgets to include healthy local produce, and helps local farms reach financial stability while encouraging them to cater to all people in their communities.

At Coolidge Hill Farm, sales to HIP customers have increased steadily ever since Duval took over. “Over the last 3 years in particular, it’s become a cornerstone of our business,” he says. “A lot of our farmers market sales are very HIP driven, and the Quabbin Harvest CSA is entirely for HIP customers. At this point almost 50% of farm income is based on HIP.”

Duval built his business around HIP for the financial stability and community benefits it offered. That makes it difficult to stomach the recent announcement that the cap on HIP households’ benefits, which now ranges from $40 per month for one or two people up to $80 for households larger than six, are slated to be flattened to $20 per month for all households starting in December. The average HIP household now buys around $40 of local produce per month using HIP, according to the state’s own data – twice the new proposed cap.

According to the DTA, these cutbacks are to ensure the program can run without fear of draining its funding. HIP is funded in the state budget, and although Governor Maura Healy proposed $25 million for it this fiscal year, the legislature’s final budget only made about $16 million available. That’s far less than the $18.4 million worth of local produce families bought with HIP the year before, or the $25 million advocates say would keep the program fully funded this year.

All the math points to HIP filling a real need, and many local legislators and HIP advocates have reacted with shock and determination to see it fully funded as more and more households use it. Led by the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative in collaboration with Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), Gardening the Community, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and others, the Campaign for HIP Funding is advocating for an additional $10 million for HIP in an upcoming state supplemental budget.

As a farmer, Duval says the recent announcement leaves him confused and saddened, especially since other state programs are actively helping farms grow more local food and make access to it more equitable.

“Two summers ago, we got a $57,000 Food Security Infrastructure Grant for a new tractor and irrigation system that’s helped us grow a lot more food,” he says. “The whole basis of our proposal was about growing food for lower-income communities. One department funded that, then another slashed HIP and undercut us being able to sell to that market.

“There’s not much money in farming to begin with,” he continues. “Even losing 10% of your sales in a year can be the difference between surviving or folding. A lot of farmers are talking about backup plans for our businesses in case that doesn’t come through.”

Duval’s contingency plan for Coolidge Hill Farm might involve raising more pigs and starting a meat CSA. It could also mean expanding their own produce CSA or getting into more farmers markets to offset lower HIP sales. In short, other markets exist, but they remain unproven, and it’s not easy to remake a farm or any business overnight.

“A lot of farmers I’m talking to are disgruntled,” Duval says. “Some are speaking out.”

Some are adding their support to The Campaign to Fund HIP at www.hipma.org. Some are calling the Governor’s office and legislative leadership or planning to gather on the statehouse steps this Wednesday the 13th to lobby against the proposed cuts. Many are still selling a lot of their fall harvest though HIP, wondering what the winter holds.

Jacob Nelson is a communications coordinator at CISA.

All photos provided courtesy of Coolidge Hill Farm.