Oregon Public Broadcasting

In the last two years, Oregon has seen a 46 percent increase in the number of people receiving food stamps. 

In the Willamette Valley people can use what’s known as the Oregon Trail card not just in super markets, but also at farmer’s markets. Now people in Central Oregon can too.

The Madras Saturday Market is probably similar to a lot of the other farmer’s markets around Oregon.

There’s live music, plenty of people milling around and more than a dozen vendors selling everything from handmade wooden toys to fresh produce and flowers.   But what isn’t so readily apparent here is the fragile state of the local economy. The unemployment rate in Jefferson County is just above 14 percent.

Evelyn Rehwalt does have a job.  In fact, she has three of them. Today, she’s running the Madras Saturday Market.

Evelyn Rehwalt : "Yeah there’s a lot of people in Madras that are unemployed a lot of business are shutting down and moving away and in light of that there are a lot of people that are qualifying for the food stamp program."

Rehwalt says now that the market can accept the Oregon Trail Card, people enrolled in the program are able to make healthier choices then they might make in a traditional supermarket.  At the same time, the program allows the venders to reach a wider audience.

Each weekend, Sandy Cloud and her husband sell their locally grown produce.  They’ve sold most of their fresh berries but still have plenty of kale.

Sandy Cloud: "It’s really nice that the state sees the connection for good local food and public assistance and people learning what do with food, I mean a lot of people don’t know what to do with Kale, for example what do we do with this?  And so we can be part of the education program."

Some people might be embarrassed to be on public assistance.

But unlike the old paper food stamps, the Oregon Trail card looks just like a credit card.  And the machines that process the payments can also process regular debit cards.

The Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council bought 5 machines of these machines with a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Market manager, Rehwalt shows me how machine works.  Since there aren’t any customers using the Oregon Trail Card at this moment, she takes out her wallet and shows me her card.

Evelyn Rehwalt: "Here’s my visa here’s my Oregon trail card. So when I go in the store people behind me don’t know what I’m doing they don’t know what button I’m pushing or what card I’m sliding.  If I’m pulling out the paper coupon book and ripping out the coupon book, then that’s pretty much obvious."

Rehwalt says the machine has been up and running for three weeks. This weekend the market processed about $50 through the new machine.