The Durham County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to allocate $480,395.72 to support the Durham Double Bucks Program through December 2025.  Farmer Foodshare, a Durham-based nonprofit that supports small and medium North Carolina farms and communities that might otherwise lack access to fresh food, was chosen through a Request for Proposals process to be the program’s fiscal sponsor.   

Double Bucks is a nutrition incentive program that runs at the Black Farmers’ Market (Durham and Raleigh), Carrboro Farmers’ Market, Chapel Hill Farmers’ Market, Durham Farmers’ Market, Eno River Farmers’ Market, and South Durham Farmers’ Market. It offers a dollar-for-dollar match to customers enrolled in SNAP, WIC, and those receiving housing vouchers. The program also doubles WIC and Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) vouchers. The Durham County funding will enable the program to be piloted in a brick-and-mortar store. This will allow residents to use Double Bucks if they cannot make it to a farmers’ market. 

Nearly 1,000 Triangle Area households utilize Double Bucks annually to purchase nutritious, locally grown foods. To date in 2023, 693 unique families have shopped with their SNAP EBT cards at the participating farmers’ markets and 824 additional transactions were made with cash and FMNP vouchers. These transactions total $86,463 in incentives, meaning that the Triangle Double Bucks program helped direct over $172,000 to local, small businesses and producers from January to August 2023.

"This program has been a total lifesaver since the pandemic," one Double Bucks participant stated. "I’d never used EBT before, but it’s significantly helped my family. Kids love the food and cooking and so do I!”  

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, incentive programs such as Double Bucks are scientifically supported to increase access to and purchase/consumption of fruits and vegetables.  These programs also support local farmers and the local economy and are likely to reduce carbon emissions.     

 

“Double Bucks allows customers to choose and purchase top quality, culturally appropriate, local food with dignity. Customers say it helps their physical health, their mental health and helps them feel included in the community. It also strengthens our food system, supports local farmers, and helps protect the environment. All the while it draws federal dollars from the SNAP and Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program into our local economy,” stated Nasim Youssefi, the Healthy Environments Nutrition Specialist at the Durham County Department of Public Health who has helped coordinate the program for the last seven years.   

 

During the 2023 market season, Double Bucks was funded by Duke Division of Community Health and Durham County.  The program coordinators are still looking for funders to support the markets in Orange and Wake Counties beyond the 2023 market season.   

 

For more information about Double Bucks, contact Nasim Youssefi at nayoussefi@dconc.gov or 919-560-7890.