Farmers’ Market (FM) Tracks

A Prevention Research Center Tool Showing Evidence of Effectiveness

OVERVIEW

Can an app help standardize evaluation methods of healthy food incentive programs that are delivered directly to consumers?

The FM (Farmers’ Market) Tracks developed an app and website to track healthy food purchases at farmers markets across the US.  The technology, known as FM (Farmers’ Market) Tracks, enables market staff to:

• Evaluate purchases by SNAP* (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) customers who are encouraged to buy more fruits and vegetables with their SNAP benefits.
• Capture point-of-purchase sales data when implemented in actual settings.
• Determine if healthy food incentive programs are working.

A 9-month study showed that FM Tracks is effective and can be used nationwide to evaluate healthy food incentive programs. FM Tracks was given to 273 markets linked with 37 regional networks in 18 states and Washington, DC. All markets adopted the sales transaction data collection feature, with nearly all recording at least one SNAP Program (99.3%) and healthy food incentive (97.1%) sale. They recorded a total of 43,493 sales.

Learn more from the “Dissemination of Technology to Evaluate Healthy Food Incentive Programs” journal article.