The Hidden Network Feeding Boston

by Tanvi Saxena and Salma Sheikh

At the Somerville Winter Farmers Market, sunlight filters through the high windows of the Armory, glinting off baskets of apples and jars of honey. Customers file past tables stacked with bread, cheese, and squash. At one booth, a vendor swipes an EBT card, doubling the total with a $15 SNAP match token— a small victory in a system stretched thin.

For years, Boston’s farmers markets have been quiet pillars of the city’s food network. They are places where the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Massachusetts’ Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) benefits meet the hands that harvest the food. But with the ongoing cuts to SNAP, compounded by fall’s federal shutdown, that network is under strain.

At the same time, these markets have become lifelines — transforming government assistance into community connection. Within 10 miles of Boston, 41 locations now accept HIP benefits, giving residents nearly a hundred points of access to fresh, local food. Each transaction keeps small farms viable, stretches a household’s grocery budget, and turns a routine shopping trip into an act of community care. In neighborhoods where grocery options are limited, farmers markets bridge the gap between food access and food equity.

“This has never happened before in the history of the SNAP program.” — Rebecca Miller, Massachusetts Food System Collaborative

“The situation we’ve been in for the last two weeks is, frankly, unprecedented,” said Rebecca Miller, policy director at the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative. “This has never happened before in the history of the SNAP program.” Her organization has spent years leading the campaign for HIP funding in the state legislature, ensuring the program runs year-round and serves more farmers and families. This time, however, the challenge is bigger than the HIP program itself.

For more than six decades, SNAP has served as the nation’s largest anti-hunger program— a safety net that allows families to purchase food through government-issued EBT cards. Massachusetts’ HIP, launched in 2017, builds on that by giving SNAP users extra dollars to spend on local produce: $40 to $80 a month depending on household size.

But those benefits are becoming increasingly unstable..

Earlier this year, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — a sweeping federal act under the Trump administration that cut SNAP funding — left many states, including Massachusetts, scrambling to fill the gap. When the government shutdown later exacerbated the cuts, Miller and her team began pushing for an emergency solution. “We’ve been advocating to the state to step up and use funds to partially fund SNAP in the month of November,” she said. “There's the state's Rainy Day Fund… it’s probably the one that makes the most sense to do that with.”

The Massachusetts Food System Collaborative and its partners, including Project Bread and the Mass Law Reform Institute, pushed for the state to respond to federal cuts and protect HIP’s $28.5 million budget. “SNAP is $215 million a month in Massachusetts,” Miller said. “They operate at completely different scales.” .

“The food system we have is powerfully affected by the political system.”— Christopher Bosso, professor of public policy and political science at Northeastern University

To understand how fragile that promise has become, Christopher Bosso, professor of public policy and political science at Northeastern University, points to history. “The food system we have is powerfully affected by the political system,” Bosso said. “SNAP was born in the 1930s because farmers were producing too much food… during the Great Depression, while people were literally starving. The government decided, instead of handing out cash, we’ll give you a voucher that you can take to the store and use like cash to buy food — and only food. That’s where food stamps come from.”

For decades, that urban-rural alliance kept SNAP alive through the Farm Bill— agriculture subsidies paired with nutrition programs. But Bosso warns that the link is weakening, particularly with the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” “That was a budget bill, and Republicans detached the food programs from the Farm Bill,” he said. “Every time [there have] been cuts in SNAP, it’s never been through the farm bill. It’s always been through the budget bill or some other mechanism.”

HIP, Bosso noted, represents a rare policy success that works for both sides of the food system. “HIP is popular among SNAP households because they get to go to the farmers' market and buy healthier food,” he said. “But Massachusetts food producers, the farmers— they love HIP. It’s money to them.”

At the Market: The Ripple Effects

At the Somerville Winter Farmers Market, the ripple effects of these policy shifts are visible every Saturday. “When the government shut down and people didn’t get their SNAP benefits, we saw a big decline in customers,” said Juliana Soltys, the market’s manager. “Since benefits have come back, we've seen around a $2,000 increase in SNAP spending.”

Soltys welcomes 69 vendors, from coffee roasters to vegetable farmers, and says that SNAP and HIP have become essential to keeping them afloat. “This is one of the few places that EBT customers can use their HIP,” she said. “Now that it’s back, we've seen more folks come out and use their benefits.”

Huey-harn Chen, a vendor at the Somerville Winter Farmers Market for Hutchins Farm, mentioned that a lot of people who use their SNAP benefits at the market don’t speak English. However, the market hires translators to make their experience easier.

“A big community of people who don't speak English as their first language will show up as long as there's translators available, they usually feel comfortable purchasing,” Chen said.

She also added that there were a lot less people at the market in early November during the government shutdown, and also that people are confused about how to use HIP and SNAP. “There's two multiple programs happening at the same time. There's like WIC and HIP and then the token system,” Chen said.

“All of it's a little bit confusing from a consumer standpoint.”

Dan Shafto, a farmer at Freedom Food Farm and another one of the vendors at the Somerville Winter Farmers Market, wants food assistance programs to be easier to understand and more accessible to the community.

“There's an intentional structuring of the economic and food system, which is very unfair,” Shafto said. “We believe food to be a human right, so we would love for the SNAP and HIP program to be even easier to use, have even more funds available to even more people.”

He also mentioned challenges that farmers and vendors face when selling their produce using SNAP and HIP.

“There were a couple of markets where the whole HIP and SNAP system was down and so we couldn't really sell it all, except with the tokens,” Shafto said.

“I think the public probably doesn't recognize how difficult it is for farmers to actually break even or have a sustainable business. And the SNAP and HIP program really provide a key part of our business that people might not realize. It's critical to our economic survival, too.”

Students on the Edge

For Imani Bosket, a third-year data science and business administration major at Northeastern, SNAP is what makes daily life manageable. “I got SNAP in my second year,” Bosket said. “Before that, I would shop at Star Market, and I was getting literally one bag of groceries for $75. I would be rationing that throughout the week, and I’m not gonna lie, I was hungry.”

Living alone, working part-time, and paying for tuition and bills, they say the assistance changed their relationship with food. “Before, I would eat one, maybe two meals on a good day and I was always tired. Now, I have a healthier, more structured relationship with food.”

“In our university bubble, it’s very much looked down upon… there’s this attitude that you’re taking a handout or you’re just that poor,” Bosket said. “But we’re all college students — we could all use the help.”

When the government shutdown delayed SNAP funding, Bosket said the first reaction was disbelief and fear. “My first thought was, how am I gonna do this?” they said. “I haven’t been on co-op yet, so I don’t have as much saved up as someone who might have been. My parents don’t help me — I don’t have anyone, it’s just me. And with work-study we’re limited to 20 hours a week, so it would become very strenuous if SNAP benefits were reduced or paused completely.”

Resilience in the Face of Uncertainty

With the government shutdown, the impact of food assistance cuts became harder to ignore. Boston’s farmers markets saw fewer people use their SNAP and HIP benefits and vendors reported sudden drops in sales. Still, amid the strain, there are still some signs of resilience. As benefits resume, markets like Somerville’s are seeing long lines return at SNAP-accepting vendors, there are diverse ranges of communities using the benefits and students who rely on food assistance say even small increases in stability make an immediate difference.

These quiet acts reveal that Boston’s food system relies not only on policies, but the connections between people and the many local communities involved.