Nourish Colorado

Through our healthy food incentives work, we utilize local and state funding to attract additional federal funding into Colorado so participants of federally funded food programs have increased access to healthy, colorado-grown products. Double up food bucks, our largest nutritious food incentive program, enables participants in the supplemental nutrition assistance program (snap) to use incentives to purchase colorado-grown produce at nearly 100 farmers markets, grocery stores, and innovative local retailers (including community supported agriculture, food co-operatives, corner stores, and urban agriculture marketplaces) across the state. Snap families can receive vouchers for up to 20 per visit toward the purchase of colorado-grown fruits and vegetables. In 2023 we had 70 du partners and 91 sites, serving roughly 27,000 families. This program helps snap customers with increased access to healthy food, gives producers access to new and/or expanded markets for their products, and contributes to the local economy. Importantly, nearly 85% of customers participating in the program report they are eating more fruits and vegetables. The program is enhanced through strong partnerships with one of Nourish Colorado's new programs, cooking matters, which offers on-site nutrition education at farmers markets, the Colorado farmers market association, boulder county public health, and the Colorado department of human services, which also facilitates a postcard marketing campaign for the program in denver. Nourish Colorado works with community food navigators to provide community-based outreach throughout various regions in the state. Navigators are typically snap participants who provide program outreach and planning. In addition to double up, Nourish Colorado provides the Colorado nutrition incentive program (cnip), which distributed nearly 360,000 to farmers throughout the state in 2023 to purchase community supported agriculture (csa) shares that are distributed to participants in the women, infants, and children (wic) program and the older adult congregate meal program. Program evaluation demonstrated that over 90% of wic participants and nearly 85% of older adult participants reported an increase in food security through the program. Additionally, in 2023, Nourish Colorado continued to partner with the Colorado department of public health & environment to provide the farmers market nutrition program, which distributed healthy food incentives to wic participants to purchase nutritious food at farmers markets throughout the state. This program distributed over 60,000 in incentives to wic participants in 2023.

Through our healthy food policy work, Nourish Colorado advances comprehensive federal and state level policy agendas that support a fair and nutritious food system by addressing structural inequities in the food system and supporting policies that mitigate the root causes of poverty. In 2021, we relaunched the food bill action team, which met biweekly throughout the year. Fbat memebers include market managers, state leaders, and community memebers who are focused on learning about policy and brainstorming new ideas that could be implemented thorugh federal and state legislation. In 2023, we led and passed hb23-1008, on food accessibility, that created a tax credit program for farms, markets, and small community retailers. Additionally, Nourish traveled multiple times to Washington dc to meet with the offices of federal legislators and secured close to 50 co-sponsorships from the Colorado delegation of food and farm bills.

Nourish Colorado's healthy food in institutions initiatives work with institutions, like schools, early childhood education centers, and older adult meal programs, to grow and strengthen local and regional food systems by increasing the purchasing power of those institutions that procure and prepare food, while also connecting those institutions to local and regional producers. We have been supporting local institutional procurement since 2018 through two programs: local procurement Colorado (loproco) and the local food program. The loproco program is focusing on partners in southeast Colorado, which include schools, early childcare centers, hospitals, public senior care facilities, and community colleges. A series of three workshops are designed to convene agricultural producers, food service directors, community leaders, and extension specialists and provide in-depth training on how to build successful farm to institution programs. In 2019, Nourish Colorado led hb 19-1132 to create the Colorado school food purchasing program, a three-year pilot program providing a .05 cent per lunch reimbursement for participating schools to purchase Colorado grown, raised, or minimally processed products as well as technical assistance to producers, food system intermediaries, and school nutrition program staff. In 2023, Nourish Colorado worked with over 30 school districts as part of the program. In 2022, Nourish Colorado worked with partners to integrate this pilot into a statewide ballot measure that was passed by Colorado voters, and then spent 2023 building a national team to carry the statewide traning and technical assistance forward.

Also in 2023, Nourish Colorado began to manage the state's snap-education program through the cooking matters curriculum. This contract was transitioned to Nourish from another organization. Nourish maintained contracts with the existing six snap-education partner organizations across the state and began to integrate new community partners.