While this may not be a garden topic, totally, but so true. Luckily for the seniors, there are alot of programs. In Indiana, there is food stamp(yes, many are too proud) and Senior Wic checks. Only approved farmers markets and approved farm stands can take these. I'm lucky to be approved. But the seniors still need to be at least 60 and lower income.

What other help is there??

Many towns and cities have community gardens that have low rental fees where people can grow their own food if they do not have their own land.

There are also sites like http://www.sharingbackyards.com/ where people offer their yard for other people to grow things.

When we have our market meeting I am going to suggest that we do a monthly collection for one of our local gorcery assistance programs - so that lower income people can access the locally produced food as well as the people with $.

The grocery assistance program also has gardens in the town that grow fresh food.

It doesn't help small marketers make money but it helps broke people.

In Toronto there are tons of immigrants who have their yards full of food - my brother has Greek people on both sides of him and they have fig trees (in Toronto!) and all sorts of veggies. My brother-in-law lives next to a Chinese couple who have their whole backyard rigged up for growing melons and vine veg.

There will always be rich people and there will always be poor people.

So true, I think if we, as marketers can guide the poorer people to resources, we should. Karma will also come back. I hope to have it come back good.

Marla

at our market there is a booth called share the spare. customers are supposed to buy from the vendors and then contribute to share the spare. the food is then distributed to poor families. i don't know to what extent customers actually do this but many vendors including myself give some of their unsold perishable produce to them. i'm not sure what criteria is used to choose who gets the free food.
we also have ebt/debit card availability but for all this past year i had but one ebt customer. no shortage of debit card customers.

I have had working shares on my farm in the past (well really every year but most years no one wants to do the work) where people work 8 hours a week for a lot of food.

Than there is gleaning where crews of people come to your farm and glean the fields of all leftover food at the end of the year (This does not work for a lot of small farms who go all year and do a lot of succession planting)

and of course there is always donating extra food to the local food bank, assuming they can take perishables (many cannot-no refrigeration for such, always good to check before trying to donate)