Berkshire Agricultural Ventures Launches Market Match Drive

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
03:05PM / Thursday, April 10, 2025Print Story | Email Story

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Berkshire Agricultural Ventures has started its 2025 Market Match campaign to aid federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program users.

"It's a program that exists to support SNAP matching programs in our area farmers markets," communications and development manager Audrey Hackett said.

This financial assistance plays a role in bolstering food equity and ensuring that all community members have access to fresh, local, and nutrient-dense food.

Through the economic development and food access program, funding is provided to farmers markets to enhance the effectiveness of SNAP benefits throughout the Berkshire-Taconic region. The grants enable a $1-for-$1 SNAP match program, doubling the purchasing power of SNAP at participating farmers markets.

"When people who are SNAP users go to farmers markets they have a certain amount that they can spend on fresh local food. The national program called Market Match doubles that amount which is wonderful," Hackett said. "So if you go to the market with $30, now you, through your SNAP benefits, have $60 to spend and you can probably access more expensive products like dairy, meat, and cheese."

BAV launched the Market Match fund in 2022 to support and grow SNAP benefits and raise money year round. The donation drive started in April and this year's goal is $30,000.

This year is more important than ever because of federal cuts made to local programs and farmers.

"There have been significant federal cuts that have impacted local food programs that are important to our food-insecure friends and neighbors and to local farmers," Hackett said.

Last fall, the state run Healthy Incentives Program that helps SNAP users purchase produce from local farms wasn't fully funded and SNAP programs are threatened currently by the federal government. This also hurt farmers, who are experiencing a funding freeze from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The Market Match Fund makes sure that our local farmers markets remain food access points for people in our community who need access to fresh local food," Hacket said. "Through the Market Match Fund we're providing support for some volume of sales that will help farmers do what their purpose in life is to do which is to grow food."

BAV has helped more than 180 farmers and food producers throughout the county. The Market Match Fund has supported more than $602,000 in SNAP sales and $337,000 in SNAP-matched purchases for low-income shoppers.

Those who wish to donate can do so here.

Tags: Berkshire Agricultural Ventures, farmers market, food insecurity, SNAP,

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Lee Wants Bioremediation in Housatonic River Vernal Pool Study

05:24AM / Thursday, September 03, 2026

LEE, Mass. — The town has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric to include PCB bioremediation in its vernal pool study on the Housatonic River.

Lee officials are urging the EPA to require GE to add a bioremediation treatment arm to the vernal-pool study or provide the public with a clear explanation for why such testing is being excluded.

"This is exactly the kind of question EPA and GE should be asking before final remedy decisions are locked in," Select Board Chair Bob Jones said in a statement released to the press. "The town is not asking to slow the cleanup. We are asking EPA and GE to make the cleanup smarter, less destructive, and more protective over the long term."

An open house was held in Pittsfield earlier this summer for the Vernal Pool Pilot Study on Reach 5A of the Housatonic River, a five-mile stretch between the river's confluence and Lenox border.

EPA has required GE to conduct a Vernal Pool Pilot Study as part of the Housatonic River Rest of River remediation, comparing excavation and restoration with activated-carbon-based treatments, including a product called SediMite and powdered activated carbon, the town said.

Ten vernal pools will be cleaned of polychlorinated biphenyls in total, five with excavation and five with active carbon, and seven additional vernal pools will be monitored as controls. Construction will be complete around October, but the pools will be left to their natural processes and monitored with surveys and sampling for three years.

The Lee PCB Advisory Committee wrote a letter calling for the 21st-century approach it said could reduce long-term toxicity, avoid unnecessary destruction of sensitive habitats, and improve the effectiveness of the cleanup.

It states that Lee supports the study's purpose and agrees that EPA and GE must understand how cleanup activities affect sensitive vernal-pool ecosystems.

"The current pilot includes 10 treatment pools and seven control pools, while local officials understand that roughly 100 vernal pools may occur in the broader remediation corridor," the Aug. 27 letter reads.

"That makes the pilot study consequential: the methods tested now could shape how many sensitive wetlands are excavated, reconstructed, treated, or left with PCBs managed in place."

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