5 Years of Impact with Mass Food Trust Program

Winter 2024 Newsletter

Massachusetts Food Trust Program, Making an Impact!

The Mass Food Trust Program (MFTP) is helping entrepreneurs bring affordable, healthy, local food to low-income residents with limited access to grocery stores. It’s benefiting our economy while giving Massachusetts a more resilient food system! The map shows the entrepreneurs collaborating with MFTP:

Adding Jobs, Access to Food 2023

MFTP funded 14 projects for 13 retailers in 2023, bringing improved healthy food options to 68,000 Massachusetts residents.

This year, the program led to the creation or retention of more than 200 jobs, with an average wage of $17.33 per hour. 90% of those hires were made from within the local community, bringing economic opportunity along with healthy food options. Ten out of the 13 businesses are owned or substantially controlled by a person of color, and 6 of 13 are woman-owned.

5 Years and Growing

Since MFTP’s start in 2019, its investment of $5.57 million has leveraged $16.9 million in total project costs, and has brought 690,000 individuals expanded access to healthy, locally grown food.

In that time, roughly half of the funding has gone to grocery stores; 40% to farms, greenhouses, and cooperatives; and the remaining 10% to mobile markets, farmers’ markets, commercial kitchens, corner stores or bodegas. These are all parts of a thriving food system.

MFTP in Action in Brockton

Digger Foods Mobile Market at Campobello Apartments, Brockton MA

An MFTP success story, Digger Foods has a driving route that brings a local, organic, and seasonal food market to residents in low-grocery, low-income neighborhoods. Through their delivery program and weekly mobile markets at schools and in affordable and senior housing developments, Digger Foods provides food-insecure people with the best fruits and vegetables from nearby farms, at discounted prices. This way, everyone can experience the joy of cooking and eating fresh, local foods.

MFTP is a collaboration of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR), the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF), the Franklin County Community Development Corporation (FCCDC), & The Food Trust.

Would you like to learn more?

For information on eligibility and the application process at the Mass Food Trust Program, attend a virtual information session (offered every month). Register online.
Speak to someone about YOUR project. For eastern Massachusetts projects, José Luis Rojas, Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF). For central and western Massachusetts, Hannah Sobel or John Waite, Franklin County Community Development Corporation (FCCDC).