Local families and seniors are getting $15 worth of locally-grown food products from the weekly Nicola Valley Farmers Market on the provincial government, thanks to an expansion in the provincial program that includes the local market for the first time this year.

The Nicola Valley and District Food Bank is administering the coupon program with help from the Conayt Friendship Society, which runs Merritt Moms and Families programming.

Together, the organizations hand-picked families with young children and five seniors to receive 16 weeks of coupons.

The coupons can be used like cash at participating farm markets to buy locally grown fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, dairy products, nuts and herbs.

The catch is that participants in the program also take a monthly nutrition and food preparation course, which is being offered locally by food bank board members Dorothy Molnar and Helen Croft.

Food bank manager Marlene Fenton said they’re also teaming up with the chamber of commerce’s Legacy Merritt program on home canning on the afternoons of Aug. 21 and 22, starting at 1 p.m. at the Civic Centre.

That program is free to participate in, and connecting with other organizations helps maximize the food skills resources offered in Merritt, Fenton said.

“It has three different groups in the community working together. I think it just builds good relationships,” she said.

Fenton described the coupon program as a win-win because it supports local people’s basic needs as well as the area’s farmers and food producers.

She said the educational component of the program is as important as the nutrition it ends up providing.

“We’re looking at teaching people what locally produced vegetables there are and what sort of things you can do with those,” she said. “When you go to the farmers market, you’ll see there’ll be currants available or kohlrabi, or something like that, and people might not have tried that — especially if money’s sort of tight, then you don’t buy something you’re not sure you’re going to like. If you’re given these coupons, it makes you a little more brave or adventurous because it doesn’t come out of what your initial food budget was going to be.”

She said some of the kids involved in the coupon program have come back and reported on what they tried and liked.

The coupons represent an injection of $6,000 into the local farmers market, Fenton said.

The increase is part of a $750,000 expansion to the province’s farm market coupon program, which includes markets in Clearwater, Salmon Arm and Lytton for the first time this year as well.

That increase is over and above the $4 million the program took to run in 2012 and 2013.

“It’s money that comes from outside of our community and comes to help the families, but it also helps the farmers,” Fenton said. “That’s $6,000 that might not otherwise have been spent at our local farmers market.”

A total of 49 markets around the province take part, teamed with local social service agencies that offer the courses.

Health Minister Terry Lake announced the increase on Aug. 9 at the Kamloops farmers market.

Lake said the program helps people make a transition to a healthier diet that lessens their risk for chronic diseases, while increasing the customer base for local farmers who sell directly to the public.

The nutrition coupon program began as a pilot in 2007, funded by the social services ministry. Its goal for this year is to support 10,000 people.

Fenton said organizers will take feedback from participants to see how the first year in the program went.

The program runs from July through October to coincide with harvest season from local farms.

— With files from Black Press’ Tom Fletcher