Kitsap Farmers Markets Scramble as SNAP Match Money Gets Cut in Half

The match money that stretches a SNAP shopper's dollars at Kitsap County farmers markets got cut in half this year, and four markets are now improvising to keep EBT customers coming through the gate. Washington's SNAP Market Match program, which doubles what food-stamp recipients can spend on produce at participating markets, dropped from a $25 daily match in 2025 to $10 starting Jan. 1, the result of federal and state budget cuts that squeezed the program statewide, according to the Kitsap Daily News. In Kitsap County, where roughly 15,692 households received SNAP benefits as of June 2025, that cut lands directly on the four markets that still take EBT cards at all. It's a small program by dollar amount, measured in tens of customers a week rather than hundreds, but it's the kind of cut that shows up immediately at the register rather than months later on a budget spreadsheet.

One market found a way around it. The rest are still figuring out what to do.

Four Kitsap Markets Still Take EBT, One Does Not

Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, Port Orchard and Poulsbo all run SNAP Market Match programs, letting shoppers use their EBT cards and receive matching funds to spend on fresh produce, dairy and other eligible food from local vendors, the Kitsap Daily News reported. Kingston Public Market does not participate in the match program at all. Silverdale Farmers Market takes a different approach, running the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program and WIC benefits instead of the SNAP match, serving a different slice of Kitsap's food-assistance population rather than SNAP recipients directly. That leaves a county of roughly 15,692 SNAP households with four markets, spread across four different cities, each absorbing the same funding cut in its own way and, so far, arriving at different answers about how much of it to make up locally. There's no countywide policy dictating how a Kitsap market handles the shortfall; each is a separate nonprofit or vendor association making its own call, which is exactly why one city ended up at $25 this season while the others are still at $10 or fundraising toward something in between. The Washington State Department of Health administers the Market Match program at the state level, but the money that actually reaches a shopper's card at the folding table runs through whichever local organization operates that specific market, which is also why a statewide funding cut doesn't produce a uniform statewide response. It produces four different ones inside a single county.

How Much the Match Money Actually Moves at the Register

The weekly numbers are modest by grocery-store standards, which is part of what makes them fragile. Bainbridge Island sees roughly 10 customers redeem SNAP benefits in a typical week. Port Orchard, which runs markets on both Saturday and Wednesday, averages about 14 SNAP customers across the two. Poulsbo's participation swings more widely, from a handful of shoppers up to 20 in a given week. Bremerton runs the highest and most variable numbers, averaging around 16 EBT customers weekly but ranging anywhere from 8 to 32 depending on the week, per figures the four markets gave the Kitsap Daily News. None of these are large numbers next to a supermarket's daily traffic, but market managers describe them as a meaningful, repeat customer base, people who show up specifically because the match makes the produce affordable, not incidental shoppers who happen to also qualify for SNAP. At the smallest of the four markets, losing even a handful of those regulars over a season would be a visible dent in Saturday foot traffic. The range at Bremerton, 8 to 32 in a given week, is itself a sign of how sensitive this kind of participation is to conditions outside anyone's control: weather, what's in season, whether a shopper's SNAP deposit landed that week. A program with that much natural swing has less room to absorb a funding cut on top of it before the swings start reading as a genuine decline rather than normal variation.

One Giving Circle Donation Kept Bremerton at $25

Bremerton is the outlier. Market manager Jane Sebastian said the market held its match at the full $25 this year through a donation from the Power of 100 Kitsap giving circle. "We were able to stay at a $25 match this year by a generous donation from the Power of 100 Kitsap giving circle," Sebastian told the Kitsap Daily News. That single contribution means Bremerton shoppers using EBT are getting two and a half times the match available at markets still running the state's default $10 rate this season. Sebastian described the stakes in plain terms: "Our attendees can use their EBT funds to shop for locally baked, grown, and raised food directly from their neighbors." The donation covers this season, and only this season. It doesn't answer what happens next spring if Power of 100 Kitsap, a volunteer giving circle rather than a government program, doesn't renew it, or if this year's shortfall repeats with no donor lined up in time for the next market season. "Power of 100" giving circles typically work by pooling small, fixed contributions from members who then vote at periodic meetings on which local cause receives the pot, a model built around member choice rather than a standing budget line. If Bremerton's chapter follows that pattern, the market's $25 match survived this year because a group of donors happened to choose it over other worthy asks in the same cycle. That's a fundamentally different kind of funding than the state program it's replacing, discretionary rather than guaranteed, and it isn't something a market can count on before the next cycle actually votes.

Port Orchard Is Fundraising to Climb Back

Port Orchard doesn't have a donor covering the gap yet, so it's raising the money directly. Ingrid Hartsock, the market's engagement manager, said some markets have managed to preserve or exceed the old $25 match by funding the difference themselves. "Some markets have been able to keep their match at $25 (or higher) by funding the program themselves," Hartsock said, describing what Bremerton had just done. Port Orchard is running its own fundraising push toward that same goal, effectively asking the community to backfill money the state and federal government no longer provide. It's a small, local version of a pattern playing out at farmers markets across Washington this year: state funding built the $25 match, state and federal cuts took most of it away, and it's now up to individual markets and the communities around them to decide whether to replace it out of pocket, one donation or bake sale at a time, rather than through the program that funded it originally. Poulsbo has taken a third approach, neither a single large donation nor an active fundraising campaign, and is instead simply encouraging shoppers to use whatever EBT match is currently available, betting that steady, smaller-dollar participation matters more right now than chasing the old $25 figure. Three markets, three different responses to the identical cut, is itself a measure of how little coordinated backstop exists for a program this small once its state funding shrinks.

The Cut Is Part of a Bigger Fight Over SNAP Funding

The Market Match reduction isn't an isolated Kitsap problem. It's the local edge of a funding fight playing out statewide and in federal court. The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration this year to temporarily block SNAP funding, injecting uncertainty into the program's near-term future and forcing states to scramble on benefit timing, according to the Wenatchee World. Gov. Bob Ferguson's office has said Washington households scheduled to receive November SNAP benefits got 100% of their allocations, with another $86.8 million in planned benefits by Nov. 20, but December's benefits remain unresolved pending how the broader legal fight plays out. Nationally, the Food Research & Action Center projects SNAP-related sales will fall by an average of 8.7% over the next nine years compared to current spending levels, a long-run estimate of what the broader benefit cuts mean for anyone, farmer or retailer, who depends on SNAP dollars. Kitsap's four participating markets are a small piece of that statewide picture, but they're the piece where the effect is visible in person, at a folding table, one transaction at a time, months before anyone tallies the statewide number. Yakima County has the highest percentage of residents receiving food stamps of any county in Washington, with more than 65,000 people relying on SNAP, according to the Wenatchee World. Kitsap's SNAP caseload is smaller in absolute terms, but the same federal funding fight determines how far both counties' benefits stretch this winter, whether that's measured in a $210,000 annual total at one Yakima market or a $10 match at a Bremerton folding table.

What's at Stake for Local Farmers, Not Just Shoppers

The match money doesn't just help shoppers stretch a grocery budget. It's revenue for the small farms and food producers who sell at these markets and often have nowhere else to move that volume of product. Bainbridge Island market manager Erica Pecha made that connection directly to the Kitsap Daily News: using EBT benefits at the market "benefits the users...but also the vendors and local farmers who rely on their sales." Elsewhere in Washington, the scale that SNAP dollars can reach at a market is larger than Kitsap's numbers suggest. The Downtown Yakima Farmers Market has taken in more than $210,000 in SNAP sales this year, the Wenatchee World reported, a reminder that for some Washington markets, food-assistance spending isn't a side program but a core part of the business. Kitsap's markets are smaller, but the mechanism is the same: every dollar of match money that disappears is a dollar that doesn't reach a local grower's stand at all, whether it's replaced by a giving circle, a fundraiser or nothing, and vendors don't get to choose which of those three outcomes applies to their table. Ted LeRoy, administrative manager at the Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market, told the Wenatchee World that direct sales carry an educational value grocery stores can't replicate, since "farmers are excited to talk about their produce" in a way no supermarket aisle allows. That's the part of the match program that doesn't show up in any of the redemption numbers: a shopper using EBT at a farmers market isn't just buying food, they're one of the only points of direct contact most small Kitsap growers have with the customers who keep their operation viable through the winter.