Upon entering any local supermarket, one might be drawn to the produce section. This large section of the store contains most of the healthiest foods available, and some of the least expensive.

Nannette Miranda from ABC30.com introduced a story last week about Assemblyman Juan Arambula’s latest crusade in Sacramento. Arambula wants to make it mandatory for California farmer’s markets to have at least one terminal or vendor that would accept Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.

As you may have guessed, EBT is the modern-day food stamp program. Gone are the days of Monopoly money food-stamp bills. With the swipe of a card, groceries are paid for, and the balance is deducted from the user’s account, much like a checking account. (Except, in this checking account, the user never contributes to it.)

“Low-income individuals [and] families often times don’t have access to the same quality food as other people; there simply aren’t the stores available, or they don’t offer the same quality,” Arambula said.

Don’t have access? By this, Mr. Arambula must think that grocery retailers don’t allow EBT cards to be used in their stores, although they are mandated to. He must think that the people who actually pay for their food are able to buy healthier things to eat, purely because they have deeper pockets.

Mr. Arambula must not go grocery shopping very often.

Vons and Save Mart, two of Fresno’s main supermarkets, both accept EBT. Right now, Vons is offering, in its once-weekly ad, containers of strawberries for $1.50 and bagged salads for $3. How about four pounds of navel oranges offered at Save Mart for $1.00? Mr. Arambula, these are examples of healthy, inexpensive veggies and fruits.

If you’re on a really tight budget, and have used your EBT card to buy too many bags of chips, candy and soft drinks, (as I’ve seen countless times as a former cashier for Vons) what’s wrong with frozen vegetables? If you cook them, they come back to life as if they were fresh. Bags of C&W frozen vegetables at Save Mart are currently offered at $1.99 each. Mr. Arambula, bags of frozen veggies can usually last more than one meal.

Discount supermarkets, such as FoodsCo, Food Maxx and WinCo, sometimes have produce items priced cheaper than Vons and Save Mart.

If an EBT cardholder is more concerned about the quality of the produce, Whole Foods Market also accepts EBT cards. How about some organic baby broccoli? It’s priced at a lofty $4, but it’s organic.

If Mr. Arambula’s idea goes through, farmer’s market vendors will have to purchase the EBT transaction machine and have access to a phone line. If there isn’t a phone line, which in many cases there aren’t, as the majority of farmer’s markets are held in parking lots, a wireless device for transactions runs at a steep $1,000, according to Miranda’s article. Find a farmer or vendor that has that kind of extra cash.

The whole notion about the government’s concern that low-income people have poorer diets, which lead to obesity and diabetes, should be thrown out the window. Low-income individuals have access to fresh fruits and vegetables at grocery stores. It’s the individual’s choice to buy them.

By the way, low-income individuals and families can buy things at farmer’s markets already, Mr. Arambula. They just have to pay cash for them like everyone else.