“Being dual-military, that was a struggle,” said Adams, who explained their earnings were too much to receive SNAP benefits, but not enough to buy the groceries they needed to feed a family of six.

Roteshia Adams.

Adams, who retired from the reserves last year, said each unit had an assigned financial officer that soldiers were able to consult for support whenever they faced nutritional hardships. That person would advise service members to visit their on-base chapel to peruse the food pantry or give them gift cards to use at the commissary. In other words, food insecurity has become a normal part of military life.

The Fort Hood metro, located 60 miles north of Austin, is home to almost 42,000 stationed active-duty service members in addition to more than 48,000 family members who live with them. Sixteen percent of residents inside Fort Cavazos, formerly known as Fort Hood, struggle with poverty and many face food insecurity, but recent inflation has made it worse—in Fort Hood and elsewhere around the nation.

Even the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA)—the entity in charge of stocking groceries for service members—has seen the impacts of inflation affecting staple foods on military bases and installations scattered across the country.

The military reduced grocery prices at military bases last fall, to an average of 22 percent less than in civilian grocery stores. Bill Moore, director and CEO at DeCA, said the savings for military families should exceed 25 percent for the current fiscal year.

Despite the cuts, many active-duty service members struggle to feed their families. A recent RAND Corporation report found that more than 15 percent of all active-duty military personnel are food insecure.

Food insecurity is a glaring problem, said Adams, who has been tracking the problem more closely since receiving her recent honorable discharge. She has been helping redress its harms at the Fort Hood Spouses Club, a nonprofit that supports military spouses through community outreach, by organizing monthly food distributions in her own backyard.

“I began to see it more not only in my home, but within our community,” said Adams. “I was listening to my neighbors and the ladies in the spouses’ club. They were forced to stretch meals, get loans, or visit the food pantry. The BAS isn’t enough.”

The Basic Allowance for Subsistence, or BAS, is a tax-free monthly stipend provided by the Department of Defense to offset the cost of meals. The food cost index, published by USDA, is utilized to adjust the BAS benefits annually.

Currently, officers receive $311 to spend on food a month, while enlistees—who receive less pay—get $452 a month. Enlistees didn’t gain full access to the allowance until 2002. Yet the Defense Department still required them to pay for their on-base meals.

BAS has risen by 28 percent in the last decade, but accessing healthy and affordable food is still difficult for soldiers, both financially and socially. And while the House and Senate have been debating the limitations of BAS and other military quality-of-life concerns recently, they have yet to make any significant changes. In the meantime, philanthropic charities have been stepping up to respond to the daily needs of military families.

‘We Can’t Host a Food Distribution Event Every Day’

Shannon Razsadin, the wife of an active-duty Navy spouse who sits as one of three civilian advisors to the Military Family Readiness Council for the Secretary of Defense, is also the executive director at the Military Families Advisory Network (MFAN).

She explained that the organization determined through national polling that these are four locations where residents need the most help accessing food. This polling motivated MFAN to respond to this national problem by delivering more than 2 million meals to over 10,000 military families at 18 food distributions since May 2021.

Active-duty service members weren’t the only members of the military community who benefited from their charitable acts. No one was turned away, so veterans and reservists also received support from these disbursements. However, none of their events have ever occurred on military bases.

“Part of the challenge is the culture of pride in the military,” said Razsadin. “We made a strategic decision to host the food distribution events off-base to remove as many barriers to entry as humanly possible.”

Not all nonprofit groups have made that choice. Food distribution events overseen by outside providers are considered non-federal entities, according to U.S. Navy Commander Nicole Schwegman, a Defense Department spokesperson.

Schwegman told Civil Eats that installation commanders may determine whether services provided by organizations like MFAN and Feeding America “conflict with or detract from local DoD programs.” These same commanding officers can ultimately approve or deny access to charitable organizations, including MFAN.

Lack of access to bases is a direct barrier to feeding military families. The events are often out of sight and mind for many active-duty members, ultimately limiting the reach, visibility, and impact of their donations.

“I honestly think that if the installation took on that [on-base] approach, we would see a lot more families not facing food insecurity. We can reach a lot more people,” said Adams. “That could get more people out . . . and the stigma wouldn’t be so much attached to it, because of the camaraderie in the military community, especially amongst spouses.”

An internal survey conducted by Feeding America found that more than a third of its affiliated food banks had a military installation or base located within their service area in 2021.

Vince Hall, the former CEO at Feeding San Diego, said he was surprised by the scale of military food insecurity in Southern California when he started working in that role and began visiting military installations throughout the region.

“It was shocking to me that solving hunger for the families of active-duty military service members was going to be a part of my work,” Hall admitted. “I had no knowledge of the severity of this issue and was embarrassed that our country has stationed so many military families here but is not paying them enough to live in San Diego.”

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan nonprofit think tank, reported that the San Diego-Carlsbad metro area ranks 11th for the highest cost of living among the top 100 largest metro areas in the nation.

Hall, who now works as the chief government relations officer at Feeding America, helped steward the founding of Feeding Heroes, a local initiative to assist one of the nation’s largest concentrations of military personnel in San Diego.

An estimated 120,000 active-duty service members call San Diego County their home, a combined figure of 403,000 when including their families. Feeding San Diego distributed more than 3.9 million pounds of food through that program in partnership with 12 nonprofits and four schools located near military installations in 2022.

Housing is another expensive hurdle. Hall said the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) isn’t enough for active-duty service members in that housing market, which often forces families to choose between buying food or paying rent.

Although BAH is nontaxable, the benefit is counted against active-duty service members who apply for SNAP, causing many to be denied. Households that received SNAP benefits included 22,000 active-duty service members in 2019 alone.

“It’s a complex issue and we understand that, but we also believe that families should not be in a situation where they are struggling with this very basic need,” said MFAN’s Razsadin. “Removing the Basic Allowance for Housing from that equation would be a huge step in the right direction.”

Charitable entities like Feeding America and MFAN are aiding military families and filling a much-needed gap in real time, but their leaders realize that their resources are strained and finite.

“It’s not a sustainable model. We can’t host a food distribution event every day,” said Razsadin. “Policy-related changes are going to be required to fix this issue, but military families do not have the luxury of waiting.”

Culture Not Conducive to Admitting, ‘I Need Help’

“One of the biggest barriers for military families is the desire to never embarrass the chain of command, and to avoid any stigma associated with seeking assistance,” Hall added.

Beth Asch, the lead author of the RAND report commissioned by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, agreed. “The culture is not conducive to saying, ‘I need help,’” she said. Her team’s research found that early- to mid-career active-duty enlisted personnel are the most susceptible to food insecurity. Single military parents with children as well as racial and ethnic minorities are also more likely to struggle.

These families face unique challenges that put them at greater risk of periodically lapsing in and out of food insecurity. While most military families move every two and three years, more than 400,000 service members undergo a permanent change of station (PCS) annually. MFAN once estimated that families spend an average of $1,913 in unreimbursed out-of-pocket expenses each time they move.

Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said civilian spouses often forfeit their jobs during these demanding moves. A loss of secondary income further intensifies financial hardship, thus raising the risk of food insecurity.

“Military families experience a lot of the same challenges that all families experience,” said Razsadin, “but there are nuances that make it a little bit harder.”

A staggering 26 percent wage gap between military spouses and their civilian counterparts intensifies financial inequities and is often the result of frequent relocations.

That disparity in wage potential among military spouses is expected to rise to 38 percent due to the pandemic, according to a survey conducted by Hiring Our Heroes in collaboration with Syracuse University’s D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families.

Blue Star Families estimated that unemployment, underemployment, and reduced labor force participation among military spouses cost the U.S. economy nearly $1 billion annually. An absence of affordable childcare creates additional constraints for many families.

“Those moves are definitely hard on families,” said Adams. “Childcare, spousal employment, all of it plays into that pot of food insecurity.”

On top of that, promotions pave the path for enlistees to earn more, but those with unpaid debt and other personal finance challenges have difficulty gaining the national security clearances that correspond with raises.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which approves national security clearances for civilian and military personnel, has denied or revoked at least 745 clearances so far during the 2023 fiscal year. Nearly 90 percent were cited due to financial considerations, according to Cindy McGovern, deputy of DCSA’s Office of Communications and Congressional Affairs.

“A soldier who doesn’t know how to manage their budget is a liability, and [that] can be used to penalize you,” said Josh Protas, vice president of public policy at MAZON, a Jewish faith-based anti-hunger nonprofit. “There’s a paternalistic aspect that I think adds to that level of shame and embarrassment.”

“Part of the issue is that people cycle in and out of it. They have a sudden medical expense or a car repair that throws their world upside down,” Protas added. “Well, you don’t expect them to sell all of their kids’ toys to put food on the table.”

He sees the military stigma against families struggling to make ends meet as “the military version of the ‘welfare queen’ [stereotype],” which is essentially “blaming the individuals for the situation that they’re in.”

Protas added that those who attempt to ask for help face the fear of retaliation by intrusive commanding officers. Often, that means simply being overlooked for a promotion.

The Defense Department declined to comment on perceived attitudes toward food-insecure service members who ask for support, but advised those who may feel targeted to file an official complaint.

“I want to make clear that taking care of our people is a top priority for the Department, and we continue to focus and look [at] ways to take even better care of our service members and their families,” Schwegan told Civil Eats in a statement.

Hall added that “pointing a finger of blame at service members and accusing them of a lack of financial competency is deeply hurtful.”

‘Let’s Get it Done Whenever We Can’

“Fixing other challenges across military life could also have benefits for food security, and they should be recognized as such,” said Welsh. However, unlike SNAP, which is shaped by the farm bill, military quality-of-life issues fall to the Defense Department. As a result, members of Congress have looked to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to address the active-duty food insecurity dilemma in the armed forces.

House Democrats from the Armed Services and Agriculture committees sent Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin a letter last March, urging him to ensure that the Basic Needs Allowance is “as effective as possible in combatting food and financial insecurity for low-income servicemembers.”

One of their recommendations includes creating an exemption for the Basic Allowance for Housing stipend when determining eligibility for the Basic Needs Allowance. This policy provision failed to gain momentum in the previous NDAA.

Representative Jim Costa, a Democrat from California whose district encompasses the city of Fresno and surrounding communities outside of Modesto and San Jose, was among the letter’s authors. He told Civil Eats that those “conversations have continued.”

“I can’t tell you that we have a consensus,” said Costa. “At the end of the day, I think we have to have a meeting of the minds, as to where the deficiencies are and how we address those—whether it’s in the farm bill or some other vehicle.”

Democrats hope to expand SNAP funding across the board in what could be the first trillion-dollar farm bill in U.S. history, but increasing food stamp benefits for junior enlistees is “just gonna put a Band-Aid on the problem,” said Representative Don Bacon (R-Nebraska), who served as the former ranking member for the nutrition subcommittee.

“I don’t think there’s a Republican that would say they could live with the fact that a junior enlistee is on SNAP right now,” added Bacon. “This should be a team sport, an American endeavor to work for and support our military. It’s unacceptable, and we’re gonna fix it.”

Last week, members of the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee, including Bacon, brought renewed attention to the issue after passing a proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year that removes the Basic Allowance for Housing from the Basic Needs Allowance eligibility.

“Now it is critical that the Senate Armed Services Committee to follow this lead and take action to eliminate the barrier that prevents the vast majority of military families struggling with food insecurity from qualifying for the Basic Needs Allowance,” said Protas at MAZON.

Earlier this year, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) reintroduced the bipartisan Military Family Nutrition Access Act, a bill designed to exclude military housing allowances from income when determining SNAP eligibility. She hopes to get this piece of legislation added to the upcoming farm bill.

“As someone whose family relied on these nutrition programs after my father lost his job, and who served in the uniform for most of my adult life, I’m proud I reintroduced this bipartisan legislation,” Duckworth told Civil Eats in a statement.

Republicans like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, also told Civil Eats that they believe the Basic Housing Allowance should not count towards SNAP.

Service members are supposed to “get housing, three squares, and what they need,” Thompson said, while speaking about his son, who served in Afghanistan alongside many troopers that struggled with food insecurity. “I do believe wholeheartedly that the way to do that is to not count basic housing allowances. Let’s get it done whenever we can.”

Increasing salaries for junior- and mid-enlisted service members has been another top priority among Republicans who now control the House chamber. The military personnel subcommittee has created a new special panel that will be chaired by Bacon later this summer and aim to explore possible policy remedies, including pay raises.

“In order for the military to be successful, we’re going to have to help them make a living wage and take care of their families,” Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas) told Civil Eats. “If not, then recruiting is going to be even more difficult than it is now.”

Protas called pay raises the “ultimate solution” but acknowledged that they may not be politically feasible. “Even if you were to do it in a targeted way just for junior enlistees, there's still a big price tag on that,” he said.

Republicans sitting on the House Armed Services Committee also proposed to increase the paychecks of all service members by 5.2 percent.

For Roteshia Adams and her husband, a pay raise would have made a big difference while they were raising their children, who are now but all grown up. But it can still make a difference for many. Feeding America’s Hall said it’s clear that something has to change for the sake of service members and their families, now and in generations to come.

“A portion of their mental energy is devoted to wondering if their kids back in Norfolk or San Diego have enough to eat that day,” said Hall. “When we put people in harm’s way, we want to give them all of the resources they need to focus on the job and not have to worry about the security of their families.”

The post Food Insecurity Is Common in the US Military. Will Congress Vote to Expand Benefits? appeared first on Civil Eats.

In 2019, Ducheneaux founded Akiptan, a certified community development financial institution, or CDFI, based in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. While CDFIs are designed to serve the broad financial needs of historically underserved communities, some, like Akiptan, play a pivotal role in the agricultural landscape, providing much-needed financial and technical support to food producers.

While there are over 1,400 CDFIs in the U.S., Akiptan is one of only 65 that are focused on serving Native Americans. It has distributed more than $16 million in capital through almost 240 loans across 24 nations for projects over the last three years—including Morning Light Kombucha, a company focused on sustainable practices in Kansas, and Sakari Farms, an operation that specializes in growing first foods and expanding research-based tribal seed production in Oregon—and its work is just getting started.

Akiptan’s 2022 market study determined that nearly three-quarters of the farmers they spoke to needed additional capital to purchase new equipment or infrastructure, but most don’t have access to CDFI loans, which accounted for only 9 percent of all the capital they raised.

The Native CDFI Network found that 86 percent of Indigenous communities lacked a single financial institution to access loans or capital within their borders. One of the network’s 2023 Policy Priorities focuses on increasing the flow of capital and subsidies to farmers and ranchers through the farm bill. The hope is to create a CDFI pilot program.

The “2022 Gaining Ground Report,” authored by the Native Farm Bill Coalition (NFBC), is also advocating for “creative flexibilities” that would enable Native CDFIs to “expand their agricultural lending and provide those key lines of credit that improve Native food economies and support rural America.”

Akiptan was one of three lenders named as a part of the Farm Service Agency’s Heirs’ Property Relending Program last August. Authorized as a 2018 Farm Bill provision, the program strives to address entrenched agricultural inequities by targeting the status of fractionated lands among Black and Indigenous farmers.

Farm Service Agency Administrator Zach Ducheneaux, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a relative of Skya’s who helped her create Akiptan, told Civil Eats that “there isn’t enough funding in the CDFI sector, let alone the Native CDFI sector, that is structured like an investment that really lets the money go out there to work.”

Skya Ducheneaux spoke with Civil Eats recently about Akiptan, her hopes for the 2023 Farm Bill, and the importance of funding for Native American food producers.

How did your childhood on the ranch inspire you to get involved in agriculture?

My dad ranched with his dad, who ranched with his dad. Everybody in my family was expected to help. And even though I’m a girl, my dad very much raised me so that I can do the same thing as every man in my life. I was out there all day with him—from sunup to sundown, before school and after school. It’s tough; ranching is hard work.

Skya Ducheneaux. (Photo courtesy of Akiptan)

I was chasing cows, pulling calves, fixing tractors. Then, when I turned 18, I never wanted to work that hard again. I said, “I’m going to get a business degree. It’s getting me off the ranch, out of the hay field.” I went to college and I started missing agriculture, never the work but the good-natured, honest people.

After I graduated, I wanted to move back home, which is funny because just a few years prior I couldn’t get far enough away. The Intertribal Agriculture Council caught wind of the fact that I was trying to move home and they offered me a position to start this CDFI.

I didn’t know what a CDFI was, so there was a huge learning curve, but I haven’t looked back. And I’m a fair-weather cowgirl these days.

Can you briefly describe Akiptan’s growth over the last few years?

We began lending and did $1.8 million in new loans that very first year. By 2022, we did just under $10 million in new loans, and closed $3 million to $4 million in loans so far this year.

Oftentimes, you see Native CDFI growth is slower because of the lack of access to resources and disinvestment, so the fact that we were growing like this with a record year was amazing. We hired two loan officers this winter and we need like three more. It’s absolutely crazy.

How do you stay sustainable while continuing to offer financial and technical services?

I spend a lot of time fundraising, and even with that, it’s still just never enough, which means needs are going unmet out there. Our market study indicates that each producer has $539,000 of unmet need, on average. If you extrapolate that to all 80,000 Native agriculture producers, it’s $43 billion.

Most of that unmet need is land, buying out fractionated interests. Infrastructure, equipment, livestock, there’s so much need, and we’re [only] seeing a drop in the bucket of that $43 billion.

Our interest rates are still really low. We also practice patient capital, which means our loan terms are longer than what you would see at a bank. It gives our producers healthy cash flows and makes sure they’re able to not only have a business that can stand on its own, but a good quality of life.

All of our loans are paired with technical assistance, and we really meet the producer where they’re at. We’ll also do up to five years interest-only, which allows producers who have room to grow upfront at accelerated capacity growth. We’ve seen producers take all their profits and reinvest it back in themselves and absolutely kick butt.

We try to take a partnership approach with them, which is where Akiptan comes from—it’s the Lakota word for doing something together in a joint effort. We are intentionally building relationships with our producers. We do quarterly check-ins with them just to make sure that they don’t have any budgeting or tax questions for us. Basically, we focus on the relational side just as much as the transactional side.

Do you think your recent market study reflects an inequity in lending services?

Traditional lenders are focused on credit risk. If you don’t have a strong balance sheet for them to fall back on, they won’t extend credit—or they will, but it’s not at terms that are beneficial to the producer. Without somebody giving you a loan and taking a chance on your business, having to start from scratch with no support is so hard.

That’s what so many of our producers are doing because of that disinvestment, because there’s a lot of distrust in Indian Country and financial institutions. You feel like you’re not being heard or understood, you’re not being valued.

(That systemic discrimination) stunts the economic development on reservations, and agriculture is such an underutilized economic driver. They get funding that keeps them surviving and never thriving, but if we have proper investments, agriculture can easily surpass gaming because we are such great producers in Indian Country.

The 2018 Farm Bill brought unprecedented resources to Indian Country thanks in part to the Native Farm Bill Coalition’s work. How that has been panning out for Native farmers—within the finance world and beyond?

The NFBC is a team of absolute rock stars. I believe they got 63 provisions in their first round of advocacy with the 2018 Farm Bill, lots around tribal parity and pilot programs. Their report “Gaining Ground” goes through all of their previous work and upcoming priorities. We saw improvements in Farm Service Agency programs in regards to loan limits, for example. [NFBC] has tons of recommendations for new opportunities in the Farm Bill, and we fully support them in their work.

How has Akiptan been involved with this farm bill and what are you hoping to see this time around?

We’ve been to D.C. a couple times this year, helping the Native Farm Bill Coalition by telling our story and advocating in that way. We’ve been meeting with the offices of U.S. representatives and senators, making sure those policymakers know the realities on the ground.

That’s our part of the farm bill, lifting up the Native Farm Bill Coalition’s recommendations for CDFIs, which we fully support. You’ve got a space at the table with something as big as the farm bill, and you can share your stories and the statistics.

We need to advocate for programs that would help CDFIs with ag lending at the national level. I see a lot of hope and desire and almost like an “enough is enough” attitude [from people struggling to get loans].

A lot of my family is involved in agriculture, and I’ve heard them cussing about their bankers for years. The culture that I wanted to create wasn’t one like that—I didn’t want to be getting cussed about every day.

We want to keep our boots dirty with our producers. We are going to feed and pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. There’s a lot of innovation, a lot of hope, a lot of desire, wanting to do better, wanting to break those generational cycles, and wanting to make a better world for Indian Country.

The post Farm Bill Funding for Indigenous Food Producers Needs a Boost appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2023/03/01/pay-what-you-can-farm-stands-feed-communities-against-tough-odds/ https://civileats.com/2023/03/01/pay-what-you-can-farm-stands-feed-communities-against-tough-odds/#comments Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:00:19 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=50977 In DC, California, Missouri, and elsewhere, farm stands that allow customers to pay what they can are providing communities a way to feed and support each other.

The post Pay-What-You-Can Farm Stands Feed Communities Against Tough Odds appeared first on Civil Eats.

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Every day, Marc James sees blatant income inequality in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

“To the north, you have the Kelly Miller housing projects, where about 94 percent of residents are below the federal poverty limit and most are unemployed,” says James, who worked as the farm programs manager at Common Good City Farm until early January. “To the south, you have people who had the chance to get their master’s degrees or are captains of industry and can afford million-dollar homes.”

The half-acre nonprofit farm is caught in the middle of these two economically divergent communities and offers a “pay-what-you-can” farm stand for residents in both neighborhoods with the hope that one group will help pitch in to feed the other.

“Some people have the means and some don’t,” James admits. “I started looking around, and I said, ‘What can I do to get the south side of the park to help support the people that live on the north side?’”

D.C. isn’t the only place where this kind of model is proving useful. People from all walks of life have been impacted by the pandemic and recent record-high inflation, which peaked at 10.4 percent for food prices last summer—the largest increase since 1981. And increased SNAP benefits just dropped at the end of February, leaving households to receive at least $95 less in benefits each month. As a result, sliding scale produce is playing an increasingly important role in keeping communities around the country healthy. But it hasn’t been an easy few years for farms using the pay-what-you-can model.

A row of market-rate housing outside of Common Good City Farm. (Photo by Gabriel Pietrorazio)

Produce for the ‘Common Good’

For nearly a decade, Produce Plus, an enrollment-based assistance program funded by D.C.’s health department, began providing low-income residents with $40 each month to spend at farmers’ markets and farm stands from June to September. It’s meant to buttress food budgets for families and individuals while compensating local growers, particularly first generation and BIPOC farmers.

“I remember picking up a thousand heads of lettuce, 600 dozen eggs, whatever it takes to keep it going.”

Yet more than an estimated one-third of all D.C. area residents are still food insecure. Ward 1, where Common Good City Farm is located, houses an estimated 88,800 residents, or more than a tenth of the total D.C. population.

Among them, 11 percent fall below the federal poverty line. A fifth of all households earn less than $49,999 annually, an economic problem intensified by race. White households, on average, earn $155,497 compared to $66,506 among Black households.

The sliding scale business model is a response to this inequality. Shoppers are told the full price of the food and given the opportunity to pay 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent of that price for a maximum of $30 off their total purchase. Roughly 35 to 40 percent of all the farm’s customers now accept a discount, and that’s twice the number that did during the market’s first pay-what-you-can season in 2021. That year, Common Good City Farm received $255,600 in foundation and government grants, according to Josephine Chu, the farm’s interim executive director.

It has taken a while for the farm’s managers to arrive at this approach. When Common Good first launched the model, James says the math equation at the heart of the farm was changing week to week. At one time, more people were getting food at zero-cost than actually paying for it, forcing the nonprofit to start asking for donations at the register, he says.

“We definitely felt [the impact of inflation], but I had to keep my finger on the pulse of the market and adjust from week to week,” says James.

Although the urban farm grew 3,800 pounds of produce last season, James still had to purchase fresh food from outside vendors to properly stock the stand. It also meant that he never hesitated to accept free produce—even when the calls from his charitable network of farms would take him hours away to pick it up.

“I remember picking up a thousand heads of lettuce, 600 dozen eggs, whatever it takes to keep it going,” adds James. “I care about my community, so I made that drive—[I was] probably a little overcommitted sometimes.”

Last year, Common Good City Farm spent more than $40,000 on food from outside vendors, slightly less than the previous year, says Chu. And some varieties were more available than others on any given week, depending on the season and the purchasing costs.

“Imagine if I had to pay my salary, cover the cost of the assistants and of all the program materials and do a pay-what-you-can market. I’d be filing for bankruptcy within three months,” says James. “We have support from a lot of our community that helps us keep things going.”

‘Pe’ah-What-You-Can’

Just north of San Diego, the 17-acre Coastal Roots Farm attracts traveling Californians from near and far to access one of the first pay-what-you-can farm stands and the inspiration for Common Good City Farm.

The operation was part of a larger nonprofit, the Leichtag Foundation, in 2014, before it splintered off to become its own nonprofit two years later. Backed by community grants, it donates three-quarters of its annual harvest directly to a plethora of strategic local partners combating food insecurity. The stand also provides a way for the public to purchase their regeneratively grown produce twice a week.

Kesha Dorsey Spoor, director of philanthropy, program strategy, and communications at Coastal Roots Farm, says the stand had sold more than 57,000 pounds of food this past season alone, with the revenue from those sales contributing about 5 percent of the organization’s overall annual budget.

“We’re not a religious organization, but there are values that inspired the founding of Coastal Roots Farm and the way that we conduct our business,” says Spoor. “For us, it was truly about caring for our neighbors.”

“One [value] is called Pe’ah, which is kind of funny. We teach pe’ah-what-you-can, a similar-sounding word,” Spoor elaborates. “Pe’ah is a Jewish ancient law that instructed to leave the corners and the edges of one’s fields unharvested for those in need.”

“I think the trust is there; people are paying what they can… It’s creating a culture of trust and dignity.”

Off-site food distribution partners have requested additional food for low-income seniors and Indigenous families in the San Diego area. And Spoor says the rising costs associated with these services, including gas, time, and labor, “impact their ability to source food” since there’s finite funding and financial resources at their disposal.

“Since COVID [began], the demand for and use of our pay-what-you-can model increased,” says Spoor. “We know that our customers and beneficiaries were impacted by inflation, adding additional barriers to meeting basic needs.”

Prior to the pandemic, one in five people in San Diego were food insecure, and that number more than doubled to one in three in the early days of the pandemic. The sliding scale model allowed the farm to adapt during these ups and downs: Spoor says a third of their roughly 37,000 annual customers were paying a discounted rate before COVID hit, and now it’s more than two-thirds. The remaining third are either paying full-price or in some cases donating above the listed value.

“I think the trust is there; people are paying what they can,” says Spoor, “and their needs change from week to week. It’s creating a culture of trust and dignity.”

The EarthDance Farm pay-what-you-can farm stand. (Photo courtesy of EarthDance Farm)

‘A Fun, Social Experiment’

Two years ago, Margaret Gerker contacted Coastal Roots for tips on how to get a new pay-what-you-can farm stand off the ground at EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, Missouri. At the time, the farm’s operations manager says she hoped to make the food they grew as accessible as possible.

“The pandemic really made us realize now is the time to do something and kickstart this idea,” says Gerker. “The model we realized would work the best is pay-what-you-can, not a sliding scale, so nobody is turned away from our produce.”

It wasn’t easy though, especially with inflation. “We have seen a large increase in prices for everything that we use on the farm. Shipping prices have also gone up, from seeds to irrigation tape to plastic for our high tunnels,” says Gerker. “We held off for as long as we could, but it made sense to increase prices a bit this year since everything has gone up.”

EarthDance soft-launched the model in July 2021 and learned immediately that many shoppers needed to pay less than the retail value for the vegetables the farm produces on its historic 14-acre property, which is said to be the oldest operational organic farm west of the Mississippi. The 2022 season, which wrapped up in November, saw 36 percent of all customers paying less than the full price.

The majority of EarthDance’s customers are people of color, predominantly over age 60, but the group also includes university students and residents from more affluent areas like St. Louis, about 15 miles away.

“Last year, our donations were higher than our discounts, but this year, it has been the opposite,” says Gerker. “We live in a [place shaped by] food apartheid and want to spread the word about our farm to people in the community, because for a lot of people it’s off the beaten path.”

The Logic Behind Warm-Glow Economics

The model is built on social interactions. David Just, a behavioral economist who specializes in food and agriculture research at Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson College of Business, has closely studied charitable food operations, and sliding pay scales in particular.

He found that consumers “recognize some fairness in having a different level of pay or cost” depending on how much income they earn. But he adds that even economically disadvantaged shoppers “prefer to pay something rather than nothing.”

While flexibility is attractive, Just explains that the model needs to be simple since it “becomes somewhat paralyzing” for shoppers to navigate complex discount structures while standing at the checkout counter. He also added that well-heeled, generous customers are also key.

Just refers to the “warm glow,” a theory economists use to describe the emotional reward of giving to others. At the same time, inflation pressures can also put a damper on the conditions that make the warm glow effect work. Just points to the brief rise of pay-what-you-can restaurants in the early 2000s, right before the 2008 recession, for instance.

“If you hit some sort of financial crisis or something that gives people a moral out, then this becomes unsustainable,” according to Just.

So far, that hasn’t happened for any of the three operations in this story. James, Spoor, and Gerker say they have all been met with skepticism, but they’re all still making it work.

“It has reinstated my faith in humans; people will show up when they need to and use the service if they can’t… I’m very hopeful for the future.”

“I don’t know that we could keep our doors open if our only source of revenue was the pay-what-you-can farm stand,” says Spoor. “We are very lucky that we’re structured the way that we are, supporting our sustainability [through] other sources of earned revenue from programs and whatnot.”

In D.C., James says their full-price customers want to see the stand continue just as badly as the ones who take the discount, like a gentleman named Gary, who frequents the farm and has been described by James as a chemically dependent, brilliant chess player.

“One day I didn’t see him anymore. Come to find out, Gary had robbed somebody because he was hungry. That story always stuck with me, tugged on my heartstrings. People who don’t have food will do anything to [get it],” says James. “This is a program we designed to make sure people have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, no matter what they’re going through.”

Gerker has seen a similar loyalty arise in her customers. “It has reinstated my faith in humans; people will show up when they need to and use the service if they can’t,” she says. “Given our first two years, I’m very hopeful for the future.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2023/03/01/pay-what-you-can-farm-stands-feed-communities-against-tough-odds/feed/ 2 https://civileats.com/2023/01/12/vincent-logan-farm-credit-administration-indigenous-chairman-equity-finance-lending/ https://civileats.com/2023/01/12/vincent-logan-farm-credit-administration-indigenous-chairman-equity-finance-lending/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:00:23 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=50415 This is the second time Logan—who grew up in Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation—has been asked to serve on behalf of the Executive Branch. Eight years ago, he served as Special Trustee for American Indians at the U.S. Department of the Interior under President Barack Obama, where he oversaw a […]

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Last September, Vincent Logan shattered a historic barrier for Indian Country when President Joe Biden appointed him as the first Native American to sit on the Farm Credit Administration (FCA) in its near 90-year history. He has succeeded Glen R. Smith, and has since assumed the titles of chairman and CEO.

This is the second time Logan—who grew up in Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation—has been asked to serve on behalf of the Executive Branch. Eight years ago, he served as Special Trustee for American Indians at the U.S. Department of the Interior under President Barack Obama, where he oversaw a $3.4 billion settlement after the Cobell v. Salazar class-action lawsuit resolved a centuries-old land-trust dispute.

Logan’s appointment comes at an important time for Native American farmers, who have long faced obstacles in gaining access to loans and other forms of financial support from the federal government. Early last year, the FCA announced a collaboration with the Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF) to address those issues by creating what it calls Other Financing Institutions for NAAF and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives to “expand opportunities for lending to underserved farmers and ranchers.”

NAAF was created as a philanthropic organization with funds from the Keepseagle v. Vilsack class-action lawsuit, which is similar to the Pigford vs. Glickman class-action lawsuit for Black farmers and found evidence that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had engaged in race-based loan discriminatory practices against Native American farmers and ranchers dating back to 1981. Logan oversaw the trust for NAAF from 2019 until he started his four-year term with FCA last fall.

Some recent examples of projects funded through NAAF include:

• $150,000 for structural capital improvements for youth ranching and their agritourism industry on the Wind River Reservation at the Arapaho Ranch Field Station in Wyoming
• $200,000 for the Blackfeet Tribe’s local multi-species meat processing plant in Browning, Montana
• $400,000 for a youth livestock lending program from the Lakota Fund’s youth livestock lending program in Kyle, South Dakota
• $75,000 for a certified fish processing facility from the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Baraga, Michigan

Civil Eats had the first opportunity to speak with Logan shortly after he took on the role in early November.

Can you tell us about your new role and the purpose of the Farm Credit Administration?

Vincent Logan. (Photo courtesy of the Farm Credit Administration)

Needless to say, everything needs to be financed. Agribusiness is a very expensive proposition throughout the country: to get food delivered, packaged, processed, and refrigerated. So, farmers, ranchers, and fishers have to access capital for their operations.

This machine is made up of private banks and insurance companies. But 40 percent of the ag-financing in this country comes through the Farm Credit System [a network of banks and other lending institutions], so that is the lion’s share right there. It’s critical that the system is safe and sound for all borrowers and the FCA provides oversight. That requires a lot of work, a lot of attention.

Farm credit may be seen as an abstract concept. What do we as eaters gain from a more equitable approach to accessing farm lending and loan services? Why should we care?

I will give you an example and see if it makes sense. One morning, I got oatmeal, sugar, raisins, milk, and black tea, and I looked at the packaging. I saw that the oatmeal came from Canada, the raisins came from California, the sugar came from Latin America, the tea came from India, and the milk came from upstate New York.

I know your readers think like this because it’s a basic food system issue. How many miles did that food travel to get to my breakfast table? Literally, what were the costs involved in just getting that food to my table?

But more than that, who were the growers and the producers involved? How does that operate? I’m hoping it’s equitable. Young farmers, beginning farmers, small farmers, people of color—I hope everyone gets a chance. I’m a gay man, and our communities are also part of the food system.

A seemingly very simple breakfast is not simple. And all of these people along the chain and all the capital it takes, that’s the amazing story—three meals a day—so think about that. That’s how I view it.

Can you explain the difference between regulation and legislation? What can and can’t the chairman of the Farm Credit Administration do?

FCA derives its powers and authorities from the Farm Credit Act of 1971, as amended. FCA has two primary functions: examination and regulation of system institutions.

We conduct onsite examinations at every system institution on a regular basis to evaluate its financial condition; evaluate compliance with laws and regulations; identify any risks that may affect the institution, or the system as a whole, and ensure the institution is fulfilling its public mission to serve the credit needs of farmers and ranchers, including those who are young, beginning, and small-scale producers. On the regulatory side, FCA issues policies and regulations governing how system institutions conduct their business and interact with borrowers.

These policies and regulations focus on protecting system safety and soundness; implementing the Farm Credit Act; providing minimum requirements for lending, related services, investments, capital, and mission; and ensuring adequate financial disclosure and governance. FCA also approves corporate charter changes, system debt issuances and other financial and operational matters.

Each year FCA is required to publish its Unified Regulatory Agenda. This document reports on the actions administrative agencies plan to issue in the near and long term. As chairman, I will play a large role in setting that agenda and overseeing its implementation.

Your public service career has been closely tethered to these two class-action lawsuits: Cobell v. Salazar and Keepseagle v. Vilsack. To what extent have those historic settlements stoked your interest in making farm credit more accessible?

It’s a wonderful question. One of the issues that we’ve always had is called access to capital, either for the tribal Nations or for individual Native Americans, for either business endeavors or agriculture in this case.

There were a number of outside forces that happened over time though when Cobell came along, that was critical in terms of economic development. It answered a lot of questions that a lot of people had been asking. And when I was a trustee over the tribal and individual accounts, you could see the direct effect from access to capital, how money is invested, and how it ultimately gets to the communities.

This Keepseagle case is another example where lending is critical to the larger picture of economic development. In the beginning, when I was in the philanthropic world working on the [NAAF] trust, access to capital was the number one issue that we talked about. We’re in this space for decades and it added, I’m not gonna say fuel to the fire, but it became part of the organism, so to speak of economic development. And that was pretty exciting for me to be part of that.

How would you characterize the relationship between borrowers and the federal government when it comes to Native communities?

Indian Country, as we call it, [is made up of] the federally recognized tribes and Alaska Native corporations. It includes urban Native Americans, it’s a lot of very complex structures.

I know from my investment career that some tribes have $11 billion in the bank and other tribes have $11,000. There are tribes that have 400,000 members and others have 20. It’s the best example of one-size-does-not-fit-all.

You mentioned how the two work together. It’s an extremely subjective case-by-case environment. When regulations come out, and the government goes to tribal consultation, they hear all sorts of things from tribal communities, and each tribe is so unique and they’re sovereign nations, too. That’s the challenge from the federal side.

From the tribal side, they also have farmers and ranchers who happen to be Native American. And so, where’s the focus? Is it on the tribal nation or on their individuals? Someone would say, “Well, you can do both.” Yes, you can. But it is an extensive and extremely complex community. I’ll put it that way.

What was it like for you to manage the financial portfolio for the Native American Agriculture Fund?

Janie Hipp, the first CEO of NAAF, asked me to help her out on the investments of the fund. So, I went out to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and there was a desk, a chair, and a laptop, that’s it. It was establishing a charitable trust without a piece of paper to start with.

We started down the road of developing all of our policies, including the investment and banking policies. When I got to the Interior at the Office of the Special Trustee, they had volumes of policies on my desk, numbered and tabbed. But this empty office model—it was amazing.

There was some anxiety [about] whether we were going to get everything right. I don’t know if we did or not, but it is now a well-oiled machine. It takes that long. It was not easy to get to where I left to come to FCA, and I’m grateful for that experience.

Do you have any specific goals for the FCA that you can share with our readers at this time?

With a workforce of about 330 employees, the FCA is a relatively small agency when compared to other federal financial regulatory agencies. But we have a national reach, purpose, and mission to serve all creditworthy borrowers working as, or aspiring to become, farmers and ranchers in rural America.

We are charged by Congress to be there for them in good and bad economic times. Heading into 2023, my overarching goal is to work to strengthen and fulfill that mission—not only for today’s ag producers, but also those in the future upon whom our nation, and frankly the world, will depend for food and fiber.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2023/01/12/vincent-logan-farm-credit-administration-indigenous-chairman-equity-finance-lending/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2022/11/22/this-mother-daughter-team-is-sharing-food-traditions-from-the-ho-chunk-nation/ https://civileats.com/2022/11/22/this-mother-daughter-team-is-sharing-food-traditions-from-the-ho-chunk-nation/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:33 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=49825 It was the first Friday in November—Native American History Month—Terry and her daughter Zoe Fess had been invited to share their family’s signature dish: Seedy SassSquash. The audience watched in awe as the dynamic mother-daughter duo pureed the squash with coconut milk, egg yolks, and maple syrup, stirred the resulting custard over a low flame, […]

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“We can look at ourselves as seeds,” said Elena Terry, while chopping a Hubbard winter squash in front of a live crowd at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in the nation’s capital. “How we interact with these ingredients is the way we really should be caring for each other.” Terry is a seed saver, member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, and founder of Wild Bearies, a Wisconsin Dells-based catering nonprofit dedicated to feeding ancestral foods to Indigenous communities and preserving those same flavors for future generations.

It was the first Friday in November—Native American History Month—Terry and her daughter Zoe Fess had been invited to share their family’s signature dish: Seedy SassSquash. The audience watched in awe as the dynamic mother-daughter duo pureed the squash with coconut milk, egg yolks, and maple syrup, stirred the resulting custard over a low flame, and poured it into a series of muffin-sized crusts made with seeds and blue corn before topping it with fresh berries.

The pair were participating in the American Food History Project’s Cooking Up History—a project that has welcomed nearly 100 guest chefs to showcase their heritage through cultural cuisine since it began in 2015.

Museumgoers crammed into open seats during November’s ‘Cooking Up History’ demo at the Walter H. Coulter Performance Plaza inside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. (Photo by Gabriel Pietrorazio)

Dr. Ashley Rose Young, a Smithsonian food historian overseeing the Cooking Up History Program, said it isn’t “something you’d see on the Food Network,” but rather the cooking demos are designed to be history lessons shared through the lens of food. She eagerly awaited the arrival of Terry and Fess, whose demo marked a defining moment at the museum. “It’s an important milestone to have their voices and stories on our stage,” said Young.

The Smithsonian’s network of guest chefs and community advocates have recently pressed the museum to reimagine Cooking Up History as an educational platform, telling stories about food through advocacy and activism. And Terry’s grassroots work with Wild Bearies—which began as a catering company within the Ho-Chunk Nation focused on serving traditional foods, and has recently expanded to include education and community outreach—fits the bill.

“There is so much healing in truth. Reconciliation comes when you take a stand and say, ‘We are going to share this narrative differently, and we are going to recognize the history more appropriately.’”

Inviting the chefs to share an alternative take on the month of November is an important part of that cultural shift at the Smithsonian: A handful of previous demos spotlighted meals from Turkey Day without any acknowledgement of Indigenous perspectives surrounding the federal holiday.

“Our Native chef colleagues said they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. This is a challenging marker in their history. It’s a symbol of the Western occupation of their lands,” said Young. “We want to adapt, listen, and change our programs. We’re not doing Thanksgiving-themed programs anymore. I can’t imagine we would ever want to do one again.”

Terry said that unexpected shift has made her feel seen: “It’s incredible. . . . There is so much healing in truth. Reconciliation comes when you take a stand and say, ‘We are going to share this narrative differently, and we are going to recognize the history more appropriately.’”

Although Terry didn’t use the word Thanksgiving during the recent cooking demonstration, she tackled other examples of grief and trauma, including the forced relocation and assimilation of Ho-Chunk peoples. In response, Wild Bearies offers culinary mentorship programming for those suffering from emotional trauma as well as drug and alcohol addiction. And Terry spoke candidly about how seeing food as medicine can provide a pathway for coping with internalized, intergenerational pain through mentorship.

“The medicine is in this—being in the kitchen with my child or saving these seeds,” said Terry. “I am not ashamed to say that I was the first one that needed to come back to my community, and food led the way.”

Mikaila Way, the Indigenous Peoples’ liaison at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization‘s (FAO) North American office, said she has been following Terry and is “impressed by her work, but also her strong focus on mentorship and young training.” During the early days of the pandemic, Way partnered with Slow Food USA and Slow Food Turtle Island to publish a cookbook, curating the tastes of seven Indigenous chefs from North America, including Terry.

And that’s why she encouraged the American Food History Project to consider Terry and Fess for Cooking Up History from a list of the nation’s most preeminent Indigenous chefs. “Every Indigenous chef on that list, they’re incredible people and all have stories like this, but the energy and the enthusiasm that Elena and Zoe both bring comes together, and the connection of food and community health is central for her,” said Way.

The Wild Bearies

Terry and Fess are part of the Eagle Clan, one of 12 patrilineal clans within the Ho-Chunk Nation. A few years back, they added four more family members—a collection of teenage and young adult half-siblings and cousins, who had lost members of their family, and were all part of the Bear Clan. Since then, Terry has opened her household to these “bears” as a special space to cook and share meals together. She chose the name Wild Bearies to honor them, and the nonprofit emerged out of her work to nurture a safe, precious space for them all to heal.

“To me, they are all my children, regardless of how they entered my life, and I don’t categorize them any differently,” Terry said. “There’s no distinction now for us, and so it is about them.”

Zoe Fess. (Photo courtesy of Wild Bearies)

The Wild Bearies began cooking and gardening together in 2018, even though their self-funded operation didn’t officially open until a year later. Thus far, it has been funded through catering gigs, speaking engagements, fellowships, and donations. For example, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield has been financially supporting the group’s culinary mentorship and holistic wellness programming. Last year, the NDN Collective named her one of 21 Changemaker fellows from across Turtle Island, affording her the capital needed to earn nonprofit status earlier this year. Wild Bearies in November also received a $10,000 cash prize from a Wisconsin-based social entrepreneurship competition. Now, Terry has begun to apply for additional funding in order to create a permanent space for all of her children.

Terry comes from a long lineage of matriarchs; her great-grandmother Rose Whiterabbit Miner solely communicated in the Ho-Chunk language and exchanged stories while cooking over open fires. When she considered creating the nonprofit, Terry leaned heavily on her grandmother, aunt, sister, and daughter for consultation; and they all became board members once Wild Bearies had fully blossomed. She’s still trying to protect that cultural legacy by centering her daughter as the driving motivation to keep their traditions alive.

Fess is a 21-year-old seedkeeper apprentice learning under her relative Jessika Greendeer at the Minneapolis-based Dream of Wild Health. She’s also a senior at Northern Michigan University and dreams of one day working for the U.S. National Park Service to protect Native lands. At the museum, Fess confessed that she briefly got caught up in the enormity of that live cooking environment but quickly found her footing on the stage—by focusing on her mother.

Jessika Greendeer. (Photo courtesy of Wild Bearies)

“If I got overwhelmed by the size of what we’re doing, I just looked at her,” said Fess. “I felt comfortable knowing this is our food; this is what we do. It’s no different than us cooking at home.”

Rowen White, the founder of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, who is originally from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, said Wild Bearies’ increased visibility is a testament to the value of intergenerational seed-saving and knowledge-keeping.

“Her work also embodies a commitment not only to our ancestors but a commitment to our living descendants and those yet to come,” said White. “Continuing to build out that legacy and intergenerational mentorship is key.”

Terry filled a temporary role as the food and culinary coordinator at the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA), staying connected over Zoom through the early days of the pandemic. She sought to “nourish connective tissue between Indigenous chefs from different communities,” said White, who worked closely with Terry during that challenging time.

“[Terry’s] work embodies a commitment not only to our ancestors but to our living descendants and those yet to come.”

Shifting to online mentorship wasn’t easy. Still, Terry kept up with her responsibilities virtually. She even suggested, and successfully implemented, the reallocation of NAFSA’s funds to disperse micro-grants used to “provide healing meals in that time of need,” said White, since in-person culinary programming was no longer possible.

Latashia Redhouse, an enrolled member of the Diné Nation and the American Indian Foods director at the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC), said Terry is “humble, genuine, and friendly,” traits that she has used to help introduce her audience to the farmers and ranchers IAC represents. More than 200 IAC-affiliated tribal producers rely on traditional retail venues, farmers’ markets and food stands, but these businesses had to pivot to online sales in 2020.

The Council had launched a certified “Made/Produced by American Indians” trademark food directory in late 2019, to help consumers find trusted Indigenous products. Terry, an ardent believer in the value of Native-made products, has become an ambassador for the directory by spotlighting Native-made foods and ingredients in her cooking demos and through her popular social media presence.

“She really understands our producers,” said Redhouse. “We knew there had to be a way to encourage the next generation of Native American chefs to think about how they can support the inclusivity of our products and use these traditional foods. And it’s great to work with her in that space.”

All these national partnerships and affiliations have meant that although Wild Bearies is a relatively new and small community-based nonprofit, it’s poised to grow beyond the boundaries of the Ho-Chunk Nation. And Terry has lofty ambitions: She hopes to undertake a cross-country tour of Native communities to build on her network of support, expand on their existing gardening projects, and even possibly open their own restaurant one day.

For now, she said that cooking beside her daughter at the Smithsonian was both humbling and rewarding—and a memory that she’ll cherish for the rest of her life.

“I love it when the younger kids, adults even, come up [to talk to us]. Those are the seeds that we’re planting, the literal seeds of intention and healing within communities,” said Terry. “Maybe they don’t grow or manifest until years down the road, but they’re there. I am so very grateful.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2022/11/22/this-mother-daughter-team-is-sharing-food-traditions-from-the-ho-chunk-nation/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2022/11/01/native-farmers-push-for-more-equitable-training-and-support-in-the-farm-bill/ Tue, 01 Nov 2022 08:00:15 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=48996 Also known as wuttahmineash in the Algonquian language, the strawberry is a natural gift from the Creator to heal relationships, says Northup, the manager of outreach and public programs at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center. According to that ritual, rooted in the origin story of Turtle Island, disagreements are settled when two people […]

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Strawberries “kick off summer for us,” says Nakai Clearwater Northup of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. The berries ripen in late June along the coastal shores of Connecticut, where the Pequots have long made their home.

Also known as wuttahmineash in the Algonquian language, the strawberry is a natural gift from the Creator to heal relationships, says Northup, the manager of outreach and public programs at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center. According to that ritual, rooted in the origin story of Turtle Island, disagreements are settled when two people exchange berries, each taking a bite while dancing underneath the glowing light of a full moon.

In recent years, Pequots have hosted Strawberry Thanksgiving, a seasonal celebration that had gone dormant for years as the tribe lost touch with its agricultural roots. Now, it’s one of several traditional ceremonies that have been revitalized with the founding of the Nation’s new 600-acre Meechooôk Farm, which employs four full-time employees and a farm manager. Blueberries, maple syrup, and sweet corn are merely a handful of New England foods whose celebrations correlate with their traditional 13-moon calendar observances.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s Meechooôk Farm, created with support from the University of Connecticut’s extension college, is nestled deep within a leafy forest in the Eastern woodlands along a dirt service road in North Stonington. (Photo credit: Gabriel Pietrorazio)

“It’s been a long time coming,” says Northup. “There has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work.”

This recent renaissance of traditional food production emerged from a partnership with the University of Connecticut’s Extension at the College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources, one of many agricultural extension programs across the country designed to help provide farmers with the latest research, technology, and training.

The national Cooperative Extension Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has established a presence in virtually every county, with more than 3,000 programs and an estimated 15,000 employees. But tribal communities haven’t traditionally had the same access to extension services that non-Native farmers and ranchers have.

The USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the agency behind the nation’s extension services, has been financially backing UConn’s support for the Mashantucket Pequot through the Federally Recognized Tribes Extension Program (FRTEP)—since getting its initial grant approved in 2017. And this year, NIFA agreed to continue offering support for an additional four years, but that decision was anything but guaranteed.

Although there are several success stories of Native communities partnering with land-grant universities both in and out of Indian Country, not all tribes have been so lucky. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is one of only 35 programs nationwide that receive a total of $3 million of competitive grant funding through FRTEP. Other projects include a youth program serving the 31 tribes living in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a dry farming project on the Hopi reservation in Arizona, and cattle ranching program on the Seminole Reservation in Florida.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s interests include hydroponic tomato greenhouses (left), livestock, including pigs (middle), and maple syrup, produced by the Mashantucket Sugar Shack (right). (Photo credit: Gabriel Pietrorazio)

Now, tribal agriculture advocates are working together to propose a massive expansion of the program in the upcoming farm bill. Some hope it will level the playing field for Indigenous food producers, more equitably funding tribal communities striving to respond to and prepare for the impacts of the climate crisis while also improving food sovereignty and nutrition security.

And if Congress approves their request, it could mean that many more tribes will have access to the foods that—like strawberries in Connecticut—bind their members much deeper to their cultures.

“Beyond the food to eat, it’s their culture. It’s everything for them,” says Shuresh Ghimire, the University of Connecticut’s assistant extension educator, who acts as a liaison between UConn and Meechooôk Farm. “It’s not just about production and money. It’s also trying to promote the use of their language through the grant.”

‘We Historically Have Been Shut Out of These Conversations’

Last January, 16 farmers, agriculture professors, and extension agents—many of whom have worked with both former and current FRTEP recipients—came together to form the Indian Country Extension Commission in part to assess the state of FRTEP. The group issued a report calling for a $30 million funding increase for the program, or 10 times the current allocation, among other congressional recommendations.

“The $30 million . . . will increase the total number of FRTEP agents: 90 new agents added to the current 35, as well as the addition of 27 new regional specialists with expertise in areas such as water, range, animal science, forestry, youth, Native foods, and Native languages,” reads the May report.

“We historically have been shut out of these conversations and are having to play catch up in a way that other communities in America haven’t had to,” says Lexie Holden, associate director of policy and government relations at the Intertribal Agriculture Council.

An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Holden previously worked as a policy fellow at the Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF), where she authored a field report specifically focused on FRTEP in 2021 that predated the creation of the new commission. In it she wrote, “The Federally Recognized Tribes Extension Program is not a perfect program, but it is necessary and it, like the people it serves, deserves parity.”

Only 13 percent of all federally recognized tribes in Indian Country benefit from FRTEP and the 1994 Extension, which includes tribal universities and colleges. And compared to the $3 million that goes to support Native food producers, the Cooperative Extension Service receives roughly $300 million annually.

FRTEP was born out of the 1990 Farm Bill. Even that provision was flawed, dispersing only a tenth of the $10 million earmarked by Congress.

“The whole reason it was created was because the traditional extension system wasn’t serving us and it wasn’t suited to the unique needs of Indian Country,” says Holden.

The commission sees Indigenous farmers and ranchers falling short in accessing extension services due to systemic disadvantages rooted in history. Their recommendations aim to correct structural and financial inequities that have persisted for decades.

Dozens of land-grant universities are scattered across the United States, institutions which receive funding from the USDA’s National Institute of Food Agriculture. (Image credit: NIFA)

Land-Grant Universities, Boss Farmers, and Early Extension

The establishment of land-grant universities, made possible by the Morrill Act of 1862, opened up opportunities for those aspiring to pursue careers in “agriculture and the mechanic arts” who had been excluded from higher education. But the funds the government used to create them came from selling more than 10 million acres of expropriated tribal lands.

Doug Steele, vice president of Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, doesn’t shy away from that history.

“We have encouraged all of the land-grant universities to understand where that initial land acquisition came from to establish their universities,” says Steele, “in appreciation of what we should be doing today.” He points to the organization’s current land acknowledgment, which explicitly names that land theft.

In the early 20th century, the Dawes Act parceled tribal lands into individual plots and gave them to Indigenous peoples in an attempt to undo the reservation system, granting each family 160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land. Still, allotted lands were often unsuitable for agriculture, and the effort imposed a culture of farming and ranching onto nomadic hunter-gatherer societies, says Cris Stainbrook, president of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation.

Leon Calico, president Indian Potato Growers’ Association, was at one time the largest Indigenous potato grower on the Idaho Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Fort Hall Reservation and gained support from early extension services, which was highlighted in the 1932 annual report. (Courtesy of the National Archives)

“You had 160 acres that you were supposed to stay on; that just didn’t work,” says Stainbrook, who also sat on the Indian Country Extension Commission. “They put these folks out there called boss farmers to train Indigenous people to be farmers and ranchers. They were the early extension agents for Indian Country.”

The idea of boss farmers came from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), says Joe Hiller, co-chair of the commission and professor emeritus at the University of Arizona. No more than two agents were employed by any reservation agency. Hiller’s father was a boss farmer on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota after the Second World War. He reported to the BIA superintendent, and was tasked with hiring, firing, and training Indigenous producers—separate from South Dakota State University, a land-grant university founded in 1881.

Some boss farmers became contract employees at the land-grant universities, says Trent Teegerstrom, associate director for tribal extension programs at the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“When those contracts ended, the universities didn’t have any funds, so the jobs went away,” according to Teegerstrom, who also co-chaired the Indian Country Extension Commission.

“Lucy Johnson, ‘a full-blood Indian,’ led a turkey rearing and feeding project under the supervision of early extension agents.” (Courtesy of the National Archives)

Extension agents were eventually phased out and replaced by welfare workers as the BIA began prioritizing social services instead of resource management programs toward the end of the 1950s.

“Then there was this weird thought that the county extension agents were going to supply the tribes with those services under the regular extension program,” Stainbrook says.

The presumption was that the Cooperative Extension Service, although controlled by predominantly white county commissioners, would offer the same treatment to Indigenous farmers. Unsurprisingly, that did not come to pass.

“Our producers weren’t able to access those extension agents, whether it was outright discrimination because of our ZIP codes, names, or tribal affiliations,” says Holden. They were “unable to use services that were directly funded by land-grant institutions, many of which got land that was either seized or sold.”

These extension agents were also ill-equipped to address Indigenous producers and their complicated problems, lacking knowledge of traditional food systems. Indian Country was essentially left on its own to deal with the agricultural hardships incurred by federal anti-Indian policies.

Then, in 1990, Congress agreed to fund the first-ever FRTEP provision, initially called the Extension Indian Reservation Program. But the program has been chronically underfunded, without accounting for decades worth of inflation, a fact that has left tribes competing for limited resources.

Fighting for an Equitable Future in the Next Farm Bill

In addition to increasing financial resources for tribal extension services, the Indian Country Extension Commission wants to do away with FRTEP’s current competitive four-year grant model. In its report, it requested that the USDA: “Eliminate the competitive nature of the FRTEP funding and instead use permanent funding similar to County Extension programs.” The current FRTEP programs would be grandfathered in and a host of new extension agents would be added throughout the country.

“Native Americans were not getting equal access to services from USDA.”

“[Competition] is the absolute worst impediment to these programs,” says Stainbrook. “You’re out there competing with your colleagues, basically.”

Thirty-six FRTEP applications were filed in the last grant cycle in 2017, all of which were approved, according to a NIFA public affairs specialist. But that funding isn’t guaranteed each cycle. Land-grant universities, including the 1994 tribal colleges, are both eligible and vying for the same money, potentially knocking other applicants out of the candidate pool to their fund agents.

“[FRTEP agents] are an incredible resource,” says Sarah Vogel. “If their efforts could be replicated and adequately funded across the U.S., it would be such a remarkable boost for Native American producers and great food for the rest of us.”

Vogel was an appointee to the Indian Country Extension Commission because of her background defending the rights of Native farmers as a part of the North Dakota Nine amid a groundbreaking federal class-action lawsuit, which she wrote about in her recent memoir, The Farmer’s Lawyer.

She says, “Native Americans were not getting equal access to services from USDA,” and sees a similar pattern of inequality in FRTEP. Vogel was reminded of that when her colleagues at the Council for Native American Farmers and Ranchers repeatedly sought to fix the tribal extension program decades ago.

“I think it’s getting to be a critical mass of awareness, knowledge, and advocacy. The equity commission is one part of it,” says Vogel, pointing to NAAF and the Native Farm Bill Coalition as reasons behind FRTEP’s rising prominence in the national ag-policy discourse.

Representation plays an undeniably important part in the negotiation process on Capitol Hill. Although 29 states are home to federally recognized tribes, FRTEP touches only 18 of them.

“I would argue forcefully that promises of agricultural programs were a clear treaty and trust obligation voluntarily assumed by the federal government.”

“We need to have some congressional champions that will say this is a very high priority,” Steele says. “One of the issues is that Indian Country has never had a very loud and unified national voice.”

And key lawmakers do appear to be paying attention in the nation’s capital.

“Over time, certain administrative decisions by the Department of Agriculture have made the [FRTEP] program less accessible to those it is intended to serve,” Representative David Scott (D-Georgia) tells Civil Eats in a statement. “The funding available through the appropriations process has also stayed fairly stagnant.”

As chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Scott says he has seen the benefits of FRTEP, particularly for Native youth. Scott says he is committed to “working toward solutions to rectify the challenges that have arisen” by ensuring that extension outreach and programming are “on-par” for tribal reservations, states, and counties.

His ranking Republican colleague, Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, tells Civil Eats that he’s ready to start “working and identifying ways to improve the program to ensure producers in every corner of every state are being reached.”

Indeed, advocates say that Congress actualizing its commitment to tribal extension services through the farm bill would be in line with upholding the existing treaties between the federal government and tribal communities.

David Wilkins, who specializes in U.S. treaty law as a professor at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies, has searched a database of the roughly 375 ratified treaties. Thirty-six explicitly reference agriculture-related language between 1805 and 1868 alone, Wilkins says, in varying ways from “giving instructions in agriculture” to even paying for “improvements.” Other treaties mentioned hiring staff, like the boss farmers and early extension agents.

“I would argue forcefully that promises of agricultural programs were a clear treaty and trust obligation voluntarily assumed by the federal government,” says Wilkins. And yet, after spending years reading through the agricultural promises, Wilkins adds that “federal lawmakers have long desired that Native folk become yeoman farmers, operating under the wrongful assumption that most Native nations knew nothing about agriculture.”

This misperception persists, when in fact advocates say the problem has been the systematic denial of the adequate land and resources to produce one’s own food.

“They’ve never gotten the funding they were promised,” Holden says. “It’s a matter of treating people more equitably.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2022/07/26/meet-the-group-thats-been-bringing-bison-back-to-tribal-lands-for-30-years/ https://civileats.com/2022/07/26/meet-the-group-thats-been-bringing-bison-back-to-tribal-lands-for-30-years/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2022 08:00:06 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=47690 “In times of question or hardship, I was lucky that I had those animals most of my life to ground me,” Frederick told Civil Eats. “If people were able to see this more often, you’d really respect life a lot more and where we came from.” His father, Tom Frederick, who once worked as director […]

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Whenever Wayne Frederick watches the American bison roaming around the sprawling South Dakota prairies of the Rosebud Indian Reservation, he sees a piece of himself. The 43-year-old Rosebud Sioux member and tribal council representative was born into the family tradition of bison herd management and has since dedicated nearly 37 years of his life to the hooved beasts.

“In times of question or hardship, I was lucky that I had those animals most of my life to ground me,” Frederick told Civil Eats. “If people were able to see this more often, you’d really respect life a lot more and where we came from.”

His father, Tom Frederick, who once worked as director of the tribe’s Department of Natural Resources and Game, Fish, and Parks, had always dreamed of bringing the buffalo back to Rosebud. It eventually became a reality in 1980, when the U.S. Department of the Interior approved his request to acquire 25 buffalo as surplus property from the Wind Cave National Park’s historic herd in the Southern Black Hills. Forty-two years later, the Rosebud herd has grown to 300 under the department’s watch, and Wayne Frederick had a chance to manage it from 2011 to 2014.

Frederick helped start another small herd with his father in 1999 at the Sinte Gleska University, a tribal public land-grant university located on the reservation, alongside university President Lionel Bordeaux. It began with 13 bison, each symbolizing a traditional moon of their calendar year, that arrived from Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in Nebraska. By 2001, the herd had increased to 100 buffalo from the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado.

Both tribally owned and operated herds, and others like them, are especially significant, as the beloved buffalo have been brought back from the brink of extinction since the dawn of the 20th century. Historical figures indicate that 30 to 60 million once wandered North America at their peak. But due to the rise of transcontinental railroads, unregulated hide hunting, drought, and the U.S. Army’s eradication of some northern herds, the total population dwindled drastically to only 325 wild buffalo by 1884.

An 1870s newspaper illustration with a caption reading, “The far west – shooting buffalo on the line of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad.” (Illustration courtesy of the Library of Congress)

“We see ourselves. They’re a resilient animal, just as we are resilient people,” said Troy Heinert, a Rosebud Sioux member and Democratic minority leader in the South Dakota Senate. “We’ve still been able to maintain our identity, and that is extremely important to us. When you’re handling those animals, they recognize that.”

“There are ceremonies and songs that may not have been performed or sung for decades. But when we bring those buffalo back, that tradition is revived. There’s no greater feeling than that.”

In November, Heinert, 49, became executive director at the InterTribal Buffalo Council (ITBC), which originated in 1992 as the InterTribal Bison Cooperative. This year, ITBC celebrates three decades of buffalo stewardship after transporting 20,000 animals to 55 tribal herds owned and operated by 76 member Nations. More than half of them were transferred from national parks, wildlife refuges, nature preserves, and private owners through the federal surplus property program—the same process that Frederick utilized in 1980.

The process of repopulating Indian Country has been a healing experience, especially for communities that lost contact with the buffalo for generations.

“There are ceremonies and songs that may not have been performed or sung for decades. But when we bring those buffalo back, that tradition is revived,” Heinert said. “There’s no greater feeling than that.”

The connections that have been built among member tribes are also noteworthy. Each time an eagle feather is tied to the council’s ceremonial staff, it symbolizes the welcoming of a new federally recognized tribe. Heinert says this annual tradition “serves as a reminder that all decisions to be made need to reflect the Nations and people we serve.”

Yet despite this sense of collective triumph, the ITBC and its members still struggle to grow their herds and protect their way of life. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers reclassifying the animal and requiring more inspections, some tribal members worry that the shift could inadvertently undercut their autonomy over bison for agricultural and cultural purposes.

Preserving Genetic Stock—in Yellowstone and Beyond

Yellowstone National Park’s revitalized population of more than 5,000 bison are widely considered to be the most sacred since they’re “the last of the free roaming wild buffalo that are genetically as close to the buffalo that provided for our ancestors,” Heinert said.

The ITBC’s goal is to get as many disease-free buffalo from Yellowstone back to Indian Country under tribal control, primarily through the federal surplus program. Their prized sequences are sought to diversify preexisting herds, and in some cases, tribe members will even isolate the Yellowstone buffalo to create herds solely for cultural use, separate from slaughter.

But all wild bison from Yellowstone must undergo a multi-year quarantine monitoring process that lasts up to three years. It’s a lengthy timeline approved by the state of Montana, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), and the National Park Service. Half of all Yellowstone bison have tested positive for brucellosis, a bacterial disease largely affecting cattle species, according to APHIS.

A herd of buffalo rumble through the wooded grasslands of Yellowstone National Park. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress)

In addition to its buffalo rematriation efforts, ITBC offers training and resources for herders to address issues ranging from health and safety to diseases and genetics. Creating distribution channels to feed communities is another top priority and member benefit. Whether ITBC is making member introductions to facilitate regional buffalo meat sales or sharing the products that are processed and stored at its headquarters for direct sale to tribes, the organization prides itself on providing nationwide access to nutritious meat while impacting the lives of more than a million tribal residents.

But the intertribal organization has its limitations, especially for individual ranchers.

Frederick once served as ITBC’s regional director for North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Minnesota, and he sat on its board of directors from 2011 to 2015. Today, he oversees the oldest Native-owned ranch in South Dakota’s Todd County, originally an allotment given to his sixth great-grandmother Tawacin Waste Win, which translates to “good and compassionate woman.” He and his wife, Alex Romero Frederick, have raised every sort of livestock on their own farm except buffalo, the “Pté Oyate”—the Lakota name gifted to the largest land mammal in North America. He strongly advocated for private bison ownership for Indigenous ranchers—devoid of any affiliation to tribal leadership.

“Not everything can be tribal government-led, and we have to involve people individually,” Frederick insisted. “I hope [ITBC] can expand their reach to help individual tribal producers who take the initiative to do infrastructure on their properties and get the buffalo economy back to the people.”

Although Frederick learned how to raise buffalo from his father, the herds themselves are predominantly matriarchal in nature, typically with a lead cow in charge—mirroring the matrilineal clan systems of tribes that still reside on the Great Plains.

“We are fully aware of the federal policy that nearly eradicated the buffalo. It wasn’t because the federal government was mad at the buffalo; that was an attempt to control us, as Indigenous people.”

Working in tandem with the federal government takes trust, which was historically violated. The U.S. has a responsibility to recognize herding traditions through their treaty obligations—the same government that for over a century sought to annihilate Native populations and drive them from their lands.

“We are fully aware of the federal policy that nearly eradicated the buffalo,” Heinert admitted. “It wasn’t because the federal government was mad at the buffalo; that was an attempt to control us, as Indigenous people.”

That history enshrines efforts to preserve the buffalo with a particular symbolic power—as if by bringing their populations back to abundance, Indigenous peoples can do the same for themselves.

Shared Ambition to Restore Bison

ITBC works with a diverse coalition of private, public, government, and tribal stakeholders to create an intricate bison management system with a common goal to rematriate the keystone species back to restore their natural grassland habitats.

One such group is South Dakota State University’s West River Research and Extension regional center, home to the Center of Excellence for Bison Studies (BisonCOE), which launched in September 2020 to better engage with bison managers from all backgrounds.

Established as a partnership between the university, the National Bison Association (NBA) and National Buffalo Foundation, the center focuses on research to improve the health of bison herds and economic viability of private and tribal producers. These groups see bison herding—which is —as beneficial for soil health, and an important way for sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere.

“Enabling climate-smart agricultural commodities such as bison, bison meat, and bison by-products—especially those that are from minority- and BIPOC-owned [ranches]—is critical for enhancing economic, ecologic, and cultural sustainability for local communities,” Jeff Martin, director of research at BisonCOE, told Civil Eats.

With an 11-member board of directors guiding and granting funding for the research aims of BisonCOE, the center has exclusively designated two three-year rotating tribal seats: one appointee represents tribal universities, and another acts as a liaison to ITBC member tribes. According to Martin, this structure has created equity and inclusivity in their deliberative discussions.

Buffalo are uniquely situated in the agricultural landscape. They are essentially considered both livestock and game-wildlife. With multiple definitions come multiple uses, Martin said. Today, there are roughly 31,000 free-roaming buffalo in the wild on public lands and total population estimates ranging from 400,000 to half a million bison across North America. And consumer demand is also driving the sustainable growth of meat packing facilities among tribal and commercial owners, thus expanding conservation efforts in the process.

“We say, eat them to save them, which does sound a little jarring at the outset,” said Jim Matheson, NBA’s executive director. “But it certainly gets people’s attention.”

Matheson estimates that approximately 70,000 head of buffalo were processed in North America last year—a new record. The bison industry has been booming, both for tribal and commercial producers, partly because of a memorandum of understanding signed by ITBC and NBA in 2014, which has been expanded upon in January to ensure “a common commitment to the success of private and tribal producers.”

The ITBC, NBA, and the Wildlife Conservation Society also lobbied together for the National Bison Legacy Act, a bill acknowledging buffalo as the national mammal. In 2016, President Barack Obama signed it into law.

“We’ve got such a good community around us. We love this animal,” Matheson said. “We’re all able to collaborate together very effectively.”

In 2021, ITBC also partnered with The Nature Conservancy to bring an estimated 130 bison from its preserves in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri to tribes in Wyoming, Oklahoma, and the Seneca Nation’s Gakwi:yo:h Farms in New York.

Dennis Jorgensen, a wildlife biologist and the World Wildlife Fund’s bison initiative manager in the Northern Great Plains, credits ITBC with steering the way for academics, conservationists, and industry leaders to heed their wisdom.

“The InterTribal Buffalo Council is really the example of how you work with communities and tribes to bring buffalo back,” said Jorgensen. “I’m impressed with their ability to support and provide guidance to that many different Nations. We work with a handful of Nations, and that’s challenging enough.”

A herd of buffalo cross the Madison River in the snow-capped mountains of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress)

Jorgensen said that 1 in 4 residents on tribal reservations suffer from food insecurity within his jurisdiction. Food can be scarce, which is why the World Wildlife Fund is backing Rosebud’s Wolakota Buffalo Range, the largest Native-owned and operated buffalo herd in North America. Frederick has helped establish the herd, which is separate from the other two that he and his father assembled decades prior. The Rosebud Economic Development Corporation created a five-year business plan in 2020 to relocate 1,500 buffalo across 28,000 acres at the cost of $5 million.

“The projects that bring tribal land back into tribal hands and restore buffalo create an opportunity for food sovereignty, [and an] economic and cultural restoration engine,” Jorgensen said. “ITBC and groups like ours that have followed in their footsteps are working to support them.”

Cultural Traditions Under Threat

As bison herds continue to grow, this year’s passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act directed the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to participate in a series of listening sessions to explore options for relabeling buffalo as an “amenable species” for regulators. The renewed effort to reconsider classifying bison meat’s non-amenable status would break from a 116-year precedent set by the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. It ruled that buffalo is not subject to USDA-mandated inspection unless it is sold off the reservation.

There are three types of inspection: state, federal, and custom-exempt. These options are the same for bison and beef except for the fact that bison producers must voluntarily pay for federal inspection to ship their products across state lines. Although most tribal producers aren’t selling buffalo meat off their reservations—thus foregoing state or federal inspection requirements—tribal communities are worried that the reclassification and subsequent inspections would disrupt traditional field kill and slaughtering practices dating back a millennium and prevent tribes from keeping specific body parts for cultural purposes.

Traditional buffalo harvesting is a ceremony in itself. To respectfully honor a healthy kill, the hunters feed the spirits of the animals set for slaughter and those who have already passed on. A prayer calling for good health and understanding is offered, since their “revered relative” is “making a sacrifice of its life to feed and take care of us,” Frederick said.

“If it were amenable, that animal has to be pre-identified and individually inspected before it can be slaughtered, which really goes against their cultural approach to this, which we very much respect,” NBA’s Matheson explained. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

USDA FSIS Administrator Paul Kiecker personally thanked ITBC for hosting a series of congressionally mandated listening sessions with the Quapaw Tribe, Osage Nation of Oklahoma, and Makoce Agriculture Development on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

“As part of these visits and listening sessions with tribal representatives, it was made very clear to me that buffalo also hold a cultural, historical, and environmental significance distinct from their viability as a commercial meat product,” Kiecker told Civil Eats in a statement.

Kiecker prioritized meeting with tribal herders before speaking with large and small, non-tribal commercial producers and processors, said Matheson, who attended the South Dakota listening session in early June. Kiecker’s agency is now compiling a congressional briefing highlighting overall feedback and the challenges and potential paths forward for relabeling bison as an amenable species.

Each body part of the buffalo carries significance, Heinert says, adding that maintaining open lines of communication with the USDA is paramount in protecting their way of life since the agency can prohibit them from keeping hides, skins, horns, and skulls.

“We understand that there are private producers that use buffalo as a commodity. Tribes view buffalo differently,” said Heinert. “What we’re trying to do is recreate this tribal buffalo economy, maintaining the cultural importance of buffalo wealth while being able to use the entire animal like we once did.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2022/07/26/meet-the-group-thats-been-bringing-bison-back-to-tribal-lands-for-30-years/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2021/01/14/from-bison-to-syrup-the-seneca-nation-is-making-strides-in-food-sovereignty/ https://civileats.com/2021/01/14/from-bison-to-syrup-the-seneca-nation-is-making-strides-in-food-sovereignty/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2021 09:00:31 +0000 http://civileats.com/?p=40056 Snyder, the director of the agriculture department for the Seneca Nation, has overseen a number of efforts to rebuild food sovereignty among the Seneca, including the development of Gakwi:yo:h Farms, the growth of a bison herd on the Nation’s reservation, and the ongoing construction of a new cannery facility. And Maple Weekend—scheduled for late March […]

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For Michael Snyder, it was canceling the Gakwi:yo:h Farm’s annual Maple Weekend that drove home how serious the pandemic would hit the Seneca Nation.

Snyder, the director of the agriculture department for the Seneca Nation, has overseen a number of efforts to rebuild food sovereignty among the Seneca, including the development of Gakwi:yo:h Farms, the growth of a bison herd on the Nation’s reservation, and the ongoing construction of a new cannery facility.

And Maple Weekend—scheduled for late March 2020—would have been the perfect showcase. Instead, everything was going to have to be put on hold.

“A week before we were going to do Maple Weekend. I’m pulling all our maple products and our bison meat, everything that I have and setting it aside ” until the pandemic passed, Snyder said.

Snyder’s work grew out of the Food is Our Medicine initiative, launched in 2013 by the Seneca Diabetes Foundation and funded to encourage healthy eating through gardening, canning, and education about culturally significant plants. Because no farm existed on Seneca land, the initiative helped fund the establishment of Gakwi:yo:h Farms, whose name means “good food” in Seneca, and whose mission is to increase the Nation’s food security and food sovereignty by promoting traditional agricultural practices and engaging with the community through food.

The founding of their farm started from the ground up, an entirely Indigenous enterprise focused from the start on everything from creating to branding, marketing, and packaging its own goods. Training new growers is also an important goal for Gakwi:yo:h Farms.

From left: LeRoy Henhawk, Michael Snyder, and Allen Gage stand together in supporting the Seneca Nation’s food sovereignty efforts at Gakwi:yo:h Farms. (Photo courtesy of Seneca Media & Communications Center)

“We want to provide a resource to grow—and we’re not only growing produce, we’re growing farmers,” Snyder said.

In 2018, he and his team began planting traditional white corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and other crops across the 54-acre central farm hub in Cattaraugus. It was the start of their efforts to expand their acreage, increase the number and types of foods they produce, and find new ways to get that food to people who need it.

When the pandemic hit, the Nation shut down its casinos, closed their communities to outside visitors, and issued a stay-at-home order on their reservation in New York State. Nevertheless, it continued to prioritize food production—and despite the public health crisis—it has managed to increase the size and reach of Gakwi:yo:h Farms.

With the help of the Nation’s Council, the farm has gained access to unused land both on and off the reservation—and has expanded the cultivation of Indigenous crops and the raising of culturally significant animals.

“Food sovereignty is still sovereignty.”

On the 410 new acres that have come into the Nation’s possession since March, the Seneca are now raising Red Angus cattle for meat, establishing a bison herd to be hunted seasonally, and tapping more trees for maple syrup. They are also in the process of opening a new cannery that will enable those who reside on the reservation to process and store produce while also finding innovative ways to distribute food to people in need.

Together, these efforts are reducing the Nation’s reliance upon non-Indigenous food systems while also enhancing its own self-determination after what Snyder describes as a long period of disconnect with their land. Now, he adds, the project is shining a new light on the potential of agriculture as a source of self-sufficiency.

“I’m an activist first and a farmer second, but I think a lot of it goes hand in hand. Food sovereignty is still sovereignty,” Snyder said.

Despite the forward progress, however, the Nation still faces challenges in gaining full food sovereignty, including a lack of processing capabilities and funding shortages.

The Lease of a Dairy Farm—and a New Partnership through Maple Syrup

Over the last two years, the new farm has grown parcel by parcel across the split Cattaraugus and Allegany territories that comprise the entire 21,618-acre reservation.

Just before the pandemic started, the Seneca Nation signed a 10-year lease for 25 acres from a multigenerational dairy farm located just 15-minutes away from the Cattaraugus territory in the town of Forestville. Run by the Gage family since 1906, the farm was in the midst of shuttering its business. With the additional land, the Seneca began growing their maple syrup operation.

Maple products have deep meaning for the Seneca, one of the original Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Their creation story includes the invention of maple syrup, a sign that spring has arrived and a time to celebrate.

Before colonial days, the Seneca traded farm goods with other Nations, and maple syrup was a rare and valuable commodity. In recent years, the homemade syrup has been sold out due to high demand at the farm store; they otherwise produce only enough to sell in casino gift shops.

The lease of land between the Senecas and the Gages, which involved only the exchange of two gallons of maple syrup, came about shortly after Allen Gage, 26, joined the staff of Gakwi:yo:h Farms as a livestock handler, becoming the only non-Indigenous farmworker among Snyder’s staff of 15.

Gage was motivated to give them access to his family’s property out of an interest in “helping people grow, because times are kind of rough right now.”

Even though the COVID-19 infection rate is low for the Seneca Nation, the pandemic has reshaped farm life. It has affected their planting and harvesting schedules while also requiring Snyder to close Gakwi:yo:h Farms to the public.

Tending the new syrup lines on Allen Gage’s (left) family farm. (Photo courtesy of Seneca Media & Communications Center)

Still, some residents on the reservation openly opposed the deal, asking why the Seneca Nation was willing to spend their resources investing in non-Indigenous lands. But Snyder said the deal is mutually beneficial. “We’ve been neighbors with all these different communities for a long time, but we’ve never really worked together,” Snyder said.

He wants to build more connections with the local community and show that “we can work peacefully.”

So far, Gage estimates, the Seneca have spent thousands of dollars on improvements to the land and its infrastructure, including new sap-collecting lines to replace a 10- to 15-year-old system. Additionally, they cleared a 100-yard stretch of overgrown pasture and laid millings to construct a culvert in the driveway, allowing them to easily haul loads of syrup off-site.

Beyond the Gage property, the Nation also granted the farm access to 50 acres near the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino to tap even more maple trees.

Gage also hopes the expansion of the Nation’s syrup-making capacities will enable the farm to send bottles of syrup to the casinos and allow an additional portion for trading with other Nations in the future.

Raising Livestock Underscores the Need for Processing Facilities

The Gage family’s farm property is just one of six recent land parcel acquisitions that have expanded Gakwi:yo:h Farms amid the pandemic, amounting to more than 400 acres of new land.

The new land acquisitions have enabled the farm to increase their various livestock operations.

In June, Snyder started grazing 25 new Red Angus beef cows and he has also worked to establish a bison herd, purchasing the animals one by one from local vendors. The Nation started with 14 bison in 2018 and now has 51. Another recently secured land acquisition, Ohi:yo’ at the Sunfish flats, a sprawling 300-acre plot of undeveloped land, will allow the wild animals to roam freely—and eventually to be hunted routinely, but Snyder said he needs to continue to “build the herd up” before they could hunt one each in both territories, every season.

Despite all these upgrades, the Nation still faces a lack of processing facilities for both meat and produce.

Early in 2020, the Nation’s Western Door Steakhouses sought to purchase bison loins from Gakwi:yo:h Farms to put on their menu, but pandemic-related closures left that meat unclaimed. Additional bison died during the move to Sunfish. And because the Seneca had no USDA-certified processing facility, they couldn’t sell any of that meat.

“There’s a real need for more of these local processing plants for meat as well as other kinds of foods.”

Although Gakwi:yo:h Farms are regular customers with four or five local, non-Native butcher shops, the pandemic-fueled slaughterhouse backlog hit them there as well. When he called the shops in September, the soonest Snyder could secure an appointment was in March.

“There’s a real need for more of these local processing plants for meat as well as other kinds of foods,” said Elizabeth Hoover, a Mohawk who is of Mi’kmaq descent, an author, and an associate professor at U.C. Berkeley. For this reason, she added, there has been a growing call across Indian Country for more Indigenous-owned meat processing facilities.

With continued concerns over COVID outbreaks inside cramped meat packaging facilities, Indigenous-owned facilities are “able to keep it right within the community rather than having to ship it out,” Hoover added.

Processing bison for distribution to residents on the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations. (Photo courtesy of Seneca Media & Communications Center)

The Cherokee and Muscogee Creek obtained access to CARES Act funding to build their own meat processing facilities amid the pandemic, but the Seneca continue to process meat for their own consumption on the reservation in the meantime until March, when they can work with a USDA-certified facility to process meats for commercial sale.

The lack of processing capacity is not just for livestock. In the case of white corn, which is central to Seneca culture, “you can’t just eat it off the cob, ” Hoover said.

The Nation currently sends its white corn for preservation through a partnership with the Friends of Ganondagan and Iroquois White Corn Project in Victor, New York. Now they are in the process of developing a commercial cannery on-site at the main farm hub.

Additional Challenges—and Innovations

Because casinos have shut down and gambling revenues have dried up, the Seneca—like many other Nations—are struggling to find the capital to fund their farms and other food initiatives.

“[Casinos] have provided the funding to get some of these farms and food projects going,” Hoover said, “but when they don’t do well, how can you continue to invest in these farms, [which] provide food directly to the community?”

Hoover believes the pandemic should be a wake-up call for Indigenous communities like the Seneca. “You can’t eat money,” she added.

Despite these challenges, the farm has found innovative ways to make the most out of the difficult situation—in many cases, by simply offering fresh, free food to those who reside on the reservation.

Gakwi:yo:h Farms has hosted several food distribution events, where they gave away the 400 pounds of bison mentioned earlier, as well as over 500 pounds of pork, 70 pounds of venison, 25 walleyes, and 900 pounds of potatoes, according to Snyder.

The Seneca Nation also engineered ways to take their products on the road through both territories this summer. LeRoy Henhawk, 43, a Seneca from the Turtle Clan, helped organize the “Renegade Mobile Market” for the farm every Tuesday and Thursday starting in July.

They lost income from missing their regular farmers’ markets, and yet “the profits were still a lot better this year,” Henhawk said. “There were good days, bad days, but definitely there’s a lot more customers than we had in the past year.”

Looking ahead, he’s hoping to purchase a new vehicle—“almost like a grocery store on wheels,” he added.

In the midst of a global pandemic, Henhawk says their farm crew has still done a great job this year. Snyder isn’t the only one from the Seneca Nation noting that the community takes great pride in the fact that the farm is feeding the Nation during difficult times, which didn’t even exist more than two years ago.

“I don’t want people to think we’re vulnerable,” Snyder said. “We are relying on the bigger food system, no doubt, but I think it eases their minds to know that [if] push came to shove, we have all this stuff. We not only survived, but we thrived.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2021/01/14/from-bison-to-syrup-the-seneca-nation-is-making-strides-in-food-sovereignty/feed/ 3 https://civileats.com/2020/11/16/happy-meals-could-get-healthier-under-a-proposed-maryland-law/ Mon, 16 Nov 2020 09:00:53 +0000 http://civileats.com/?p=39050 November 17, 2020 update: The Prince George’s County Council unanimously passed the Healthy Kids Meal Bill in a hearing today. The McDonald’s restaurants dotting Maryland’s Prince George’s County are take-out and drive-thru only, just as they are around the country, as part of national efforts to slow the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus. And although […]

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]]> November 17, 2020 update: The Prince George’s County Council unanimously passed the Healthy Kids Meal Bill in a hearing today.

The McDonald’s restaurants dotting Maryland’s Prince George’s County are take-out and drive-thru only, just as they are around the country, as part of national efforts to slow the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus. And although the Happy Meals are still flying out the doors, an effort underway by the county council could have nationwide implications for what gets included in those boxes.

Tomorrow, the council is holding a public hearing on County Bill 071, dubbed, “The Healthy Kids Meal Bill,” which would set a five-year plan in motion to overhaul the foods that restaurants can serve children in the county. Supporters say the bill, which is widely expected to pass with unanimous support from the 11-member council, will be the nation’s most comprehensive health nutritional children’s meal policy to date.

The bill will start by requiring, over the next two years, that all food retail businesses offer water, milk, or 100 percent juice to accompany every children’s meal as a default beverage option rather than soda, which can still be requested by parents or guardians. Over the next five years, the bill will add requirements for every restaurant to offer at least one healthy side dish and then one healthy main course.

“While I was running for office, I would always hear, ‘We don’t have enough access to healthy options for meals in Prince George’s County,’” Councilmember Sydney J. Harrison, the author of the bill, told Civil Eats.

Prince George County’s bill follows a similar bill passed in Baltimore in July 2018, which was the first of its kind on the East Coast. Today, around 20 cities, counties, and states have passed Healthy Kids’ Meal legislation, but the Prince George’s County bill takes the proposal several steps further.

Shawn McIntosh, the executive director of Sugar Free Kids Maryland, which also supported the Baltimore bill, believes the Prince George’s County bill could set a new national precedent.

“We really believe that this will be a good turning point for healthy children’s meals across the country,” McIntosh said.

Although initiatives like this one have been in the works for years, proposing what the restaurant industry sees as sweeping changes in the midst of the pandemic has led to some pushback.

“Our members are concerned about the timing of the council’s consideration of legislation that would impose more restrictions on food service businesses,” Melvin Thompson, the senior vice president of government affairs and public policy for the Restaurant Association of Maryland (RAM), testified before the county council on October 15. The pandemic has been tough on most businesses and Thompson adds that, “many restaurants are still struggling to keep their businesses afloat.”

The pandemic has not been bad for fast food chains’ businesses, though. “McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Coca Cola have exceeded the profit margins in light of the pandemic,” Harrison said. McDonald’s latest quarterly earnings report shows sales increased by 4.6 percent over last year, and earnings of $5.42 billion during the three months ending in September.

Despite McDonald’s success, not all food retail businesses are benefiting during the pandemic, according to Martin Dresner, a professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

“There’s certainly been winners and losers in the restaurant industry [during] the pandemic; I think a lot of these independent operations are really hurting,” Dresner told Civil Eats.

While some national chains are “doing quite well,” especially those with delivery services in-place, Dresner said local food establishments have been struggling to survive.

At the same time, councilmembers and nutrition advocates alike argue that the pandemic has exacerbated existing health and economic problems in the county, as it has around the country. Prince George’s County continues to lead the state of Maryland with over 35,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases so far, or nearly a fourth of all cases statewide. And with takeout and delivery are the only dining-out options for residents, the council sees this bill as an opportunity to improve the long-term health of county residents.

“I think that the pandemic only highlights the need for more legislation that helps to move communities in a healthier direction and provide more access to healthier options,” said Sara Ribakove, a policy associate at the Center of Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Although Ribakove is careful not to imply that the bill would change the county’s immediate experience of the pandemic, she notes that healthier diets can help “lower susceptibility to [chronic] diseases down the road,” including hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, and heart disease, which are prevalent in this majority-Black community.

Sydney Daigle, director of the Prince George’s County Food Equity Council (PGCFEC), says her own food landscape is “just dominated by fast food restaurants and unhealthy carry-outs.” She also believes that this bill can change consumer behavior for the better.

“I think health is at the forefront of everyone’s mind right now—in the county as it is across the nation. We see now, more than ever before, how important it is to look at policies that will improve the food retail environment for families and kids,” Daigle added.

Federico Asch, who sits on the American Heart Association’s Greater Washington board of directors, explained that research and clinical data supports the fact that high consumption of sugar is linked to increased health risks such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease—all COVID co-morbidities.

“These are habits that start in childhood,” said Asch. Even though “Prince George’s County is taking the lead, it’s not alone,” he added. “These are health issues that affect everyone in America.”

As the bill nears its final vote, representatives from restaurant chains and the state’s restaurant trade association are airing their concerns about the bill. Philip Cronin, regional manager of U.S. government relations at McDonald’s, claimed at the hearing that the current bill would “prevent the sale of Happy Meals” in the county.

Although McDonald’s isn’t taking an official position on the bill, a statement provided to Civil Eats after the hearing proposed amendments to the bill that would “require only a few adjustments to the language as it stands and would not change the intent of the legislation.”

Cronin’s concerns largely focused on the size of McDonald’s operations. He said that making changes to its Prince George’s County menu would have ripple effects along its entire supply chain, which in turn would affect the nation’s food supply.

Photo by Gabriel Pietrorazio

Dresner considers this situation as “the ‘McDonald’s problem,’” in that national chains are not in favor of local mandates that create potential disruptions to their ongoing operations.

“They are national chains, and they have national operations. They like to roll out products [on] at least a regional but [ideally] a national basis; so, if you have individual counties with different mandates, and I think that complicates their supply chain,” Dresner told Civil Eats.

“If we add a whole grain product requirement, we would have a significant impact on the grain supply in the United States,” Cronin said. “I know it seems somewhat far-fetched, but it is the truth, it is the reality.”

Dresner also mentioned that if McDonald’s is required to offer more healthy meal options that end up not being popular, the company could find itself in a bind.

“If they weren’t creative enough to come up with some healthy options that people wanted, they would end up with probably excess inventory,” he added.

While Harrison critiqued Cronin’s supply-chain anecdote as “not necessarily the truth,” he pointed to the situation on the ground as needing real-world action.

“We don’t have the opportunity or liberty to be anecdotal, we have to be factual, and the facts say that Prince George’s County is number one in the state of Maryland for fast food saturation,” Harrison said.

Similarly, Daigle at the Food Equity Council said that McDonald’s and RAM “didn’t come forward earlier in the process and chose to wait,” raising their objections too late to have them addressed.

“[The bill] might mean that [restaurants] have to add additional packets of apples to their Happy Meals, or perhaps fruit juices,” Daigle said. “But it’s not that they can’t offer their current menu. They have to add some additional healthy components—and they have five years to do that.”

One of Cronin’s proposed amendments included offering an additional fruit drink instead of the required half-cup of non-fried fruit or vegetables.

This doesn’t sit well with Ribakove, who noted that the standards proposed in the current bill are in line with federal dietary guidelines and incorporated ideas from industry-backed standards such as the National Restaurant Association’s voluntary Kids LiveWell program. It’s “really important to maintain the requirement for whole fruits and vegetables,”she added.

Even while it’s voicing opposition to the county bill, McDonald’s has set its own goals that, if achieved, would bring Happy Meals in line with Prince George County’s new rules. As part of its Global Happy Meals goals, launched in 2018 to be implemented by the end of 2022, McDonald’s aims for Happy Meals to contain 600 calories, 10 percent of calories from saturated fat, 650 milligrams of sodium, and 10 percent of calories from added sugar—an achievement that would meet or exceed the Prince George’s County requirements by the time the proposed law goes into effect.

Cronin acknowledges that, “when it comes to the overall nutritional requirements, we’re pretty much there,” but added that having entities outside the company “dictating what gets us to that [outcome] can be difficult for us.”

Harrison acknowledged McDonald’s national goals even amidst its efforts to change the bill, saying, “we congratulate you, you’re leading the rest of the restaurant businesses in Prince George’s County.”

Harrison explained that the local effort was not designed to create “a punitive piece of legislation.” Instead he sees it as an opportunity for business growth—one that incentivizes businesses to “be a part of the solution” when it comes to improving health outcomes in the community. Amendments to the bill during the previous hearing removed explicit mentions of fines and enforcement after the five-year implementation process, although Council Chairman Todd Turner mentioned that the county code allows the health department to issue fines for violating the law even if those fines aren’t spelled out in the bill.

The county council plans to schedule a final vote soon after the hearing. As Harrison awaits the outcome, he hopes his county can spark change across communities nationwide.

“Hopefully, Prince George’s County can lead the nation in a way to show that we are focused, we are committed, we are dedicated to creating ‘Health in All’ policies and living well,” he said.

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