This Pilot Program Is Supporting Tribal Food Sovereignty with Federal Dollars

Indigenous communities are combining traditional knowledge and new technology to improve food production for its people. For example, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma partners with the startup Symbiotic Aquaponic that uses fish and plants in water to grow traditional foods like corn, pole beans, and squash. It can be expensive to get started, but the system uses less water than industrial agriculture and provides key nutrition for members of the tribe.

Sam Schimmel, a college student and member of the Siberian Yupik and Kenaitze tribes, helped organize a food drive on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. The initiative, known as Operation Fish Drop — delivered more than 12,000 pounds of salmon to 400 families. It Brought together tribal councils, local fisheries, and volunteers to help address food security in Alaska Native communities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Home-Grown School Feeding Program provides one square meal a day to students in public primary schools in an effort to combat poor school attendance and malnutrition, feeding thousands of students each day. In addition to improving the economic conditions for farmers and food vendors, as well as rates of malnutrition, the program has led to a 35.6% increase in school enrollment.

The Quapaw tribe runs the Downstream Casino Resort in Oklahoma where they combine Indigenous food and farming knowledge with modern hotel operations. They have seven greenhouses and two gardens with 20 varieties of vegetables and herbs that cultivate about 6,000 pounds of food per year for the hotel and casino. They also have their own meat packing and processing plant, coffee roasting program, brewery, and farmers market. By creating a system of locally sourced and sustainably raised food, the Quapaw are reclaiming their land and food sovereignty.

The ability of community gardens to supply healthy food to those who might not have their basic needs met has grown in importance as coronavirus continues to spread across the United States. For example, the New Roots community gardening initiative in Salt Lake City helps nearly 150 refugee families raise food on plots, and about 86 percent of the gardeners report saving an average of $30 a week by growing their own food. However, the future of this program, and others around the country in New York City, Seattle, and Minneapolis, are uncertain as they face budget cuts from cities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leftover food from publicly-funded school meals is not simply an issue of wasted tax dollars and environmental concern, it is a detrimental misallocation of much needed food for many students who still go hungry in schools across the country each day. The Share Tables program is helping to more equitably distribute food by providing a space where unopened items from one student's lunch may be deposited on a designated table (or tub, or shelf) for hungry peers to take - not only reducing food waste and child hunger, but helping students develop empathy and healthier eating habits.

Wholesome Wave works to end food and nutrition insecurity with its Produce Prescription Program food pharmacy, which offers people with diet-related illnesses prescriptions for healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables. Food pharmacies are collaborations between healthcare organizations and medical professionals that use food as medicine, highlighting the importance of a well-rounded diet to prevent disease.

The National Home Grown School Feeding program provides food to schoolchildren to support their health and education while simultaneously supporting local cooks and farmers. During its operation, the program reached millions of students across 3o states and led to a 20% increase in primary school enrollment.

The CalFresh Fruit and Vegetable EBT Pilot Program rewards healthy shopping choices with a dollar-for-dollar instant rebate at participating grocery stores. 74,000 people in 44 of California’s 58 counties benefit from the program.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress and the Department of Agriculture changed the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) to make the program more accessible. Innovations included allowing virtual appointments and increased funding for fruit and vegetable vouchers, among other changes. These changes led to significant program growth, estimating 6.6 million WIC participants in 2023.