House, Senate bills set aside 10% of new program funding for tribes
At Ashawaug Farm in southwest Rhode Island, Dawn and Cassius Spears preserve Indigenous knowledge of agriculture through the cultivation of three Narragansett heritage crops: white corn, succotash beans and crookneck squash. The Spears would like to expand their farm’s reach beyond their farm stand, but they face challenges.
Like many small food producers, the Spears sought financial assistance through federal programs. Some have been cut or significantly scaled back under the Trump administration, including U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that helped tribal farmers. Tribes relied on those programs to grow and distribute culturally-significant foods locally.
“When we go into these federal programs, we’re hoping that they’ll last long enough,” Cassius Spears told the Associated Press. “They usually start out with a good song and dance. And they’re going to last a long time. And then something happens where they get cut.”
The Biden administration started two programs during the pandemic to help states and tribes purchase local food from nearby farmers for food banks and schools: the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS). The Spears’ farm provided food for a tribal farm in nearby Connecticut that used LFPA funds, after an agreement was signed in August 2022.
Carly Griffith Hotvedt, executive director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative and a member of Cherokee Nation, said the LFPA program allowed tribes to get federal dollars directly to small-scale producers. In some instances, tribes used those dollars to source culturally significant foods for tribal members such as bison meat, certain types of berries and wild rice that were included as part of a food box distribution.
The Farm Bill negotiations now underway in Congress could provide a permanent solution. The House passed its version of the bill in April, and a Senate committee released its draft in late June. The House version includes a bipartisan proposal for a permanent program modeled after the LFPA program. It would allow states, through the USDA, to establish cooperative agreements connecting local farmers and producers with local food distribution organizations. Both proposals would set aside 10% of the program’s funding for tribes.
The Spears and other tribal producers are watching the Farm Bill process closely, hoping that the temporary programs they relied on will become a permanent fixture — and that the funding will last.