In the final piece of The Farm Bill Fight, a series by FERN and Mother Jones on the changing nature of America’s most important agricultural law, Bridget Huber makes the case for expanding a pilot program that gives Native Americans more control over their food supply.
“For years, the Oneida Nation has been growing food and raising cattle and buffalo on its 65,000-acre reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Now, some of that food is doing more than nourishing people: It’s helping undo centuries of government overreach. As part of a pilot program included in the 2018 farm bill,” Huber writes, “the tribe is using federal dollars to buy food grown on the reservation and by other nearby Native producers and distributing it for free to low-income members of its tribe and another, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.”