The US Department of Agriculture has established partnerships for a new, interagency pilot project aimed at offering more localized ground bison meat for tribal communities through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations.
The program will look at changes to how USDA purchases bison to better support buying the meat from local, small, and mid-sized bison herd managers and delivering it directly to their local tribal communities.
The announcement (Oct. 12, 2023) was made by several members of USDA’s staff who met with leaders from the three tribal nations participating in the pilot– the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe– their herd managers and local producer Dakota Pure Bison.
Last month (Sept. 18, 2023), USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service awarded bison contracts to four tribal and local producers to test the flexibilities outlined in the program. Contracts were awarded to:
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Akicita Consulting (owned by the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe)
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Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Buffalo Authority Corporation (owned by the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation)
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Brownotter Buffalo Ranch (operating on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation)
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Dakota Pure Bison (operating on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation)
USDA Director of Tribal Relations Heather Dawn Thompson says their nation-to-nation relationship with tribes enriches how USDA does business for Indian Country and for all of rural America. She says this pilot program is an important step to use government procurement flexibly for the benefit of tribal and smaller producers and their surrounding communities.
Tribal leaders indicated that USDA purchase specifications do not align with how tribal and other small- and mid-sized producers operate. This pilot responds to feedback from across Indian Country and from small producers by aligning purchase timeframes with indigenous informed principles of infrequent animal handling, traditional field harvests following a nature-based purchasing calendar and allowing either USDA or state inspection. This pilot will also explore smaller packaging and purchase orders to meet small- and mid-sized enterprises at scale and exclusively target Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone) purchase preferences benefiting economically distressed areas, of which all tribal reservations qualify. All producers announced through this pilot operate on tribal lands.
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says the local purchases will reduce the time and distance the meat travels to the consumer, increase economic development market opportunities for tribal and local bison operations and provide high quality, nutritious foods for nutrition assistance programs.
The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations is administered by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service and provides nutritious domestic USDA Foods purchased by the Agricultural Marketing Service along with administrative funding to participating tribes and state agencies. These foods are then distributed to FDPIR participants, which include income-eligible households on Indian reservations or Native American households residing in designated areas near reservations or in Oklahoma, to help fight food and nutrition insecurity.
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