I wrote for the Anchorage Daily News about how federal funds helped fuel tribal agriculture’s growth, and how now they’re now in question.
Here’s how the story begins: On a plot carved into a forest of white spruce and aspen near Glennallen, Lakota McRoberts strolled through a collection of raised garden beds earlier this summer, calculating how many neighbors she might feed.
“I’d like it to be probably three times the size,” she said. “But last year we were able, in August, to feed 148 families, which is like 258 individuals, to give them a pretty decent basket.”
McRoberts, 25, who also works for the food bank at the Copper River Native Association, is part of the newest generation of a tribal gardening movement that’s grown quickly in recent years, driven by compounding concerns about food security in mostly Indigenous communities at the northernmost end of America’s grocery supply line.
Farming advocates in Alaska say shipped-in food has always been expensive, but the supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the fragile nature of stocking village groceries. Meanwhile, climate change has upended subsistence salmon fishing, derailed hunting and even left berry patches barren, making wild food harder to harvest. Volatile global economics, the threat of tariffs and shrinking support for government food assistance further heighten concerns. All of that, plus a post-pandemic bump in government funding for small agriculture projects, has stoked community food-growing projects from Metlakatla to Tyonek to the Yukon River to Kiana to St. Paul Island.
For McRoberts, who grew up in Glennallen, the community’s hunger feels urgent. Read on.