Tribal food assistance program in shambles after USDA warehouse consolidation

This August a food program for Spirit Lake Nation in northeastern North Dakota had to send people home without block cheese and pork. Soon the center will be without dozens of items, and they don’t know when the shortages will end.

Since May, many enrolled in the Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) and senior commodity food programs have faced such shortages. Delayed, incomplete or missing deliveries increased after the U.S. Department of Agriculture switched to a single distribution and warehouse provider for all organizations providing food through the programs.

The USDA acknowledged the delays in a statement on Aug. 12, stating that the agency “recognizes this is a significant disruption that has left locations without acceptable inventories of necessary food items.”

The agency announced it would offer $11 million in cash assistance to help address food shortages caused by the agency’s decision to consolidate the supply chain. The funding amount for providers will depend on the number of clients they serve and their level of food needs, according to a USDA spokesperson.

More than 50,000 people rely on the federal program for food each month, an alternative to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which can be hard to access in tribal jurisdictions.

“These are our families that we feed and the not knowing, the lack of communication, the lack of solution [is] unbearable,” said Mary Greene-Trottier, director of the Spirit Lake Nation Food Distribution Program. She said she hopes the USDA funding alleviates short-term needs, but is still concerned about ongoing disruption of deliveries.

In April, when the distribution system transitioned solely to the Missouri-based contractor Paris Brothers, it lacked staff and infrastructure to adequately communicate and coordinate orders.

Throughout the months of May, June and July, program directors could not obtain confirmation that their monthly orders had been received, even after persistent follow-up, they reported.

Many shipments arrived incomplete or weeks after scheduled delivery dates, with little to no communication about delays, they said. Paris Brothers has not responded to requests for comment.

“Our people cannot go without food”

The Omaha Nation Food Distribution Program in Nebraska gets a truck on the first Thursday of every month with frozen meats, canned goods, pasta and cheese.

In April, they received an email from USDA suggesting that they would not be able to place orders for the month of May while the vendor established the centralized warehouse system.

Marisa Fuller, director of the Omaha Nation Food Distribution Program, said, “we cannot go a whole month without food…our people cannot go without food.”

More than 25 percent of Native American households face food insecurity.

“These are our families that we feed.”

Mary Greene Trottier, director of the Spirit Lake Nation Food Distribution Program

“FDPIR is a vital program because we’ve had participants that this is their only food source,” Fuller said.

In February, USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service announced that the warehouses supplying the FDPIR and Commodity Supplemental Foods Program, for those 60 years and older, would be consolidated and served by a single distribution provider, Paris Brothers.

In February, tribal leaders expressed concern about the switch and questioned whether a phased-in, gradual transition would be feasible.

Fuller said that instead, during the call, officials “assured us that everything was going to be okay, there was going to be no disruption.”

For tribal leaders, “The potential for a disruption like this was very much on everyone’s radar,” said Carly Griffith Hotvedt, interim executive director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, an advocacy group.

Spirit Lake Nation’s food program gets deliveries every other week from the national supplier and a weekly produce delivery with fresh eggs. In mid-August they were about to run out of beans, juices, frozen fruits, canned soups and noodles.

At the start of August, Hotvedt Griffith said deliveries increased, but haven’t made up for the significant backlog. A USDA spokesperson said they are prioritizing sites with the least food.

The Commodity Supplemental Foods Program, which supplies food for 725,000 lower-income seniors, has also experienced some disruptions because of the warehouse consolidation. The Bismarck chapter of the Great Plains Food Bank had a weeklong delivery delay in July, Chief Operating Officer Kate Molbert said.

“There’s people that have been on this program longer than I’ve been alive, and that’s something I don’t think [USDA] really grasped.”

Marisa Fuller, director of the Omaha Nation Food Distribution Program

The state of North Dakota and Feeding America alerted the Great Plains Food Bank in June that nutrition assistance programs may be facing delays. Molbert said the organization has remained in communication with local tribal partners to see if there were resources it could provide.

Advocates want to “make sure this never happens again”

The Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative works closely with a coalition of FDPIR programs. In May, when they began hearing of delays, the organization started identifying the most at-risk programs and asking how they could help. The organization connected some groups with Feeding America, a national non-profit food bank program.

Some distribution programs discussed sending their own trucks to retrieve supplies or using tribal funds that could be reimbursed later, Greene-Trottier said.

Some tribal members unenrolled from FDPIR and signed up for SNAP benefits, despite the challenges of accessing the program.

One option floated was activating the Emergency Food Assistance Program, another USDA program. But state agencies would need to declare a disaster to access those.

“We recognize the impact these delays are having on the daily lives of FDPIR and CSFP participants, including their families and communities, and we are deeply committed to finding solutions for the immediate term while addressing underlying issues,” stated a USDA spokesperson in an email.

Griffith Hotvedt emphasized that programs like FDPIR serve the most vulnerable populations, including children and elders.

Tribal leaders want to see consistent communication from USDA. The Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative is exploring policy changes to prevent this in the future.

“We’ve built a good rapport with our participants and our community, even our non-native folks that we serve, they’re very understanding of what’s taking place,” Fuller said.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.