"A broken promise to Indian Country": Tribal leaders call on USDA to address major food shortages

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made a seemingly straightforward logistical shift to the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), which provides USDA foods to income-eligible households living on reservations or in designated tribal areas, offering a vital lifeline to communities often underserved by other federal nutrition programs.

During a February Tribal consultation, USDA officials announced plans to consolidate the program’s two national distribution warehouses into one, touting the shift as a cost-saving measure. But meeting minutes reveal Tribal leaders voiced concerns early on, warning that the consolidation would exacerbate goods shortages already affecting their communities, while flagging that “there was not sufficient time to make the transition” by the USDA’s goal date of April 1.

Months later, the situation has continued to deteriorate as the food shortages have further deepened — prompting Tribal leaders and lawmakers alike to urge the USDA to find a swift solution to the growing crisis.

According to the USDA, the FDPIR serves as an alternative to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), particularly in areas where access to SNAP offices or authorized retailers is limited. It also connects clients with culturally relevant foods, such as bison, wild rice and blue cornmeal, alongside standard USDA commodities

Administered federally by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), a division of the USDA, the program is managed locally by Indian Tribal Organizations (ITOs) or state agencies.

The USDA procures and delivers food to these local agencies, which handle storage, distribution, eligibility assessments and nutrition education. The USDA also provides funding to cover administrative costs for these operations.

Currently, around 276 tribes benefit from FDPIR through 102 ITOs and three state agencies.

According to Carly Griffith Hotvedt, the interim executive director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, the program serves some of the most vulnerable populations across the United States, with “around 30% of served households in Indian Country including children under 18.”

“Another 42% of those households have elders over the age of 60,” Griffith Hotvedt said in a written statement from the organization. “Children are our future, and elders are knowledge keepers of our Tribes. These groups are critically important to us and should not be expected to endure or go without.”

However, many ITOs have spent months reporting major food delays — if the shipments even arrive at all.

“Tribes and FDPIR program staff are facing food shortages and unknown wait times [to] get food orders filled,” said Mary Greene Trottier, President of the National Association for Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations (NAFDPIR), said earlier this summer. “Programs like ours at Spirit Lake Nation have been told mid-July should be when normal deliveries resume, but currently some Tribes haven’t heard from the delivery vendor in days. It is difficult to distribute foods on the reservation if you can’t tell your Tribal warehouse staff when the delivery truck will be there.”

Even when packages have arrived from the USDA’s new distribution center, which is operated by the Missouri-based contractor Paris Brothers, some are missing key items.

Cumulatively, the chaos that has erupted from not knowing when shipments will arrive, or what they will contain, has led to frustrations from both FDPIR staff and clients (for instance, in speaking with “Tribal Business News” in July, Greene Trottier said one tribal FDPIR office reported having to “share pictures of empty shelves on social media” to prove they had no food to distribute).

“There's people going without food, people who don't receive the benefits they're entitled for that month,” Greene Trottier told the publication. “It's reaching every warehouse in Indian Country that distributes FDPIR food.”

This summer, ITO workers began hosting regular calls — some report daily, others weekly — with the USDA to try to address the shortage, but it’s slow work. In the meantime, many community members began relying on food pantries to supplement their diets as Feeding America announced their network of food banks was connecting with Native and Tribal reservations in their service area “to identify the impact that the disruption has had in these communities and how they can assist, especially for Tribes most affected.”

“Food banks across the country are on alert to reach out to their tribal partners for collaborative support,” Mark Ford, Director of Native and Tribal Partnerships for Feeding America, said in a statement. “We also welcome anyone interested in assisting to please reach out to their local Indian Tribal organization or their local food bank with offers of support, which may include volunteering with food distributions or through financial contributions so those impacted can get the food they need until this disruption has been resolved.”

On Aug. 23, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley led a bipartisan group of senators — which included Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), John Hoeven (R-ND), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Tina Smith (D-MN) — to send an open letter to the USDA, urging the agency to “take immediate action to rectify mounting delays with the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations.”

It read, in part:

In March 2024, USDA consolidated the food delivery contractors to one sole-source contractor, Paris Brothers, Inc. in Kansas City, MO. Since that change went into effect on April 1, 2024, participating Indian Tribal Organizations (ITOs) began to experience ‘[s]poradic deliveries, or incorrect orders and compromised best if used by dates.’ Participating households have not had consistent food deliveries for over four months. This is unacceptable,” the senators wrote.

“We appreciate that USDA is hosting weekly calls with impacted ITOs, but delays persist and there is no timeline to resolve this issue and fully restore on-time food deliveries. Tribal leadership, low-income families, and the community-at-large have been diligently working to fill the gap; however, USDA must take immediate action to restore full operation of the FDPIR program and end the uncertainty looming over countless families,” the senators implored. “We urge the USDA to engage in emergency tribal consultation and restore food deliveries and operation of the FDPIR program. USDA must promptly establish plans to prevent a situation like this from occurring in the future.

In response, leadership at the USDA announced they are “taking a number of steps to address the delays in the short term” while also developing a permanent plan that ensures a steady and reliable distribution schedule. On a web page updated on Sept. 10, the agency wrote the “USDA recognizes this is a significant disruption that has left locations without acceptable inventories of necessary food items.”

Their current short-term solutions include: allocating at least $11 million to FDPIR and up to $36 million to CSFP agencies to purchase domestic foods; temporarily expanding the USDA DoD Fresh program to supply additional meats, grains, and dairy; activating the Emergency Feeding Network to distribute food through local partners; and leveraging the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program (LFPA) to allow tribal and state governments to buy regional foods and meet immediate needs.

However, Tribal leaders and food security advocates say this sustained disruption has damaged community trust in significant ways.

“From the federal or distributor perspective, this may just appear like a normal logistical challenge that is part of doing business,” Greene Trottier said in a written statement. “However, for our Tribal communities, this is often viewed as another instance of a broken promise to Indian Country. Front line ITO staff in our communities ultimately deal with the fallout of the inconsistencies in the food package.”

She continued: “No amount of hard work can correct a lack of food, though.”