The only federally recognized Tribe in Alabama, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, requests $864,186 for the Tribal Food Security Program to expand upon the Tribe’s successful Community Garden, Farmers’ Market, and Food Distribution programs. At least twice each month, the Tribe will host a community distribution of free fresh and minimally processed food to Indian and non-Indian people. Foods will be purchased with grant funds under simple grow agreements with socially disadvantaged and other farmers/producers within a 400-mile radius of the Tribe’s reservation in Atmore, AL.
Grant funds will allow the Tribe to continue establishing its own unique, independent Food Security Program for purchasing food to help feed the community. The Tribe acknowledges that Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) funds are only for food procurement. Program deliverables are to further establish and strengthen the Tribe’s permanent Food Security Program with a priority focus on networking with socially disadvantaged producers and exponentially expanding the Tribe’s existing local food capacity.
Intended beneficiaries are: Food recipients, who will receive free fresh and minimally processed nutritious foods two or more times each month; food producers, who will gain income and build their food production capacity; farm supply and farm implement partners working with producers; coordinated distribution sites of Tribal, County, State, Regional and local partnerships; and the Tribe, as it continues to strengthen the local food supply chain and build a permanent Food Security Program on the reservation.
Outcomes of this project will be establishment of a permanent Food Security program on the reservation; distribution of fresh or minimally processed local food from and to rural, underserved, disadvantaged people; recruitment and retention of existing local food producers; and encouragement of new and beginning socially and economically disadvantaged farm producers.