California Tribes Face Uncertain Future as USDA Food Assistance Program Ends

Every Monday, Norma McAdams comes to the K’ima:w Medical Center on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in northeastern Humboldt County and leaves with a box of fresh produce. Lately, she’s been experimenting with new recipes.

“I love yellow squash and zucchini with a little onion and make pasta out of the zucchini to cut back on the carbs,” said McAdams, a Hoopa Valley tribal member.

McAdams, 74, used to grow her own fruit and vegetables in a small backyard garden, but an osteoporosis diagnosis and a back injury have made gardening difficult in recent years. As she gets older, she said, eating healthy, locally grown food is more important than ever.

“Your immune system is susceptible to whatever you’re eating — is what you’re becoming — so it’s really important,” she said.

McAdams is one of 180 Hoopa Valley seniors who receives local produce, eggs and beef purchased through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Purchase Assistance program, known as LFPA.

The program launched in late 2021 under former President Joe Biden. It has since provided $88.5 million to California food banks and tribal governments — more than any other state — to purchase food from “local and socially disadvantaged” farmers. The program aims to strengthen local food systems weakened by the pandemic, especially in rural areas like the Hoopa Valley, where nearly 30% of residents live in poverty, according to U.S. Census data.

In 2015, the Hoopa Valley was classified as a food desert after its only grocery store closed.

“It just helps augment our costs for food,” McAdams said. “So it’s very nutritious and helpful.”

In March, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the program, leaving tribes and food banks in California scrambling. Even money that had already been promised for reimbursements through 2025 was included in the cuts.

“There were more than 500 farms that we had to notify: ‘Hey, we’re really sorry, we think this program could be frozen or ending,’” said Stacia Levenfeld, the chief executive officer of the California Association of Food Banks. “That’s a hard thing to talk to a farmer about who has food in the ground.”

A week later, the USDA backtracked, restoring already allocated funds but still canceling future program funding. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins justified the cuts as “COVID-era funds” that had not been spent yet. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Allie Hostler, a tribal member and the Klamath Trinity Resource Conservation District coordinator, runs LFPA for the tribe. She said the tribe has so far spent $105,000 of the $727,000 they were approved for reimbursement. Any funds not claimed by the end of the year will expire.

Hostler said the tribe sends food purchased through LFPA to the senior center first, reflecting a cultural priority of caring for their elders. The remaining food is then made available to the broader community, both tribal and nontribal.

“I think seniors are prone to living thrifty and pinching pennies. Many are on fixed incomes,” Hostler said. “Having access to food through this program sort of guarantees they’ll have locally produced healthy foods in their refrigerators and on their kitchen tables. Without that, I’m not sure how many will continue to buy healthy.”

The cancellation doesn’t just hurt Hoopa Valley’s seniors. Hostler said the grant also meant reliable markets for local farmers and ranchers, as well as an opportunity to expand their operations.

“For our local farmers, it meant market stability,” she said. “It meant being able to sell every tomato that you grow.”

Even before the pandemic, the Hoopa Valley tribe was acutely aware of the dangers of being too reliant on outside food sources. The reservation spans nearly 90,000 acres of dense forests and mountains, bisected by the Trinity River in Northern California’s Humboldt County.

“We’re geographically isolated from larger highway systems where food comes and goes,” Hostler said, adding that the only place to buy food on the reservation for three years after the grocery store closed was the tribe’s gas station.

“One of the more healthier items you could get there is like a Lunchable, for example, or an orange juice,” she said. “But as far as food you can use to prepare a scratch-cooked meal was largely unavailable.”

Alternatively, McAdams said many people would drive to the Costco in Eureka, an hour and a half away on winding roads.

“It’s over a really rough road where you have to stop like five or six times,” McAdams said. “It’s not easy, especially if you’re disabled.”

The limited access to high-quality foods contributes to poor health conditions among Native Americans. Data from the Indian Health Service shows that American Indians and Alaska Natives face higher rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and die much younger than other populations.

Today, the reservation has one tribally owned grocery store, but much of the food is still trucked in from Central Valley farms. Hostler said about half of the Trinity River’s water is diverted to those farms, mostly for agricultural purposes.

“When our water leaves this water system and fish die and the ecosystem suffers, it ships south to make cheap food, and then the food comes back up here in a truck,” Hostler said. “We’re paying for that food twice. We’re paying with our water, with our salmon and with our resources. And then we turn around and we pay money for it.”

The food assistance program encouraged local farmers and ranchers to scale up, knowing they’d have a guaranteed buyer. Hostler said she had hoped the program would bolster the local supply chain enough to eventually supply the grocery store itself.

“I loved this program because it strengthens our local food system here, where we can grow our food with our resources, with our own people, on our own land and feed our community,” Hostler said. “To me, that is a functioning food system.”

Stephanie McKindley is one of those local farmers. Her four-acre farm is lined with rows of peach trees. For more than a decade, she has sold the peaches with her father and daughter at a stand in front of the town’s burger joint.

“People don’t have a lot of money here, so we just kind of work with what people have, and we basically just give them away,” she said.

But starting last year, she was able to sell the peaches to the senior center through the LFPA program instead.

“This was the first year that we actually got market value,” McKindley said.

As a result, McKindley and her sister decided to scale up their garden, growing corn, squash, tomatoes, pumpkins, herbs and cherries. She even hopes to dry seaweed for the senior program. Without the LFPA program next year, McKindley worries about the investments they’ve already put into their farm.

“There is a cost. There’s a lot of labor, seeds,” she said.

When the program ends in November, Hostler hopes to secure alternative markets, like the local school district, for farmers like McKindley. But seniors like McAdams might lose access to high-quality, healthy foods.

In a letter to Rollins in March, a dozen tribal associations urged the USDA to reconsider the cuts, reminding Rollins about the United States’ federal treaty obligations to tribes in exchange for taking their land.

“Tribal programs and funding are provided on the basis of our unique political status and are legally required by trust and treaty obligations and the many statutes that implement those obligations,” the letter said.

Hostler doesn’t see the termination of LFPA specifically as a violation of the federal government’s legal obligation. But she worries the U.S. won’t honor its promise to provide certain basic services in return for taking their land. Today, the Hoopa Valley tribe occupies an area that is a third of their aboriginal territory.

“We don’t wanna stand at the federal government’s door with our hand out,” Hostler said. “I want to rely on ourselves. I want to rely on our land. I want to see restoration of our lands, of our river, of our fishery. That’s what federal obligations to the Hoopa people looks like to me.”

Seniors like McAdams could feel the cuts as early as next year. Without the program, McAdams said she and other elders will have to lean more on the younger generation. She hopes the tribe will be able to encourage their youth to care about food sustainability and teach them to garden, make jams and can fish like their ancestors have done for generations.

“It’s a little bit scary, but we’re hopeful,” McAdams said. “We’re really a community that helps take care of each other.”