Issues in Indian Agriculture
Agriculture has been a part of the Native American way of life throughout history. Activities they conducted and still carry out include hunting, fishing and gathering. Agriculture allowed Native Americans to stay in locations to grow crops for consumption and other needs. In modem times, Native Americans use their lands and natural resources to provide staples and other foods for consumption as well as to improve their economic self-sufficiency, agriculture income and reservation employment, through agriculture and agribusiness.
Reservation-based Indians tend to be the most rural of any minority group - - geographically isolated, resource-limited, and the least likely of any farm group to receive payments or loans from the United States Government (USG). Indian lands represent some 55 million acres, with nearly 47 million acres made up of range and crop land. Despite such large land holdings, many reservations are checkerboarded or fractionated in their ownership, often preventing productive use of the lands.
In addition to a huge land base, the agricultural sector constitutes the second largest revenue generator and employer to Indian country. According to the U.S. Census, some 70 percent of Indian agriculture production comes from livestock operations. The Indian agricultural sector could conceivably include any number of products including forestry, fishing, bison, wild rice and fruits, cotton, tobacco and other Native-made or grown products.
With federal expenditures for Indians still lagging far behind non-Indian America, and with an employment-based welfare reform system looming on the horizon, it is natural that the Indian agricultural sector is a candidate for tribal and federal focus in terms of improving access to existing federal agricultural, raising farm and lease income, increasing employment, strengthening subsistence agriculture and fishing, promoting Native-made agriculture products and encouraging economic self-sufficiency for Native Americans.
Though many tribes have abundant natural resources to work with, individual operators and farming tribes are in need of capital, more efficient administration of existing federal programs, specialty markets and export promotion, and marketing assistance that non-Indian agriculture producers in the country have access to. Recently passed legislation such as the Indian Agricultural Resources Management Act of 1993, a more coordinated federal apparatus, and future work of the Administration and Congress can help to improve the condition of Indian agriculture, and improve the lives of Native Americans nationwide.
Greg Smitman, Executive Director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council (IAC), is a Navy veteran, he also has Bachelor's and Master's of Science degrees in Range and Forest Management from Washington State University, and has been working in Indian Country all of his professional life.
Greg started out as a Range Conservationist on the Fort Belknap Reservation, and was quickly promoted to Natural Resource Officer for BIA. In this position he administered and supervised over 50 employees from six major BIA branches, including Forest Management, Irrigation Project Management, Range Management, Real Estate Appraisals, Real Estate Services and Soil Conservation. Greg was selected for the Interior Department's Executive Manager Development Program and promoted to the Billings Area Office of the BIA, where he held the position of Special Projects Coordinator. While in this position he was instrumental in creating the National Indian Agriculture Working Group, from which the IAC was founded.