Tribes Face Food Shortages As USDA Distribution Program Stalls; Congress Steps In

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized this week to tribes and low-income elderly for the recent failure of USDA food delivery programs many of them rely on. The apology came at a joint committee hearing where two prominent Oklahoma tribal members helped detail the problems they've been dealing with.

The program in question is the USDA’s Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), which has been helping tribes supply nutritious foods to their members since 1977. But since April, many of the participating tribes have experienced significant food shortages.

“The problem has been very serious,” said Marty Wafford, Under Secretary of Support and Programs for the Chickasaw Nation Department of Health. “We've experienced delays in shipments and semi-bare shelves.”

Wafford testified on a panel with other tribal leaders and provided members of Congress with some specific examples of the delays and shortfalls.

“The Ada FDP store received a portion of an order on July 12th, nearly a month behind,” Wafford explained. “The partial order contained products with a 'best by' date of July 12th.”

Accord to Wafford, FDPIR serves about 2,500 Chickasaw Nation members through five tribal grocery stores. And she says, until the USDA switched from two companies handling the food deliveries to one, in April of this year, it generally worked well.

“But we've had some hiccups, we've had some hiccups,” she stated in an interview after the hearing, “and we need to get them fixed — we need to be able to feed our people.”

Congressman Tom Cole, an enrolled Chickasaw himself, is helping lead a bipartisan effort to correct the problem, by holding USDA leaders to account, especially, Cole says, for failing to heed warnings from the Chickasaw and tribes across the country that the new distribution system wouldn’t work.

“It's more than a mistake, it's gross negligence,” Rep. Cole (R-OK4) said at the hearing. “Tribal consultation is not only a requirement, but a duty of the agency and should be taken seriously.”

Both Cole and Wafford say the program is not an option, but rather is part of the United States government’s trust and treaty obligation to the tribes.

“The situation that we're in 100% does not fulfill the trust responsibility, however, we are gracious and we're hopeful that, after today, that we can come to some really fast resolutions.”