Indigenous Farmers Hope Their Knowledge of Regenerative Practices Can Influence Others

Tribes in the Midwest and Great Plains are embracing and sharing traditional agricultural knowledge with both Native and nonnative farmers to improve the soil and water for everyone.

On a recent summer day, Timothy Rhodd fearlessly opened the lid on a box of bees and pointed out the hive's complicated systems.

“It’s pretty cool once you start learning what these insects do for the whole world. And they’re dying and it’s agriculture that’s causing it," said Rhodd, the chairman of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.

Not only do the bees produce honey that is sold, but the tribe’s agricultural operation, Ioway Farms, also uses the bees to pollinate its orchard. It’s all part of the work the tribal nation is doing to better farm the land. Rhodd said just a few years ago they used the same row cropping practices as the rest of the Midwest.

“What folks didn't see was the financials of our operation. We were spiraling downwards,” Rhodd said. “Financially we weren't a profitable farming operation, and it's due to the mindsets that's been instilled in us.”

The tribe decided to stop “chasing yields” and start implementing practices that are better for the soil, such as prescribed burns and cover crops that keep the ground planted all year round. According to Rhodd, the farmers now consider the soil to be the “livestock” of the operation — just as important as the plants that are grown out of it.

Sharing traditional farming knowledge

Now the tribe hopes to share what it has learned with other tribes and farmers in the region. The Iowa Tribe is working on a new project funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, to create the Center for Excellence for Regenerative Native Agriculture (CERNA). Through the center, it will share traditional knowledge and regenerative practices to farmers, Native and nonnative, and help them transition from conventional agriculture to Native regenerative agriculture, while also providing technical and financial assistance.

“The Iowa Tribe people were known as agricultural people. They were known as farmers,” said Rhodd. “And so through this we're getting to reeducate and say that regenerative agriculture is Indigenous agriculture, that it is from an Indigenous mindset.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is making it a priority to support these Indigenous efforts to improve farming practices, according to Josiah Griffin, the policy advisor for economic development and food systems at the USDA’s Office of Tribal Relations. He said the USDA has a “trust and treaty” responsibility to make sure that it is working flexibly with tribes to give them access to USDA programs.

“The partnership with the Iowa Tribe is really kind of the pinnacle or a significant spotlight in our examples of how we're moving forward in a productive and proactive way in partnership with tribes,” Griffin said.

He added that Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge plays an important role in helping the Biden-Harris administration reach the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.


Source: kcur.org

Photo Credit: GettyImages-Sasiistock