Reservation Gardeners
Earn First Profits at Fledgling Market
Residents of the Rosebud Lakota Reservation
in south-central South Dakota, facing more
hurdles than most growers, nonetheless have
embraced family gardening. With help from
three SARE grants, many beginning Rosebud
gardeners not only grow enough food for their
families and neighbors, but also supply a
budding gardeners’ market in a rural
area devoid of many healthy food choices.
Overcoming poor soils, a lack of agricultural
traditions, and an average annual rainfall
of just 12 inches—as well as widespread
diabetes and poverty—the Lakota gardeners
did well enough in 2003 to earn a $10,000
profit. The reservation’s community
health care providers and Ann Krush at the
reservation’s Center for Permaculture
as Native Science in Mission, SD, recognized
that quality of life had deteriorated. They
and community members were galvanized to
do something. “Diabetes is a terrible
problem here,” said Krush, the SARE
project coordinator. “So we started
encouraging food gardens. Getting out in
the fresh air is good, but exercise and eating
the fresh food you grow is even better.”
With the first two grants, Krush and community
leaders helped spread knowledge about gardening
and bee-keeping through informal get-togethers.
Intended to help novice growers establish
gardens, the SARE funding was more successful
than they could have hoped. “Ten years
ago, you never saw a garden,” Krush
said. “Now it’s common and accepted.
Now it means doing something healthy for
your family, your community, your elders.”
The harvest from several families’ table-sized
garden plots, developed with help from SARE-funded
program assistants from within the community,
was bountiful enough to share with neighbors.
To spread the gardeners’ success to
the rest of the community, Krush and others
received a third grant to organize the
gardeners’ market at the reservation’s
traffic light, the only fresh market for
hundreds of miles. Eight vendors served the
market in 2003, earning their first profits.
From a background of poor nutrition, partly
because of scarce food options, many kids
now choose fresh fruit and vegetables over
junk food. Locally grown fruit, honey, and
vegetables became part of Elderly Nutrition,
a federal program that provides food for
seniors who need it. And the Center for Permaculture
as Native Science buys overflow from the
Rosebud gardeners to distribute to the federal
Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program—thus
helping to establish healthy eating habits
that will last a lifetime.
Editor's note: The Center for Permaculture
as Native Science in Mission, SD, closed
in 2004, therefore discontinued work on its
SARE-funded projects.
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