Imagine driving three hours to buy organic vegetables. This was a reality for Daphne Snow a decade ago — now she helps grow vegetables herself as farm manager for Choctaw Fresh Produce, an organic farming initiative started by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (MBCI) to increase access to affordable, healthy produce.
Choctaw Fresh Produce is made up of four different certified organic farms on the reservation, serving fresh produce to 11,000 MBCI members who live in eight separate communities spread across 10 counties. MBCI was historically a farming tribe, and the initiative is a way to reclaim that identity. The farms grow traditional foods like blueberries, collard greens, squash, and turnips, and elders are encouraged to share memories of when they relied on gardens to feed families and communities.
The Choctaw Fresh founders started the grant-funded project in 2012 hoping to create jobs and spark economic growth for the tribe, but they realized that farming and selling their produce off-reservation wasn't much of a money making venture. Choctaw Fresh Produce thus shifted its focus, seeking to keep 75 percent of its yield on the reservation to address food insecurity and improve community health. Mississippi has the country's highest obesity rate, at nearly 40 percent, and almost 2,000 MBCI members, roughly 16 percent, have type 2 diabetes.
The organic produce now goes either directly to individual tribal members or to the businesses at the tribe-owned Pearl River Resort that employs more than 2,000 people, most of whom are MBCI members. In addition to stocking local schools, a mobile market, and programs for tribal elders and those with diabetes, Choctaw Fresh also runs a tribal-supported agriculture (TSA) program analogous to community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives elsewhere. The extra effort of farming organically has also paid off with environmental benefits, including soil regeneration.
More broadly and across generations, Choctaw Fresh is helping to demystify organic produce and doing away with misconceptions that it is elitist and expensive. And the farmers hope their work and influence on local diets and health may one day extend beyond the reservation, becoming a catalyst for the creation of more certified organic farms in Mississippi and across the South.
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