Tribal Business News recently featured the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative’s Director of Policy, Research, and Tribal Governance, Kristiana Coutu, about Indian Country food and agriculture as well as how new, proposed changes from the USDA could affect Indian Country.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

A proposed update to the regulation, crafted by a “review group” within the USDA itself, asserts that tribes should be consulted on how best to implement and maintain sub-offices on their lands. Rural Development, an agency typically underutilized by tribal governments, should be folded into the sub-office regulation, according to an IFAI executive. 

“The importance of this regulation is that it provides more of a structure for USDA staff to use when receiving a request from a Tribe for a suboffice and then working with the Tribe to understand its needs, and then to get a sub office established,” IFAI Policy and Program Director Kristiana Coutu said. “This departmental regulation also pulls in Rural Development as well – another USDA agency that wasn’t contemplated originally.”