Kotzebue gets $1.5 million to keep growing food above the Arctic Circle

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded $1.5 million over three years to the Drumbeats collaborative, a University of Alaska food systems effort run out of the Chukchi Campus in Kotzebue with the Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham.

The work started in 2018, when Chukchi launched a food sovereignty and security project. Since then it has helped build the Kotzebue Food Coalition, demonstration gardens and native food gardens, and a hydroponic system growing greens and tomatoes north of the Arctic Circle.

There is reason to keep at it. A 2022 needs assessment put food insecurity in the Northwest Arctic Borough at 18.2 percent, among the highest rates in Alaska.

The new money funds applied research on food systems at the state, regional and community level, along with curriculum and training meant to widen the pipeline of people working in Alaska food systems, and an eight-member statewide advisory council to steer the university's extension programming.

The federal award description and the people doing the work describe it differently. USDA frames it as protecting Alaska's food supply "to enhance national security" and expanding local markets. Drumbeats describes its own goal as place-based Alaska Native food and energy sovereignty, pursued through Indigenous leadership and culturally responsive education.

It is not the first such award. The consortium received $1.5 million previously for the same work, through the USDA program serving Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian institutions.

Nothing in the award record says how the advisory council will be seated.