Future Visions: A Sustainable and Healthy Local Food Production System

Abstract

• A collaborative effort to create an innovative food production system is underway on the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation.
• Three land-grant universities and colleges, along with United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, are conducting research as a foundation to begin planning for on-the-ranch production of healthier meat.
• This collaborative project uses the Lakota philosophy of natural resource management and in this paper I urge more.
• I recommend additional research to develop investigations of relationships between cattle and the native food and medicine plants that also reside within the pasture.

Keywords: meat production, Lakota resource management, land-grant collaboration.