SWIAA is a Native American owned and operated 501 c 3 non-profit organization. Eleven of the twelve SWIAA Board Members are Native American from different Indian Tribes in Arizona. Established in 1987, SWIAA’s mission is to promote sustainable agriculture and natural resources conservation through educational outreach and technical assistance on tribal lands throughout the Southwestern Unites States, and to advocate for better services from government with its agricultural assistance programs. SWIAA currently has over 300 Native members from 20+ southwestern Federally Recognized Native American Tribes.
This grant will be used to deliver targeted technical assistance and training in Native American communities and improving equitable participation of Native farmers and ranchers in USDA programs and services.
The program is also open to all Federally Recognized Tribe in Arizona (Arizona has 22 Federally Recognized Tribes).
The Overarching Goal of this Five-Year proposed program is to address the following barriers and challenges to indigenous farmers: communication barriers, lack of support during application process, lack of standardization and transparency, limited knowledge on qualification requirements, and complicated reporting requirements.
To achieve the overarching goal, this program intends to address the following objectives/purposes in tribal communities in Arizona:
Objective 1: Remove Native producers’ communication barriers and improve their understanding of USDA programs and services by expanding targeted outreach, and education in tribal communities.
Objective 2: Improve the standardization and transparency of USDA programs and services by working closely with USDA and Native producers, building and strengthening work relationships between USDA agencies and Native producers at all levels and creating open communication channels for USDA to collect
Objective 3: Provide direct technical assistance and support to Native producers (especially beginning farmers/ranchers) during application process to improve their equitable participation in the full range of USDA programs and services.
Objective 4: Provide Native producers with support on Federal program administration and reporting to improve the successfulness of Native producers in meeting USDA programs requirements.
Objective 5: Improve the awareness of the qualification requirements of USDA programs, build tribal capacity, and increase Native producers’ skillsets by providing targeted training on small business management, cooperative development, financial literacy, business planning, risk identification/mitigation, new market identification/planning, lending, leasing, tax, and business-related legal issues.
Objective 6: Improve community resiliency/self-reliance from social and natural disasters like COVID-19 and climate impacts by strengthening community food system, improving food safety, maximizing the use of renewable resources, promoting the use of land-use planning tools, and adopting agricultural practices and principals that are more robust to climate and land use changes.
Objective 7: Provide effective program management and compete the entire project successfully. The project team will provide all of the support listed above. We will also facilitate and provide all required federal reports to ensure all grant requirements are met for our constituents.
