Dakota Food Rx: Connecting Local Foods and Healthcare Using Produce Prescriptions

Kristine Reiner October 16, 2024 No Comments

Dakota Food Rx: Connecting Local Foods and Healthcare Using Produce Prescriptions by Geb Bastian, SDSU Extension & Jared Lukens-Black, Budding Moon Farm

Connections Across the Generations


Saturday, November 9th, 10:30am MT – The Joe Rovere Minnilusa Pioneer Room

Imagine going to your doctor and instead of getting a prescription for a medication, you get a prescription for fresh fruits and vegetables! For more and more South Dakotans with low income and dealing with diet-related chronic conditions, this dream is becoming a reality through produce prescription programs.

Join Geb and Jared as they discuss how the Budding Moon Farm Veggie Rx program has expanded into the larger Dakota Food Rx program, and how local producers and healthcare providers have come together to improve healthcare outcomes through the power of local foods.

Rx Program

Geb Bastian is an assistant professor and extension nutrition & health specialist at South Dakota State University. His research and extension outreach aim to bolster local food systems and improve access to healthy foods for all South Dakotans. Geb is the principal investigator of Dakota Food Rx, an expansion of the Veggie Rx program originally started at Budding Moon Farm.

Budding Moon Farm Info

Jared has been operating Budding Moon Farm – a mixed vegetable farm distributing through a sliding-scale CSA and Prescription Produce Program – since 2018 in Spearfish, SD. Before learning vegetable production from a number of farms in the Pacific Northwest, Jared was a middle school teacher in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN. The goal of Budding Moon Farm is to implement innovative programs that increase nutrition security in the community, while also supporting a healthy ecosystem and maintaining financial viability. Jared continues this work beyond the borders of South Dakota by collaborating with the Fair Share CSA Coalition and CSA Innovation Network on improving equitable access to healthy food.

Keynote Feature: Mariah Gladstone, Piikuni (Blackfeet) and Tsalagi (Cherokee)

Kristine Reiner September 25, 2024 No Comments

A Recipe for Resilience

Cultivating: Building Markets with Community in Mind

Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 10:30am MT – Wells Fargo Theater

What to expect: Locally harvested, pre-contact foods are a testament to the resilience of Native lifestyles and should be part of our modern kitchens. Mariah will discuss how to prepare nutritious meals using readily available and affordable foods in new and easy ways. Her presentation will also examine traditional Indigenous foodways, the impact of colonization on our diets, and the health and cultural benefits of reconnecting to our traditional foods.

Mariah Gladstone, Piikuni (Blackfeet) and Tsalagi (Cherokee), grew up in Northwest Montana on and near the Blackfeet Reservation. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Environmental Engineering and returned home where she began her work on food advocacy. She developed Indigikitchen, an online cooking platform, to revitalize and re-imagine Native foods. She then earned a Master’s degree at SUNY-ESF in the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Mariah has been recognized as a Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellow. She has shared the importance of reconnecting to traditional foods at events throughout North America and abroad, as well as through appearances on the Today Show, CBC, and more.

Learn More

Native Tea Time Workshop

Connections Across the Generations

Friday, November 8th, 2024 – 12:45-2:15pm MT – The Joe Rovere | Minnilusa Pioneer Room

For thousands of years, Indigenous people have hunted, fished, farmed and foraged for food on this continent. Mariah practices many of those traditions today and teaches others how to incorporate indigenous foods into their contemporary diets. She will bring a variety of plants she has grown and foraged that have traditionally been used to make tea, such as cedar, yarrow and mint. She will make some teas for participants to sample, then work with them to create their own personalized teas to take home. Throughout this hands-on workshop, Mariah will also discuss traditional Native foodways, changes that took place with colonization, and what is happening with the Indigenous Food Movement today.