BISMARCK, N.D. — A Native American people in North Dakota will quickly grow lettuce in a giant greenhouse complex that when completely finished will be amongst the nation’s biggest, allowing the people to grow much of its own food years after a federal dam flooded the land where they had cultivated corn, beans and other crops for centuries.
Work is continuous on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation’s 3.3-acre (1.3-hectare) greenhouse that will make up most of the Native Green Grow operation’s preliminary stage. However, adequate of the structure will be finished this summertime to start growing leafy greens and other crops such as tomatoes and strawberries.
“We’re the veryfirst farmers of this land,” Tribal Chairman Mark Fox stated. “We when were part of an aboriginal trade center for thousands and thousands of years duetothefactthat we grew crops — corn, beans, squash, watermelons — all these things at huge levels, so all the people depended on us considerably as part of the aboriginal trade system.”
The people will invest approximately $76 million on the preliminary stage, which likewise will consistsof a storagefacility and other centers near the small town of Parshall. It prepares to include to the growing area in the coming years, ultimately amountingto about 14.5 acres (5.9 hectares), which authorities state would make it one of the world’s biggest centers of its type.
The preliminary greenhouse will have enough glass to cover the comparable of 7 football fields.
The people’s fertile land along the Missouri River was flooded in the mid-1950s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed the Garrison Dam, which produced Lake Sakakawea.
Getting fresh fruitandvegetables has long been a obstacle in the location of western North Dakota where the people is based, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The rolling, rugged landscape — split by Lake Sakakawea — is a long drive from the state’s mostsignificant cities, Bismarck and Fargo.
That seclusion makes the greenhouses all the more imp