Montana Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, Ballot Language

MONTANA FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT SCARCITY IS A POLICY CHOICE

Filed with the Montana Secretary of State Prepared for review by the Attorney General of the State of Montana

Signature Requirement: 30,180 valid signatures (Five percent of total votes cast for the office of Governor at the most recent gubernatorial election, collected from at least thirty-four (34) of Montana's one hundred (100) House districts. The exact current-cycle threshold is pending the Montana Secretary of State posted calculation.)

NOTE: Because this act includes appropriations, it must be introduced through the Legislature rather than by initiative. However, the substantive policy framework, the food assurance program and the essential goods program, may be proposed as a non-appropriation initiative statute, with appropriations enacted by the Legislature upon passage. The ballot language below is drafted for the initiative-eligible components.

SCOPE NOTE: An earlier draft of this measure carried a public health and welfare division, an education modernization division, and a public service and resource library division. The education modernization material has been extracted to be assembled into a separate, standalone Education measure. The operative public-health program sections have been removed. The public-health findings are retained in the Act as the evidentiary basis for the food and commodity assurance program. This ballot language presents one operative program: at-cost food and commodity assurance.

BALLOT TITLE

SHALL THE STATE OF MONTANA ESTABLISH THE MONTANA FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH:

    (1) CREATING A MONTANA FOOD ASSURANCE PROGRAM OPERATED BY THE
    DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE TO SELL GROCERY PRODUCTS AT AT-COST
    PRICING TO ALL MONTANA RESIDENTS THROUGH STATE-OPERATED FOOD
    ASSURANCE CENTERS, WITH NOT FEWER THAN FIVE PILOT CENTERS WITHIN
    TWO YEARS, INCLUDING CENTERS SERVING THE BLACKFEET AND CROW OR
    NORTHERN CHEYENNE RESERVATIONS, AND TWELVE CENTERS STATEWIDE
    WITHIN FIVE YEARS, PLUS MOBILE DISTRIBUTION UNITS FOR REMOTE
    COMMUNITIES, MODELED ON THE 159-YEAR MILITARY COMMISSARY PRECEDENT
    AND DEVELOPED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MONTANA'S EIGHT FEDERALLY
    RECOGNIZED TRIBAL NATIONS;

    (2) CREATING A MONTANA ESSENTIAL GOODS PROGRAM THROUGH THE
    DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE TO PRODUCE AND DISTRIBUTE CLOTHING,
    HOUSEHOLD SUPPLIES, HYGIENE PRODUCTS, TOOLS, AND OTHER ESSENTIAL
    COMMODITY GOODS AT AT-COST OR BELOW-RETAIL PRICING ON THE SAME
    NO-PROFIT, COST-PLUS-SURCHARGE BASIS AS THE FOOD ASSURANCE
    PROGRAM;

    (3) REQUIRING THE LEGISLATURE TO APPROPRIATE FUNDS SUFFICIENT TO
    ESTABLISH THIS ACT, ESTIMATED AT THIRTY-SIX MILLION DOLLARS
    ($36,000,000) FOR THE INITIAL BIENNIUM, REPRESENTING APPROXIMATELY
    ONE-HALF OF ONE PERCENT (0.5%) OF THE STATE'S BIENNIAL GENERAL
    FUND?

SUBMISSION CLAUSE

    [ ] YES / FOR THE MEASURE

    [ ] NO / AGAINST THE MEASURE

BALLOT TEXT

This measure adds new parts to Title 80, Chapter 1, and Title 90, Chapter 1, of the Montana Code Annotated to create the Montana Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, a food and commodity assurance program.

FOOD AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE

The Act adds a new part to Title 80, creating:

    - A Montana Food Assurance Program operated by the Department of
      Agriculture, establishing state-operated food distribution
      centers where all Montana residents may purchase the full range
      of grocery products at at-cost pricing (production cost plus a
      facility surcharge not exceeding 5%);

    - Not fewer than five pilot centers within two years: Billings,
      Missoula, Great Falls, and two centers serving reservation
      communities (the Blackfeet Reservation and the Crow or Northern
      Cheyenne Reservation), developed in partnership with the
      respective tribal governments;

    - Expansion to twelve statewide centers within five years, with
      at least one center per congressional district and at least one
      center on or adjacent to each of Montana's seven reservations;

    - Mobile food assurance units, refrigerated distribution vehicles
      operating on regular routes, to reach communities across
      Montana's 147,040 square miles where population density does
      not support a permanent facility;

    - Montana-first procurement: 60% Montana-sourced within three
      years, increasing to 75% within five years, including contracts
      with tribal food sovereignty programs for buffalo meat,
      traditional foods, and tribally produced agricultural products;

    - A Tribal Food Sovereignty Advisory Council with one
      representative from each of Montana's eight federally recognized
      tribal nations.

The Act adds a new part to Title 90, creating:

    - A Montana Essential Goods Program operated by the Department of
      Commerce, distributing clothing, household supplies, hygiene
      products, tools, and other essential commodity goods at at-cost
      or below-retail pricing, on the same no-profit basis as the
      food assurance program, prioritizing Montana-based manufacturers
      and artisans, including tribal enterprises.

EVIDENTIARY BASIS: The USDA ERS Food Dollar Series establishes the farm share of the food dollar at 24.3 cents, with 75.7 cents in markup. The United States military commissary system has operated at-cost food distribution for 159 years under 10 U.S.C. Section 2484. Montana's agricultural output of approximately $4.6 billion in annual cash receipts and approximately 2.12 million cattle (nearly two for every Montanan) demonstrates that the state's productive capacity vastly exceeds its population's food requirements. Approximately 11% of Montana households experience food insecurity, and approximately 80,271 Montanans receive SNAP benefits totaling approximately $169.4 million annually.

WHY THIS ACT REACHES BEYOND BARE SURVIVAL: The Act's legislative findings establish, on six decades of research across four programs and three species (the Whitehall Studies of Marmot; the primate research of Sapolsky and Shively; the Nobel Prize-winning telomere research of Blackburn), that food insecurity and economic hierarchy are not merely economic conditions but medical conditions with documented physiological pathways. The gap is the gradient, not the deprivation alone. A food and commodity assurance program that raises the material floor and reduces that gradient is, on this evidence, a public health intervention.

GENERAL PROVISIONS:

APPROPRIATION:

    Department of Agriculture (food assurance):        $20,000,000
    Department of Commerce (essential goods):           $8,000,000
    Tribal partnership and food sovereignty grants:     $8,000,000
    TOTAL:                                             $36,000,000

    This total represents approximately one-half of one percent
    (0.5%) of Montana's approximately $6.96 billion biennial general
    fund for the 2027 biennium.

EFFECTIVE DATES: The Montana Food Assurance Program and the Montana Essential Goods Program take effect July 1, 2027, with pilot food assurance centers operational within two years and statewide expansion within five years.

SEVERABILITY: If any provision is held invalid, the remaining provisions continue in effect.

TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY: Nothing in this act diminishes tribal sovereignty. All programs that operate on or serve tribal land are developed in genuine government-to-government partnership with the relevant tribal nation. Tribal nations may elect to participate in, modify, or decline any program.

CONSTITUTIONAL ALIGNMENT: This act operationalizes the 1972 Montana Constitution, Article II, Section 3 (clean and healthful environment), Article II, Section 10 (privacy), and Article X, Section 1(2) (tribal cultural integrity), extending the anti-extraction principle of the 1972 Constitutional Convention from governance to the material economy.

PROPONENT STATEMENT

This initiative establishes an at-cost food and commodity assurance program for the State of Montana.

THE PROBLEM: Montana produces approximately $4.6 billion in agricultural output annually. The state has nearly two cattle for every person: approximately 2.12 million cattle, approximately 1.14 million people. Yet approximately eleven percent of Montana households cannot consistently feed themselves. The USDA documents that 75.7 cents of every food dollar pays for markup, not food. The military commissary at Malmstrom Air Force Base distributes food at cost to military families, but the Montana ranchers and farmers whose products feed the nation are denied access to the same system their taxes fund.

Montana maintains 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles across 13,800 square miles of its prairies. A nuclear warhead can reach any point on earth in thirty minutes. Groceries cannot consistently reach the Blackfeet Reservation.

Butte produced the copper that wired America's electrical grid. The profit left. The poison stayed: the Berkeley Pit, one of the largest toxic waste complexes in the United States, where 342 snow geese died in a single day in 1995 after landing on the toxic water. The 75.7 percent markup is the same extraction mechanism, value taken from production, profit removed elsewhere, communities left with the cost.

THE SOLUTION: Food at cost. Not charity, not subsidy, but the same at-cost distribution model the United States military has used since 1867, extended to all Montanans who fund it through their taxes. Cattle operations, wheat farms, trucking, and processing all stay private; the state purchases at production cost plus a surcharge not exceeding five percent and operates the retail point of sale, the way the Defense Commissary Agency has since 1867 without acquiring a single ranch. The program is developed in genuine government-to-government partnership with Montana's eight federally recognized tribal nations, including tribal food sovereignty programs, buffalo restoration, and traditional food systems. An accompanying essential goods program applies the same no-profit model to clothing, household supplies, and tools.

THE COST: $36 million for the initial biennium, approximately one-half of one percent of the state's biennial general fund. Montana currently spends approximately $169.4 million annually on SNAP benefits routed through commercial retailers. At-cost pricing delivers approximately four times the food value per benefit dollar.

THE MONTANA ADVANTAGE: Montana is the smallest-population state in this legislative series with a citizen initiative process. With approximately 1.14 million people across 147,040 square miles, Montana is the distribution test at the sparse extreme. If at-cost food assurance reaches every community across the fourth-largest state by area with one of the smallest populations, the distribution problem is solved for the hardest case in the nation. Montana's 1972 Constitution already wrote the framework: anti-extraction, pro-individual-rights, pro-environmental-health, pro-tribal-sovereignty. This act operationalizes what Montana's constitutional convention envisioned.

Original Colorado proposal 2015-2016 (Sassafras and Maple Research Foundation, Colorado DPOS registration). Montana adaptation 2026 (Historical Apoplexy series, Cooper).

FISCAL IMPACT SUMMARY

(Prepared pursuant to MCA 5-4-201 and 13-27-312)

INITIAL APPROPRIATION: $36,000,000 from the general fund for the 2027 biennium.

PERCENTAGE OF BIENNIAL GENERAL FUND: approximately 0.5% of the approximately $6.96 billion biennial general fund.

BREAKDOWN:

    Food Assurance Program:                $20,000,000 (0.29%)
    Essential Goods Program:                $8,000,000 (0.11%)
    Tribal Partnership Grants:              $8,000,000 (0.11%)

FOOD PROGRAM TARGET AT FULL OPERATION:

    The at-cost food assurance program, serving Montana's population
    of approximately 1,142,750 residents, scales toward an annual
    production-cost target of approximately $353 million ($309 per
    person per year for a base list of twenty-five core staple food
    items, per USDA Food Dollar Series methodology). This is
    approximately ten percent of the state's annual general fund of
    approximately $3.48 billion. Montana's per-capita general fund
    spend of approximately $3,045 places the state on Table 2 of the
    fiscal-baseline schedule. The $36,000,000 initial appropriation
    funds the establishment, pilot, and initial-expansion phases; the
    program scales toward the target as food assurance centers come
    online and Montana-first procurement contracts mature.

PROJECTED SAVINGS:

    SNAP efficiency: at-cost pricing delivers approximately four times
    the food value per benefit dollar, increasing the food reaching
    recipients without increasing the benefit.

    Federal cost-shift offset: at-cost routing independently offsets
    the H.R. 1 (2025) SNAP administrative cost-shift, which raised the
    state share from fifty percent to seventy-five percent effective
    October 1, 2026.

    Healthcare cost reduction: improved nutrition and a reduced
    physiological gradient are projected to offset program costs over
    time.

CONTEXT:

    Montana's biennial state budget (all funds): approximately $16.46
    billion.
    Montana's biennial general fund: approximately $6.96 billion.
    Montana annual SNAP spending: approximately $169.4 million.
    Initial appropriation as a share of the all-funds biennial
    budget: approximately 0.2%.

SIGNATURE LINES

I, the undersigned registered elector of the State of Montana, do hereby petition the Legislature of the State of Montana, or, alternatively, do hereby petition the Secretary of State to submit to the registered electors of the State of Montana an amendment to the Montana Code Annotated, concerning the establishment of the Montana Food, Resource, and Commodity Assurance Act, as set forth herein:

Print Name: ___________________________________________

Signature: ____________________________________________

Address: ______________________________________________

Date: ___________________

County of Residence: __________________________________

(Repeat as needed. 30,180 valid signatures required from at least 34 of Montana's 100 House districts.)

END OF BALLOT LANGUAGE

MONTANA FOOD, RESOURCE, AND COMMODITY ASSURANCE ACT Citizen Initiative Petition Pursuant to Article III, Section 4, Montana Constitution

Prepared by: The Amanuensis, theamanuensis.com Version 2 (Montana adaptation). Original Colorado proposal 2015-2016 (Cooper, through SMRF). Montana adaptation March 2026. Cromwell-Mode 26-item reweave and Option B restructure May 22, 2026.

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