As Rural Alaska Begs For Basic Health Care, Large Canadian Grocer Gets $1.8 Million... To Grow Plants

COPPER RIVER COUNTRY JOURNAL

When Health Care Transformation 

Means Growing Carrots 

Google Search For 'Polar Permaculture', or Indoor Winter Gardening. 

Canadian Grocery Chain's Plan For Indoor Arctic Gardening Funded By State Of Alaska As A 'Rural Health' Solution  

The U.S. government's new Rural Health Transformation funding program is ostensibly geared to provide vital assistance to rural Americans who need health care. 

Rural health is in a bad way, not just in Alaska, but everywhere.

Over 1,800 applications for assistance through this program were turned in this summer and fall from 864 organizations in Alaska, and around $242 million has been doled out across the state for the first year's allocations. 

This is part of the Big Beautiful Bill, and Alaska is apparently the highest per-capita recipient of rural health funding in the United States. As of September 29th, the state showed that 249 projects had been granted in the 7 weeks of distribution, starting on August 7th, 2026. It seems like a lot. 

But, that would come to only around 14% of all applicants actually getting funds to help their desperate and isolated communities receive medical assistance. 

(The actual text of the many applications – along with the details of what will be done, exactly, with the funds allocated – are not clear to the public.) 

The Big Beautiful Bill initiated the Rural Health Transformation funding to replace major cuts in Medicaid. Reports about the bill, which was signed into law on July 4th, 2025, show it reduced federal Medicaid programs by at least $714 billion across America over a 10-year period (some sources say it cuts almost $1 trillion in Medicaid.) 

The deficiencies of rural health in the nation and Alaska are well known. There are problems with distances, staffing, dwindling populations, a lack of doctors... 

The Rural Health Transformation grant program came on board with a lot of hype and expectations.  As Alaska's lucky community 'winners' were announced, week after week, the door began to close on everybody left behind. There will be four more years of rollouts, submissions, acceptances... and disappointing refusals. 

Imagine the surprise recently when, on the list of recipients of U.S.-sponsored funding in Alaska, there was one big standout: The Alaska Commercial Company. They're getting almost two million dollars – not for medically related programs, but to attempt to grow fruits and vegetables near some of their stores. Apparently in the winter. 

The company seems confident it can learn to grow produce in Alaska, in some kind of indoor system, over this coming year.  If so, that would be a huge and very unexpected success.  In roadless rural Alaska, fuel is difficult to get, electricity costs are high, and it's dark and unbearably cold for most of the winter. As a result, 95% of all Alaska food comes from Outside.

Even outdoor gardening is a challenge in Alaska in the summer. Indoor winter gardening to any sort of commercial scale is practically nonexistent. According to the web, indoor arctic gardening needs a highly controlled artificial microclimate, special LED lighting, hydroponics (meaning a good source of water) and careful humidity management. Successful arctic 'farms' are few and far between across the northern world, and basically run by professional scientists and agriculture specialists. 

Still, the Commercial Company is getting $1.8 million for their project, which is framed as a 'rural health' idea that is somehow more valuable than requests from Alaskan hospitals and actual rural medical facilities. 

The Alaska Commercial Company is a Canadian-owned for-profit grocery chain. It has stores all along the coasts of Alaska, stemming from the days of the Gold Rush and its alliance with the Hudson Bay Company. On the web, ACC is known for its eye-popping prices, which lead to a regular flow of popular Tik Tok videos, with visitors and locals waving around items, showing half a watermelon costing $37, and milk costing $10 to $15 a gallon. One of the more engaging websites about Bush food prices, which stopped operating in 2019, was a citizen-produced site following this basic format that they called "The Price is Wrong." 

Of course, the high cost of shipping, the isolation, and the lack of access to other stores contributes to the cost problem. There's no getting around it, the Alaska Commercial Company is performing an expensive but vital service to the Western Alaska and coastal communities. 

But is the Alaska Commercial Company providing health services? Does a Canadian company, based in Manitoba, have the knowledge and experience to receive $1.8 million in U.S. rural health funding  – so they can grow plants? Will they actually be able to pull off a complicated and uniquely difficult agricultural project like this in the upcoming year, as the grant demands? 

And will this arctic gardening program – which takes funding away from medically oriented requests by actual Alaskan health providers  -– lead to better health for the people who use the Commercial Company's 38 rural Alaska supermarkets? 

The Copper Valley is in desperate need of after-hours medical care. Yet when Cross Road Medical Center submitted a request to help solve it, Cross Road was not funded. And neither were hundreds of other valid rural organizations struggling to maintain basic health services to people living in their small Alaskan communities.