Source: USDA, 6/28/21

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced that it is accepting applications for grants to establish and operate Agriculture Innovation Centers. USDA is making $7.4 million available under the Agriculture Innovation Center Program.

Agriculture Innovation Centers may use the grants to provide technical assistance to help agricultural producers develop and market value-added agricultural products using a variety of options, except joint marketing efforts. The centers may provide the following types of assistance:
• financial advisory services to develop, expand or operate a business owned by an agricultural producer; 
• process development services, such as engineering, production system scale ups, scale production assessments and systems development; 
• organizational assistance, including legal and technical advisory services; • outreach assistance; • technical assistance for product development, excluding research and development; and 
• technical assistance for applied research to develop and operate processes and systems to produce and market value-added agricultural products. 

Eligible applicants include nonprofit and for-profit corporations, public bodies and institutions of higher education. Consortiums are also eligible to apply, but they must select a single organization to represent the consortium as the applicant. Only the applicant organization must meet the eligibility requirements Recipients must provide matching funds of least one-third of the total project budget. 

The total project budget must include both grant award and matching funds. Applications for grants must be submitted through Grants.gov no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Sept. 27, 2021. For more information, see page 33969 of the June 28, 2021, Federal Register. 


For more information about the program, click here.