$1 million grants available to rural businesses for agriculture innovation

Part of the mission of the Agriculture Innovation Center Program, according to USDA, is to stimulate innovation so American agriculture can achieve the goal of increasing agricultural production by 40% while cutting its environmental footprint in half by 2050.

Part of the mission of the Agriculture Innovation Center Program, according to USDA, is to stimulate innovation so American agriculture can achieve the goal of increasing agricultural production by 40% while cutting its environmental footprint in half by 2050. Courtesy Photo

Nevada News Group

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is accepting applications for grants to establish and operate “Agriculture Innovation Centers,” with $7.4 million available to help rural businesses.

According to USDA, grants under the Agriculture Innovation Center Program may be used to provide technical assistance to help agricultural producers develop and market value-added agricultural projects using a variety of options, except joint marketing efforts.

Recipients must provide matching funds of at least one-third of the total project budget, and both grant awards and matching funds must be included in the total project budget.

The maximum grant amount is $1 million.

According to the program, grant and matching funds may be used to operate an Agriculture Innovation Center and to provide the following services to agricultural producers:

  • Consulting services for legal, accounting, and technical services to be used in establishing and operating a center
  • Hiring employees for the center, 
  • Making of matching grants to agricultural producers, 
  • Applied research, 
  • Legal services, 
  • Technical assistance, including engineering services, scale production assessments, market planning and development, business planning, 
  • 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 productions assessments and systems development, 
  • Technical assistance for product development, excluding research and development; and/or
  • Technical assistance for applied research to develop and operate processes and systems to produce and market value-added agricultural products.

Eligible applicants include public bodies, federally-recognized Indian tribes, higher education institutions, nonprofit organizations and for-profit corporations.

The deadline to apply is Sept. 27; go here to learn more.

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