Wholesale Farmers and Alternative Market Development

Wholesale Farmers and Alternative Market Development works to improve market access for producers and develop new markets. This work ensures that opportunities for U.S. food producers are readily available and communities are equipped to successfully grow and sell regionally produced foods, while also supporting increased access to locally produced foods.

Producers, processors, marketing agencies, and general public.

Contact Deputy Administrator, Transportation and Marketing Programs, Agricultural Marketing Service, USDA. The standard application forms as furnished by the Federal agency must be used for this program.

AMS outlines the application requirements and merit review process in each grant program’s RFA. Applicants are required to use the RFA to apply for grant funds. After the application deadline has passed, AMS begins a three-step process to evaluate each application submitted to the grant program and select applications for funding. Grant agreements are established with applicants based on the results of this three-step process to ensure compliance with requirement that Federal awarding agencies maintain a fair, unbiased merit review process in selecting competitively awarded grants. The Initial Qualification Screening is Step 1. In this step, each application is reviewed for overall completeness, as well as compliance with eligibility and program requirements as set forth in the RFA. Applications that met these basic requirements moved forward to Step 2. Step 2 is the Technical Review. Applications are evaluated by panels of external peer reviewers. Selected reviewers have diverse expertise

representing various entities with programmatic knowledge. To eliminate bias, AMS assigns applications to reviewers outside of their own geographic areas and avoid project assignments associated with reviewer businesses. Each reviewer also signs a conflict of interest and confidentiality agreement. Reviewers that indicate a real or perceived conflict do not review the affected application(s) and are removed from those application discussions. The panels analyze each application using the RFA’s evaluation criteria and instructions prepared by AMS. Individual reviewers evaluate and score their assigned applications and then confer with their team to derive a consensus review. The consensus review serves as the basis for awarding grant funds and focuses on the applications’ strengths and weaknesses. The third step is the Administrative Review (Step 3).