Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program

The Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program (FMLFPP) is a component of the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP). FMLFPP supports the development, coordination and expansion of local and regional food systems through two competitive grant programs: (1) Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) and (2) Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP). FMPP grants fund direct producer-to-consumer marketing projects such as farmers markets, community-supported agriculture programs (CSA), roadside stands, and agritourism. FMPP accepts Capacity Building, Community Development, Training, and Technical Assistance, Turnkey Marketing and Promotion, and Turnkey Recruitment and Training grant project types to support domestic direct producer-to-consumer marketing channels. LFPP grants fund local and regional food business enterprises that serve as intermediaries to process, distribute, aggregate, and store locally or regionally produced food products. LFPP accepts Planning, Implementation, Turnkey Marketing and Promotion, and Turnkey Recruitment and Training grant project types to support local and regional food businesses.

All applicants must be domestic entities owned, operated, and located within the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or Tribal Governments. Eligible entities include Agricultural businesses and cooperatives, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) networks and associations, Food councils, Economic development corporations, Local governments, Nonprofit and public benefit corporations, Producer networks or associations, Regional farmers’ market authorities and, Tribal governments.

Projects must benefit more than one producer, vendor, individual. Applicants must collaborate with others to benefit the larger community.

AMS outlines the merit review process in each grant program’s RFA. After the application deadline has passed, AMS begins a three-step process to evaluate each application. Grant agreements are established with applicants based on the results of this process to ensure compliance with requirement that Federal awarding agencies maintain a fair, unbiased merit review process in selecting competitively awarded grants. The Initial Review is Step 1. In this step, each application is reviewed for overall completeness, as well as compliance with eligibility and program requirements. Applications that met these basic requirements moved forward to Step 2-is the Technical Review (Panel Review). Applications are evaluated by panels of external peer reviewers with selected expertise representing various entities with programmatic knowledge. To eliminate bias, AMS assigns applications to reviewers outside of their own geographic areas and avoids project assignments associated with reviewer businesses. Each reviewer 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. The peer review panels evaluate their assigned applications using instructions prepared by AMS officials. Individual reviewers score applications and then confer with other panel members. The scoring and discussion serve as the basis for awarding and allocating grant funds and focuses on strengths and weaknesses of each proposal. The third step is the Administrative Review (Selection Process and Risk Review) (Step 3). AMS will conduct a final administrative evaluation of each review panel’s top scores applications. AMS reviews each application to ensure that potential recommended projects align with the scope of the RFA, allowability of budget items, available funding, geographic coverage/variety, program priorities and assess an organization’s ability to account for the use of Federal funds.

Eligible applicants should review the RFAs for application deadline. Also, annual application deadlines are posted in Grants.gov. More information can be found at www.ams.usda.gov/grants.