Regional Food System Partnerships

RRFSP is a component of the Local Agricultural Marketing Program (LAMP). RFSP supports partnerships that brings together public and private resources to plan and develop local or regional food systems and encourages food economy viability and resilience. Through RFSP, AMS works together with partners to accelerate local or regional food system growth through increased access to local knowledge and networks. Partners will lead the scope determination of the regional food system to be developed, including goals, outreach objectives, and eligible activities to be carried out, while coordinating with AMS to receive technical and financial assistance.

Projects that benefit producers, local and regional food business enterprises, and consumers.

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, the application is reviewed to ensure that they met the RFA’s basic requirements. Applications that met these basic requirements moved forward to Step 2. Step 2 is the Competitive 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). AMS conducts a final administrative evaluation of each application in the review panels’ top rankings and recommendations. In addition to the applications’ scores, each award is reviewed to ensure that the recommended applications align with the grant program’s statutory purpose and that the budget items were allowable and necessary. AMS also assesses the applicants’ ability to account for the use of Federal funds and monitor the performance associated with these monies. Non-competitive grant programs implemented by AMS are limited to Step 3 in the application review process.

Eligible applicants should review the RFA for the application deadline. Annual application deadlines and funding opportunities are posted in Grants.gov. More information is available at www.ams.usda.gov/grants.