Growing Value-Added Economies Act
This bill amends the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 to reauthorize and modify the Department of Agriculture (USDA) Value-Added Producer Grants Program. (The program provides grants for the development and marketing of value-added agricultural products, which are products that have increased in value due to processing.)
The bill modifies the program to require USDA to:
establish independent external review panels to review and evaluate each eligible application based on merit and relevance, develop and implement an outreach and technical assistance strategy, and provide for periodic evaluations that measure the impact of the program and the impact of projects on achieving the purposes of the program. The bill also: (1) provides mandatory funding for the program; and (2) prohibits more than 5% of the total annual funding for the program from being used for administrative expenses, program evaluation, outreach, and technical assistance.
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