Growing Value-Added Economies Act

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.