DOVER, Del. (March 12, 2024) – The Delaware Department of Agriculture (DDA) announced today they are accepting applications for the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program (RFSI) through April 30, 2024. Through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), more than $1.7 million in competitive grant funding is available for projects designed to build resilience across the middle of Delaware’s food supply chain.

Funds will support expanded capacity for aggregating, processing, manufacturing, storing, transporting, wholesaling, and distributing locally and regionally produced food products. These include specialty crops, dairy, grain for human consumption, aquaculture, and other food products. Ineligible products include meat and poultry, fiber, wild-caught seafood, exclusively animal feed and forage products, fiber, landscaping products, tobacco, and dietary supplements.

RFSI is funded through Section 1001(b)(4) of the Federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Using a standardized competitive review process, DDA will award two types of grants:

• Simplified Equipment-Only Projects, using a simplified application to fund smaller grants between $10,000 and $100,000. This project option is a fixed-price grant, which will fund only equipment purchases. Applicants cannot use these funds for associated facility upgrades, staffing, or other costs. The amount awarded will only equal the equipment cost up to $100,000. No match is required for this type of grant project.
• Infrastructure Grants, with a minimum of $100,000 and a maximum of $1,156,597 for infrastructure projects and activities. Infrastructure grant applicants must contribute 50% of the proposed project cost as a match to the grant unless the applicant qualifies for a reduced match as outlined in the Request for Applications (RFA).

Based upon stakeholder outreach, Delaware is seeking projects that provide technical assistance to producers working to develop value-added products, expand access to climate-smart technologies for farmers and food waste management, and increase the number of facilities that support product aggregation, cold storage, warehousing, and distribution of targeted agricultural products.

Applications should be submitted by agricultural producers or processors or nonprofit organizations, for-profit entities, local government entities, and tribal governments operating middle-of-the-supply-chain activities. Institutions such as schools, universities, or hospitals bringing producers together to establish cooperative or shared infrastructure or invest in equipment that will benefit multiple producers’ middle-of-the-supply-chain activities such as processing, aggregation, and distribution of targeted agricultural products may apply. All businesses and organizations must be domestically owned, and project facilities must be physically located in Delaware.

To review Delaware’s RFA and other Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure program documents, visit https://de.gov/rfsi. Using the link on this website, applicants can apply for the RFSI grant through the Delaware Community Foundation (DCF) application portal. The DCF online portal allows applicants to submit their applications more easily. While DCF is facilitating the grant application process, this is not a grant program of the DCF.

DDA will host an informational webinar about the RFSI grant program at 10 a.m. on March 21, 2024. RFSI virtual office hours for prospective applicants to connect with the Delaware Department of Agriculture on the grant process are scheduled for April 4 and April 18 at 10 a.m. Registration is required for each session and will be available online at https://de.gov/rfsi.

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