The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) is asking the public for help to find ways to strengthen the state’s food supply chain after harvest. NDA will host virtual listening sessions on Aug. 1 to identify funding priorities for a $3.3 million cooperative agreement with the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) program. For those unable to attend, an online survey is available.
The Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure program develops and administers state coordinated initiatives to help build resilience across the middle of Nebraska’s food supply. USDA funds will support expanded capacity for food crops for activities that happen post-harvest and prior to the arrival at a retail market. Activities like gathering, processing, manufacturing, storing, transporting, wholesaling, and distributing locally and regionally produced food, including specialty crops, dairy, grains for eating, aquaculture, and other food products. These funds exclude meat and poultry products because those products are funded through other USDA programs.
“Listening sessions and surveys are great ways to get constructive feedback from a lot of different people interested and involved in agriculture,” said NDA Director Sherry Vinton. “Our goal with these sessions is to gather ideas and consider priorities to fund proposals and projects that will help strengthen Nebraska’s food supply.”
NDA will work in partnership with USDA to make competitive subaward infrastructure grants to Nebraska food and farm businesses and other eligible entities, including nonprofits, local government entities, tribal governments, and institutions such as schools and hospitals. Information on the competitive infrastructure grant proposal process will be released this fall.
Virtual listening sessions will be held through WebEx on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Register here:
10 a.m. session: https://tinyurl.com/RFSI-10a
1 p.m. session: https://tinyurl.com/RFSI-1pm
For those unable to attend a session, a public comment survey is available here: https://tinyurl.com/RFSI-Survey
For more information, visit www.nda.nebraska.gov/promotion/rfsi/index/html or contact Holle Evert at holle.evert@nebraska.gov or 402-471-6861.
