General Requirements for Cooperative Services Grant Programs, Value-Added Producer Grants, Agriculture Innovation Centers and Rural Cooperative Development Grants

This final rule implements new regulations for Value-Added producer grants (Value-Added Producer Grants) and a new demonstration program whereby agriculture innovation centers provide technical and other assistance to agricultural producers to help them establish businesses that produce and sell Value-Added agricultural commodities or products (Agriculture Innovation Centers). The Agricultural Innovation Center program is authorized under the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107-171) (2002 Farm Bill). The 2002 Farm Bill also modified and extended the authority of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Secretary) (USDA) to make Value-Added Producer Grants. This rule implements regulations in one central location to consolidate requirements that are common to all grant programs administered by Cooperative Services within the Rural Business- Cooperative Service (RBS), thereby avoiding the necessity of repeating elements shared in common in each of the subparts dedicated to specific programs. This rule amends regulations to reduce the matching requirement required of certain institutions of higher education with respect to Rural Cooperative Development Grants from 25 percent to 5 percent and to adjust the scoring criteria to reflect this change. Finally, this rule amends regulations to add Value-Added Producer Grants and Agriculture Innovation Center Grants to the list of RBS programs covered by the servicing regulation in that part.