USDA Awards $4.8 Million in Grants for Community Food Projects

Acting Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner announced today that $4.8 million has been awarded as part of the USDA’s Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service’s (CSREES) Community Food Projects (CFP) program. The grants, given to 34 organizations in 20 states, will help low-income people meet their food needs.

“These grants offer exceptional opportunities to make food available so that disadvantaged communities can move toward self-sufficiency,” Conner said.

The CFP program has been meeting the food needs of low-income people for the past 11 years while increasing the self-reliance of communities in providing for their own food, farm and nutrition issues and needs. The program administers three types of projects: community food projects, training and technical assistance projects and planning projects.

These projects are intended to help private, nonprofit entities that need a one-time infusion of federal assistance to establish and carry out multipurpose community food projects. Projects are funded from $10,000 to $300,000 and from one to three years and require a dollar-for-dollar match in resources. Funds have been authorized through 2007 at $5 million per year.

Examples of funded projects include expanding access to healthy and local foods in a low income, high unemployment area by employing teens to develop community gardens and market their produce; a county-wide operation of community kitchens for micro-enterprise development with low-income participation and leadership; and improving access to healthy foods through a variety of methods, including supermarket development, promoting local produce, a community kitchen and educational programs.