Growing Value-Added Economies Act 2018-05-10 Introduced in House 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.

]]> text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.