The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will enter into cooperative agreements with States, territories, and Tribal Governments to expand upon prior LFPA and LFPA Plus work, and to provide an opportunity for State/territories and Tribal governments that did not participate in LFPA or LFPA Plus to establish projects through LFPA25. States, territories, and Tribal governments will purchase local, unprocessed or minimally processed domestic foods from local producers, targeting historically underserved farmers/producers/fishers and small businesses including processors, aggregators, and distributors. Food purchased will target distribution to underserved communities. In addition to increasing local food consumption, funds are expected to help build and expand economic opportunity for local and historically underserved farmers/producers/fishers and small businesses including processors, aggregators, and distributors.

AMS encourages projects that benefit historically underserved farmers/producers/fishers and small businesses, provide food distribution to underserved communities that are not part of the normal food distribution networks, and incorporate culturally relevant foods, including kosher and halal, as appropriate based on community preferences. For cooperative agreements intending to serve these entities, recipients should engage and involve those beneficiaries when developing their Project Summary. AMS would like these relationships and purchase and distribution channels to continue past the conclusion of this program. USDA will provide the State, territory, or Tribal government funding for food purchases as well as guidance, technical assistance, instruction, and monitoring throughout the life cycle of the cooperative agreement.

Funding can only be used for food procurement. Recipients may not request direct or indirect costs associated with developing or administering the program. All food purchased must be unprocessed or minimally processed, and must meet the definitions of domestic and local, as defined in section 1.2.1 of the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). See section 4.6.2 “Allowable and unallowable costs and activities” of the NOFO for more information.

$100 million in funding will be available for Tribal agreements, $50 million of which will be allocated for Tribes enrolled in past rounds of LFPA, the remaining $50 million will be allocated to Tribes that have not previously participated in the LFPA program. The remainder of the funds, $371.5 million will be available to state governments and territories. These funds will be awarded through a non-competitive process. Funds awarded to States and territories will be based on the statutory The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) funding formula. This formula considers the poverty rate and unemployment levels in each state to ensure the distribution of funds corresponds to feeding needs in each state. Cooperative Agreements will be awarded based on acceptability of the Project Summary and the ability of the recipient to meet the goals of the program.