USDA is spending $110 million to expand meat processing through more than 50 grants for projects in 30 states, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Thursday.
The agency will distribute $83 million to help build or upgrade 24 meat processing plants through the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program and $26.9 million to fund equipment and facility upgrades to 33 recipients through the Local Meat Capacity Grant program.
“The point of this is you’re seeing an expansion of opportunity for small and mid-sized producers,” Vilsack said on a press call Tuesday. “You’re creating additional choice for farmers, more competition for their products.”
The Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program provides funding for building or expanding of processing facilities, installing new equipment, ensuring they are meeting packaging and labeling requirements, and helping companies meet staffing goals. Eligible facilities can receive a maximum of $10 million for projects, but not more than 30 percent of the total project cost.
Two facilities — Producer Owned Beef near Amarillo, Texas, and North State Processing LLC in Hamlet, North Carolina — received $10 million apiece for their projects, according to a list of recipients.
Producer Owned Beef will use the funds to buy equipment for a new plant expected to process 3,000 or more head of cattle per day. North State’s funding will go toward construction of a USDA-inspected facility for cattle, emu, water buffalo and alpaca processing.
The Local Meat Capacity Grant Program provides between $100,000 and $5 million in funding for processing expansion projects and $10,000 to $250,000 for equipment upgrades. Grant recipients are required to pay for half the project costs unless they are small and underserved business owners, in which case they only have to pay 25%.
In March, USDA announced $9.5 million in funding for 42 projects in the program’s first round.
Illinois meat plant Behrmann Meat and Processing got the largest grant in this round — just over $3 million to remodel a plant and purchase equipment like a roll stock packaging machine and a value-added sausage room with two smokehouses. The expansion is expected to allow the facility to serve 600 farmers, rather than 350, and expand its processing capacity by 30%, according to a list of recipients.
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