The USDA terminated a $59 million University of Idaho grant on Monday, April 14, the largest in the school’s history. According to the university’s press release, this was a result of changing criteria implemented by USDA and the cancellation of the original grant program.
Due to the grant cut, 26 employees have lost their jobs, including 13 graduate students, three post-doctoral fellows and 10 others, according to the Spokesman-Review.
The grant was part of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, which now requires at least 65% of the grant funds to go directly to producers or farmers. In UI’S Innovative Agriculture Marketing Partnership project, the original recipient of the grant, the proposal allocated only around 50% of the funding for direct incentive payments to producers. The rest of the grant was “intended to provide technical and marketing services to enrolled producers – saving them the cost of contracting those services independently.”
USDA is now relaunching the PCSC program as the new Advancing Markets for Producers Initiative. This reformative effort will “utilize existing funding” with no new funding made available for current partnerships, according to USDA. UI will be allowed to resubmit their proposal to meet the new criteria by June 20 of this year.
USDA will still honor all eligible expenses that occurred prior to April 13, according to their website.
Rebekah Brown can be reached at [email protected].