Silos are valuable on farms and ranches but not in federal agencies. Within USDA and other federal agencies, various departments too often operate in isolation, creating confusion and challenges for constituencies wanting to utilize their resources.
Leaders at USDA AMS understood that when they enlisted Flower Hill Institute and five other organizations to create the Meat and Poultry Processing Technical Assistance (MPPTA) Program in 2022.
From the outset, AMS directed our network to connect new and expanding processors with resources across the alphabet soup of USDA agencies. That included letting eligible processors know about the Farm Service Agency’s Farm Storage Facility Loan Program, assisting enterprises in obtaining their FSIS Grant of Inspection, and working with the National Institute for Food and Agriculture to expand workforce training resources for smaller meat and poultry businesses.
That cross-agency communication and collaboration have been especially vital during the past year.
A Congressional Appropriations Committee directed funding to USDA Rural Development (RD) to establish a one-time expansion program for fish processors on the Eastern Seaboard to develop and expand the capacity to harvest, process, and market wild-caught blue catfish, an introduced species wreaking havoc on the ecosystems of the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding waterways.
Flower Hill began gathering input from processors around the Chesapeake on the additional infrastructure needed to expand wild catfish processing and marketing. Then we passed that input along to the Rural Development staff crafting the grant. When the official Request for Proposals was issued, Flower Hill again assisted processors as they developed and submitted their grant applications this fall.
Flower Hill Team meeting with AMS officials.
In conjunction with a planned meeting with AMS officials in Washington, D.C. in November, Flower Hill Regional Directors Dave Carter and Chris Roper, along with Executive Director, Roger Fragua, huddled with the Rural Development staff tasked with developing a new Meat Processing Expansion Grant to be offered shortly after the new year. Following that meeting, Flower Hill hosted an online listening session attended by 185 people to gather stakeholder input for the RD staff. A smaller roundtable hosted by Flower Hill in late December gathered additional input from agricultural lenders working with smaller processors.
AMS also facilitated a virtual meeting in December to connect Flower Hill with FSIS leadership to discuss how the MPPTA network can work more directly with that regulatory agency to help smaller processors successfully attain and retain their Grants of Inspection.
These cross-agency relationships are helping to bring more information, resources and support to processors nationwide. As we continue through 2026, we’ll continue to work to keep silos on the farms and ranches, where they belong.
