America's Healthy Food Financing Fund

America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative Food Access and Retail Expansion Fund (HFFI FARE Fund)

Limit: 1 // Available: 0 

M. Glaubach (Cooperative Extension)

Reinvestment Fund, in its capacity as National Fund Manager for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative at USDA Rural Business-Cooperative Service, requests applications for America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative Food Access and Retail Expansion Fund (HFFI FARE Fund) for the 2024-2025 funding cycle.  

Over the next five years, the HFFI FARE Fund will provide $60 million in loans, grants and technical assistance to food retail and food retail supply chain projects. For the 2024-2025 funding cycle, at least $9,000,000 is available for implementation grants, at least $1,500,000 is available for technical assistance, and at least $16,000,000 is available for loans. The purpose of HFFI is to support food supply chain resiliency, improve access to healthy foods in underserved areas, create and preserve quality jobs, and revitalize low-income communities by providing financial and technical assistance, either directly or through other partners and intermediaries, to eligible fresh, healthy food retailers and enterprises to overcome the higher costs and initial barriers to entry in underserved areas. Eligible applicants for grants and technical assistance include for-profit, nonprofit, and cooperatively owned businesses, institutions of higher education, state and local governments and tribal governments. Eligible applicants for loans include for-profit, nonprofit, and cooperatively owned businesses, and institutions of higher education. Applicants may include food retailers or non-retail food enterprises.  Grants and loans will be available to eligible organizations in eligible underserved areas to implement a project that is designed to improve access to fresh, healthy food through food retail. 

This notice identifies the objectives for the HFFI FARE Fund, deadline dates, funding information, eligibility criteria for projects and applicants, and application requirements and associated instructions needed to apply for an HFFI FARE Fund grant, loan, or technical assistance. 

The HFFI Food Access and Retail Expansion (FARE) Fund will only accept one Funding Inquiry per entity in a 12-month period. If there are multiple entities involved in a project, they can each submit a Funding Inquiry. However, each project will only be able to apply for each type of assistance (loan, grant, TA) once in a 12-month period, regardless of how many entities are involved. For example, If Entity A and Entity B are working on Project Grocery, each can submit a Funding Inquiry on behalf of the project. But they need to decide which entity will apply for which type of funding. Therefore, Entity A could apply for a loan and Entity B could apply for TA and a grant, but they cannot both apply for a grant for Project Grocery within a 12-month period.