America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative offers resources such as grants, loans, technical assistance services, programming, and other forms of support to eligible projects that will improve access to fresh, healthy foods in underserved rural and urban areas.
In 2021, we are offering a targeted small grants program and technical assistance to healthy food retailers and food enterprises.
For-profit businesses, cooperative businesses, nonprofit organizations, and state, local, and tribal governments and governmental agencies will be eligible to apply.
The program will support projects aiming to strengthen, expand, and innovate within the food retail supply chain. The program could assist a variety of organizations, business models, and capital needs of ventures that process, distribute, aggregate, market, and sell healthy, fresh, and affordable foods to underserved communities and markets. Projects must demonstrate how their proposed project will contribute to food access through the availability of staple and perishable foods for retail sale.
To be eligible for assistance, applicants must propose a project that:
- Plans to expand or preserve the availability of staple and perishable foods in underserved areas with low and moderate-income populations; and
- If the project involves retail sales, accepts benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) established under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (7 USC 2011 et. Seq.).
Confirm Location Eligibility
To be eligible for grant funding or technical assistance through America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative, applicants must propose a project in an underserved area. You can use the interactive map below to determine if your project’s proposed location qualifies as underserved.
Eligible areas include:
- USDA’s 2019 Low Income, Low Access census tracts.
- Census tracts adjacent to USDA’s 2019 Low Income, Low Access census tracts with median family incomes less than or equal to 120 percent of area median family income.
- Census Block Groups in 2016 Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) Areas meeting one or more additional distress criteria.
Some other measures of limited access to supermarkets or grocery stores that have been adopted for use by a local government or philanthropic healthy food initiative are also valid for determining eligibility, when used in conjunction with additional distress criteria. For help determining if your project is in an eligible area determined by a local government of philanthropic healthy food initiative, please contact us at help@investinginfood.com.
There are additional data layers in the map below that share information on income, availability of food nutrition programs, as well as NMTC and CDBG eligibility that may be helpful in your planning or application process. You can view additional data by clicking on the “New Map” icon on the upper left and selecting a different data layer. Click on any shaded area of the map to find the exact value for that location.