Montana awards more than $260,000 to ag-businsesses

Apr 21, 2015

There’s still $110,000 in funding available

Ten agricultural projects in Montana will share $260,924 in grants from the Department of Agriculture.

“Expanding value-added agricultural businesses and helping create more opportunities for producers to process and sell products locally is part of the Main Street Montana project. These grants will help boost locally grown products, and help local foods expand into more schools and institutions,” said Governor Steve Bullock.

The recipients include:

Tizer Meats
They’ll use $50,000 to purchase equipment and expand meat production in the Helena area.

Montana State University Extension – Lewis and Clark County
$9,932 will be used to purchase supplies to perform fruit tree research at sites in Lodge Pole and Shelby.

Lake County Community Development Corporation
With the $13,000 they received they will buy food processing equipment to help the Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center in Ronan to build agricultural food facilities and help with their farm-to-school and farm-to-institution programs.

Community Food and Agriculture Coalition
With $15,000 they will assist beginning farmers and ranchers across Montana as well as provide train-the-trainer programs.

Hedstrom Dairy
With their $29,713 they will buy a herd monitoring system for the Kalispell Kreamery Dairy to help improve herd health and productivity.

Powder River Meat Company
They received $50,000 to help with construction costs and expand meat production in the Terry, Montana operation.

But wait, there’s more.

An extra $110,000 has been made available for other projects and agricultural businesses.

The deadline for the application is May 4^th, 2015 at 2:00pm. Interested parties are encouraged to contact local agriculture development centers or economic development organizations to see about assistance.

Join the discussion and tell us if you’re a part of any of the projects that received funding. What kinds of projects in Montana would you start up if you knew you were eligible for the $110,000 in funding?

Montana is making money available to support agriculture

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