Strengthening Rural Cooperatives and Communities Act
Sponsored By: Representative Riley (NY)
In Committee
Summary
Strengthens and expands Rural Cooperative Development Grants. The bill clarifies what 'cooperative development' covers, ties grant scoring to equity and service commitments, requires recipients to serve socially vulnerable communities, and creates mandatory data analysis and annual interagency reporting.
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- Cooperative developers and new co-ops gain a clearer, broader definition that explicitly includes outreach, education, training, and technical assistance for startup, expansion, and ongoing sustainability.
- Socially vulnerable, underserved, and distressed communities are explicitly prioritized because grant recipients must commit to providing technical assistance and other services to those communities.
- Grant scoring and selection shift to favor applicants who meet the specified equity and service criteria, replace a prior subparagraph with the new service requirement, and remove a previous discretionary qualifier in one funding provision.
- Transparency increases. The USDA must analyze program research and include those results in the interagency working group's annual report. The working group must report to Congress within 180 days of enactment and annually after that. The program tracking period is updated to 2025–2029.
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Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
1 provisions identified: 1 benefits, 0 costs, 0 mixed.
More help for rural co-ops
This bill would update Rural Cooperative Development Grants. It would define cooperative development to include outreach, education, training, and technical help for starting or growing co-ops. Applicants who meet priority service requirements would get the most scoring points. Grant recipients would need to agree to serve socially vulnerable, underserved, or distressed communities. It would remove a discretionary clause so one program rule applies in all cases. USDA would have to analyze program data and include it in the annual interagency report. The interagency group would have to report to Congress within 180 days of enactment and every year after. The program’s timeline would shift to 2025–2029.
Sponsors & CoSponsors
Sponsor
Riley (NY)
NY • D
Cosponsors
Rep. Valadao, David G. [R-CA-22]
CA • R
Sponsored 3/6/2025
Roll Call Votes
No roll call votes available for this bill.
View on Congress.gov