The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA) announced March 22 the availability of funding to help assure that rural communities have sufficient access to livestock veterinary services. Funding is made through NIFA’s Veterinary Services Grant Program (VSGP).

VSGP was designed to support education and extension activities and practice enhancement initiatives that will enable veterinarians, veterinary students, veterinary technicians and veterinary technician students to gain specialized skills and provide practices with additional resources needed to more effectively mitigate veterinary service shortages in the U.S., NIFA said. Ultimately, VSGP will bolster the capacity of veterinary practitioners to provide food animal veterinary services in designated rural veterinarian shortage situations.

New and resubmitted applications will be accepted for two project types: (1) education, extension and training, and (2) rural practice enhancement. NIFA reviews proposals submitted to its competitive grant programs through an external peer review process. Specific details on panel meetings, review formats and evaluation criteria vary among programs.

Pending congressional appropriations, approximately $2.4 million will be available to support VSGP in fiscal 2018, NIFA said.

The application deadline is May 18, and more information is available on the VSGP funding opportunity webpage.