Louisiana Department Of Agriculture & Forestry

The Louisiana Department Of Agriculture & Forestry Central Depository Account Division, doing business as Ldaf, is a U.S. state government entity that receives and administers federal grants for agricultural, forestry, food safety, and conservation programs across Louisiana as a grant recipient rather than a federal contractor. The division operates as the Central Depository Account — the administrative vehicle through which the parent state agency receives and allocates federal funding to implementing programs.

Ldaf's federal footprint centers on cooperative agreements and formula grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration. The agency serves as prime recipient on 640 of its 645 recent awards (99%), with work performed statewide across Louisiana. The portfolio spans pest detection and eradication, wildlife and forest management, animal disease surveillance, meat and poultry inspection, emergency food assistance administration, specialty crop development, water quality improvement, and pesticide regulatory enforcement. Representative work includes a $1.125 million cooperative agreement with the FDA (CFDA 93.103) to conduct surveillance of animal food products for microbial and chemical contaminants at the LDAF Agricultural Chemistry Laboratory through June 2030; a $3.282 million EPA nonpoint source implementation grant (CFDA 66.460) to install best management practices in the Bayou Bartholomew and Big Creek watersheds through September 2030; a $4.602 million USDA meat and poultry inspection cooperative agreement (CFDA 10.475) to operate intrastate inspection programs ensuring compliance with federal food safety standards; and multiple $100 thousand to $500 thousand project grants from the USDA Forest Service for wildland fire assistance, forest stewardship, and forest health activities (CFDA 10.698, 10.664, 10.721).

Customer concentration sits heavily with USDA programs. The Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) leads award volume with 197 grants supporting pest surveys, animal disease traceability, and foreign animal disease preparedness across multiple commodity surveillance programs including citrus, cotton, solanaceous crops, forest pests, and sudden oak death detection. The Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service accounts for 152 awards combined, funding emergency food assistance program administration (TEFAP, CFDA 10.568), senior farmers market nutrition (CFDA 10.576), child nutrition (CFDA 10.560), and specialty crop block grants (CFDA 10.170). The USDA Forest Service Region 8 – Southern Region and broader Forest Service collectively account for 91 awards spanning consolidated payment grants, state forest action plan implementation, and cooperative forestry assistance (CFDA 10.664, 10.698). The FDA awarded 19 grants for animal food surveillance and inspection program support. These five customer lines account for 68% of recent award volume and span 53% of combined potential value across the portfolio.

Activity has remained consistent, ranging from 29 to 44 awards annually over the past five years (2022–2026), with 19 awards in 2026 year-to-date. Twenty-seven awards (combined potential value $362 thousand) face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, primarily cooperative agreements with APHIS for annual pest survey and animal disease traceability programs and formula grants from USDA Food and Nutrition Service with defined fiscal-year cycles. Ldaf operates as a subordinate division of the State of Louisiana, which holds the parent grant authority and UEI. The division's role is administrative implementation and pass-through of federal funds to executing programs within LDAF's organizational structure.