North Dakota Department Of Agriculture

North Dakota Department of Agriculture, a U.S. state government entity operating as a federal grant recipient, administers agricultural regulatory and compliance programs for USDA, FDA, EPA, and other federal agencies through cooperative agreements and project grants, with 286 prime awards (99% of the footprint) concentrated in plant pest surveillance, animal health administration, meat and poultry inspection, and specialty crop development.

The Department operates as a prime recipient on federal grant work only — it holds no federal contracts and does not function as a prime contractor on IDIQs or GWACs. Its award portfolio spans 289 total grants and sub-awards across 16 distinct federal customer agencies, with activity stable at 15 to 20 awards annually over the past five years. The organization is a child entity under the State of North Dakota, headquartered in Bismarck.

Federal grant work concentrates in three signature program areas. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) work dominates by volume: 137 cooperative agreements fund commodity pest and disease surveillance across exotic cyst nematodes (pale cyst, golden, pea cyst, soybean cyst, chickpea cyst, British root knot), khapra beetle, karnal bunt in wheat, and wood borer detection. Representative awards include cooperative agreements for pale cyst nematode surveying in seed potato areas (soil sample collection, lab testing coordination), karnal bunt wheat sampling at elevators with forwarding to the USDA lab in Phoenix, and corn and small grain pest occurrence surveys. The Department also operates animal identification and traceability programs, distributing official cattle identification devices to veterinary practitioners and recording distributions in federal databases to enhance livestock disease traceability. Additional APHIS work encompasses avian influenza and cattle health surveillance, swine health program support, and African swine fever / classical swine fever monitored certification pilot operations.

Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) awards fund state-administered meat and poultry inspection programs. The Department holds recurring cooperative agreements (most recently October 2025 – September 2026) valued at $703,333.33 and $854,000 respectively under CFDA 10.475 (Cooperative Agreements with States for Intrastate Meat and Poultry Inspection) and CFDA 10.477 (Meat, Poultry, and Egg Products Inspection), conducting ante-mortem and post-mortem facility inspections, product safety verification, and labeling compliance enforcement to federal standards. The Department also holds a single firm fixed-price definitive contract with FDA (awarded August 24, 2021, valued at $235,055.47 through August 31, 2026) for animal feed facility inspections in North Dakota, including compliance verification for medicated feeds, Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule standards, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy prevention measures.

Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) grants fund specialty crop competitiveness and market support. Block grant awards in the $2.5 million to $4.3 million range support multi-year projects (typically three years) enhancing potatoes, peas, lentils, beans, honey, and other specialty crops through 12 to 15 sub-awarded research, education, and marketing initiatives led primarily by North Dakota State University, the National Agricultural Genotyping Center, and the North Dakota Trade Office. The Department also holds recurring market information compilation and dissemination cooperative agreements (CFDA 10.326) extending through 2030, collecting and reporting state shipments, supplies, prices, and market conditions for agricultural commodities to national databases.

Grant work also spans USDA Forest Service invasive species and forest health initiatives, EPA pesticide regulatory program administration (training and certifying pesticide applicators, enforcing EPA labels, conducting compliance monitoring and outreach), NRCS livestock manure management technical and financial assistance, USDA Child Nutrition Farm to School programs, specialty crop block grants, and resilient food systems infrastructure. The Department holds a cooperative agreement from the EPA Region 8 (awarded October 1, 2023, completion September 30, 2026) funding comprehensive pesticide enforcement and applicator training activities to protect water quality and public health.

Customer concentration clusters around USDA agencies. APHIS accounts for 137 awards, FDA for 26 awards ($1.2 million combined potential value), FSIS for 21 awards, and AMS for 32 awards. The combined potential value across the entire portfolio is $1.5 million, but obligated dollars total $101.3 million — indicating that actual awarded dollars far exceed published ceiling values, likely due to recurring annual funding cycles and formula-grant mechanisms where each year's appropriation exceeds the original potential-value ceiling reported in grant notices.

The Department operates with minimal subcontractor exposure: only 3 awards (1%) are sub-awards. The two named sub-award recipients are the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (appearing on two 319 NPS pollution prevention program sub-awards in 2021 and 2023). Recompete exposure in the next twenty-four months is modest — 13 awards totaling $235 thousand in combined potential value reach completion within that window.