VDACS SCBGP 2027 application · pre-drafted for owner review.

IronRoost Farms, Inc. requests Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (SCBGP) 2027 funding to expand Central Virginia’s hydroponic leafy-greens production capacity and to harden the cold-chain and buyer-pipeline rails already proven under the 2026 poultry pilot. The 2027 cycle retargets the same vertically integrated platform — same land base, same walk-in dispatch cooler, same Mid-Atlantic broker / institutional buyer relationships — toward a specialty-crop class where the displaced-capacity gap is widening: [FILL — JP] independent fresh-cut processors within a 100-mile radius of our Nottoway / Lake Anna operating base, against [FILL — JP] active regional buyers naming local leafy-greens supply as a friction point, and a public-target denominator of [FILL — JP] lbs / week of Mid-Atlantic fresh leafy-greens purchases [FILL — JP]. The urgency for the 2027 cycle is sharpened by the recent closure of Tyson’s Glen Allen further-processing operation, which removed the largest independent fresh-cut leafy-greens handler inside our 100-mile radius and left regional buyers with one fewer regional source at the exact moment Virginia Grown / Virginiafresh co-branding demand is accelerating.

The application’s underlying grower-network rationale is that the 2027 cycle shifts the on-farm economic uplift from contract poultry growers to contracted hydroponic CEA operators, on the same fair-contract language already documented in the existing SCBGP working outline. The buyer-outreach rationale is unchanged from the 2026 cycle’s cold-chain moat: the named Mid-Atlantic buyers we have already mailed — PFG, Saval, Wholesome, UVA Dining, VCU Dining, Riverside Regional, Sentara, and CCCPS via the four pre-staged buyer outreach letters in the public/correspondence/ directory — are the same buyers who pull fresh-cut regional leafy greens under their existing PO structures. The cold-chain footprint already validated by the 2026 poultry pilot makes the 2027 leafy-greens expansion leverageable without a parallel cold-chain capital cycle.

Without the SCBGP 2027 award, the displaced-capacity gap left by the Glen Allen closure is filled by out-of-state coastal CEA, with a documented price volatility and lead-time friction pattern already described in the RRS Foodservice, farm-to-table restaurant, and CCCPS buyer letters. With the SCBGP 2027 award, IronRoost Farms stands up a Central Virginia specialty-crop CEA capacity that anchors a regional buyer pipeline, retains processing-knowledge jobs inside the state, and aligns Virginia’s Grown / Virginiafresh branding with a true local producer rather than a coastal shipper re-routed through a Richmond distributor.

Producer identity. IronRoost Farms, Inc. is a Virginia C-Corporation (SCC #12012225) headquartered at 2593 Cougar Lane, Locust Grove, Virginia 22508. The producer-of-record is Jean-Pierre Maldonado, Sole Director and Officer, IronRoost Farms, Inc. The operating model is a vertically integrated regional food platform: producer-side CEA capacity on Central Virginia land, a VDACS-licensed on-site processing and dispatch facility, a Tuesday / Friday refrigerated delivery cycle into the Richmond / Charlottesville / Southside VA corridor, and durable PO structures with named broadline distributors, institutional accounts, and farm-to-table restaurant accounts. The producer identity values below are reused from the IronRoost wholesale offer sheet letterhead and require no new entity documentation between SCBGP cycles.

Phase 1 scope — hydroponic microgreens (current harvest window, Aug–Sept 2026). The Phase 1 commercial line covers the four microgreen varieties broadline buyers consistently ask for and routinely struggle to keep year-round: sunflower (1 lb clamshell / 5 lb MOQ), pea shoots (1 lb clamshell / 5 lb MOQ), radish micro (1 lb clamshell / 5 lb MOQ), broccoli micro (1 lb clamshell / 5 lb MOQ), wheatgrass (1 lb clamshell / 5 lb MOQ), and mixed brassicas (a kale / arugula / mustard / broccoli rabe blend at 5 lb MOQ). Clamshell labels carry farm name, lot ID, and harvest date — usable as a “today’s harvest” stamp on the buyer’s menu insert. Pack sizes are 1 lb retail-ready clamshell, 5 lb food-service flat, 10 lb distributor flat. Net-30 default, Net-15 by request, ex-farm pricing, no broker markup on direct Phase 1 accounts. The Phase 1 floor at first commercial cycle is 200–400 lbs / week across the Phase 1 varieties, conservative on the equipment-baseline ceiling; Year-2 supply scales as the facility fill-rate increases.

Phase 2 scope — SCBGP 2027 hydroponic leafy-greens capacity build-out (24-month project period). The 2027 award funds the build-out of hydroponic leafy-greens capacity: [FILL — JP] CEA square footage of NFT / DWC / vertical greenhouse footprint dedicated to the 2027 leafy-greens line, with [FILL — JP] named CEA operating partners under fair contract, and a cold-chain handling SOP that carries the Phase 2 leafy harvest through dispatch at ≤ 41°F walk-in to the buyer-side receiving cooler. Phase 2 specialty crops include lettuce, kale, spinach, arugula, and culinary herbs — specialty-crop categories unambiguously within SCBGP’s statutory definition and formerly displaced by the Glen Allen exit. The 2027 grower-contracting motion is the Phase 2 analogue of the 2026 contract-grower motion: producer ↔ CEA operator fair-contract language, anchored on the same seed deployment waterfall documented on the Financials page. Phase 2 capacity opens an additional SKU set to the existing broker / institutional / restaurant-direct buyer pipeline and rebalances the regional channel mix away from the post-Glen-Allen reality of one fewer independent regional source.

The 24-month project period divides into four quarters (Q1–Q4 of each project year). Each quarter maps to a discrete deliverable with a named responsible party. The named Mid-Atlantic buyers in the Q2 channel build-out quarter are pulled from the four pre-staged buyer outreach letters: PFG / Saval / Wholesome at the broadline-distributor level (broker-outreach letter), UVA Dining / VCU Dining / Riverside Regional / Sentara at the institutional level (RRS foodservice letter), farm-to-table restaurant direct accounts (restaurant outreach letter), and CCCPS at the K-12 farm-to-school level (CCCPS outreach letter). The owner confirms which of those named buyers appear in the final 2027 RFA scope on the day the RFA drops; the draft below carries the full set as default.

VDACS SCBGP 2027 follows the standard federal cost categories: Personnel, Fringe, Travel, Equipment, Supplies, Contractual, Other, Indirect. SCBGP is a federal grant administered by VDACS, with IronRoost’s match dollars funded by the seed deployment waterfall documented on the Financials page — operating capital, not debt. The match-amount column on each row below is the IronRoost share; the SCBGP request column is the federal / state share. The indirect rate uses the federal 10% de minimis rate per 2 CFR 200.414, unless the 2027 RFA specifies a different rate on the day the RFA opens. Every dollar cell below is a [FILL — JP] marker — the 2027 RFA ceiling is not yet published, and the cost-reasonableness sentence on each cost category pairs with the buyer-channel commitments already documented in the broker-outreach letter so the budget pairs with the Section 2 narrative by construction.

Cost-reasonableness paragraph. Every dollar in the table above is backed by a one-sentence reasonableness justification in the cost-reasonableness column: market-rate anchoring on personnel and fringe, prior-bid references on equipment, and fair-contract framework language on contractual. The match column is funded by the seed deployment waterfall documented on the Financials page (no new debt) and reaches the SCBGP match minimum (typically 20–25%) line-by-line. The indirect rate is cited verbatim — 10% de minimis per 2 CFR 200.414 unless the 2027 RFA specifies otherwise. State any negotiated indirect cost-rate agreement (NICRA) in lieu of de minimis if IronRoost has one on file at the day of submission.

The three objective cards below map to the three objectives most likely to score on a hydroponic-leafy-greens 2027 application. Every objective carries a numeric baseline, a numeric target, a data-source owner, and a verification cadence. The owner fills in the exact numbers against the 2027 RFA on the day the RFA opens; the data-source language below is the recommended default and pairs with the Section 3 work-plan quarters by design.