Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity

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Issuance Date: January 13, 2016 Due date for Questions: January 26, 2016, 1400 Bangladesh Time Application deadline: February 17, 2016, 1400 Bangladesh Time Subject: Notice of Funding Opportunity (NFO) Number: RFA-388-16-000001: Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity (RDC) The subject Notice of Funding Opportunity is seeking concept notes in the process for selecting an organization for a Cooperative Agreement from qualified US and non-US organizations to fund an activity titled the Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity (formerly known as Strengthening Agriculture Production and Market Systems). The purpose of the Activity: USAID/Bangladesh intends to award a five year assistance activity not to exceed $24.5 million under the US Government’s Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative, through a competitive Notice of Funding Opportunity (NFO), subject to the availability of funding. The Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops activity will improve small-holder rice and rotation crop productivity and market system competitiveness by using facilitation and market systems approaches to catalyze systemic changes through partnerships with the private sector and local actors. Small-holder productivity will improve by strengthening input and seed systems and expand the adoption of improved rice and rotation crop technologies. Market competitiveness will increase by improving value chain efficiencies, access to finance, and post-harvest services. The activity will incentivize crop diversification with rotational crops such as value-added rice varieties, lentils, mustard, mung beans, sunflowers, and other crops with the overall objective of improved food security through systemic changes that increase rural incomes. The Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops (RDC) activity will have two phases: an initial phase to broadly test and prove core strategies and a second phase of scaling and expanding successful approaches to include additional partnerships, markets and beneficiaries. The RDC activity will support Government of Bangladesh (GoB) priorities and the recently finalized Seventh Five-Year Plan Agricultural Development Strategy and is also aligned with the Bangladesh Country Investment Plan (CIP), a five-year plan to ensure sustainable food security through public investment in agriculture, food security and nutrition. RDC is aligned with USAID/Bangladesh’s current Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) and the FTF multi-year strategy, and will support the new CDCS framework (2016-2021) by working to sustainably reduce poverty and improve food security. The RDC activity contributes directly to the global goal of FTF, working to sustainably reduce poverty and improve food security, and furthermore supports the GoB’s goal “for achieving poverty reduction through accelerated agricultural investment and growth, contributing to the transformation to a middle-income country by 2021.” The GoB has been an active partner in planning and implementing USAID/Bangladesh’s development programs.

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