The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP) announces the opening of the fiscal year (FY) 2025 application cycle. NIFA anticipates that approximately $10 million in funding will be available in FY25 to help mitigate food animal veterinary service shortages in the United States. VMLRP helps qualified veterinarians offset a significant portion of the debt incurred in pursuit of their veterinary medical degrees in return for their service in certain high-priority veterinary shortage areas. 

The VMLRP supports NIFA’s Animal Systems portfolio by facilitating professional workforce development in critical agricultural sectors related to animal health and well-being. The program contains two general categories of participation:  

• Mitigation of private veterinary practice shortage situations.  
• Mitigation of public veterinary practice and specialty veterinary discipline shortage situations. 
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VMLRP awardees commit to providing at least three years of food animal veterinary services in a designated veterinary shortage area in return for payments of up to $40,000 of student loan debt per year with a maximum of $120,000 for a three-year contract. VMLRP awardees are eligible to reapply to continue to serve their originally awarded shortage situation area in the last year of their contract or one year after their contract ends.  

The VMLRP Request for Applications (RFA) and the 2025 veterinary shortage situations are now available. The deadline for Letter of Intent (LOI) is March 31, 2025, and the application deadline is April 11, 2025. Renewal applicants must have a start date of January 1, 2022 (FY 2021) or January 1, 2023 (FY 2022) to apply for a FY2025 award.

We will send out a separate announcement when the Technical Assistance webinar for this RFA is scheduled. This information will also be posted to the VMLRP Request for Applications (RFA) page.

Please refer to the VMLRP Annual Report for more information about the program.  

Questions about the VMLRP application process may be sent by email to VMLRP.applications@USDA.g