Awarded Grants
Below is a listing of our awarded grants that tackle big food and agriculture challenges.

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14 Grants found

Increasing Motivation and Promoting Persistence in Farmer Conservation

Novel Farmer-to-Farmer Learning Approaches to Cultivate a Culture of Conservation in the Mississippi River Basin

Equipping Conservation Professionals and Farmers with Tools to Deliver Edge of Field Practices

Increasing Water Productivity, Soil Carbon, and Sustainability of Integrated Multi-Crop Systems Using Field-Scale Research

U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative: Improving Dairy On-Farm Sustainability through Improved Soil Health and Manure Management

Irrigation Innovation Consortium Funds Seven Research Projects

New Crops ATLASS (Analytics Telenetwork: for Landscape, Agronomic, and Sociocultural Scalability)

FFAR Grant Addressing Surface and Groundwater Pollution on Farms

FFAR Awards Grant to Reduce Water Waste in Crop Irrigation

Precision Irrigation Scheduling for Specialty Crops

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Increasing Motivation and Promoting Persistence in Farmer Conservation

Year Awarded  2023

FFAR award amount   $120,238

Total award amount   $246,924

Location   Columbus, OH

Program   Achieving Conservation Through Targeted Information, Outreach and Networking (ACTION) Program

Matching Funders   Walton Family Foundation

Grantee Institution   The Ohio State University

Almost half of growers who do not implement conservation practices have positive attitudes about those practices. This project is testing the effects of interventions meant to close this gap. Researchers will develop targeted engagement that addresses farmers’ needs, including plans for overcoming challenges and maintaining motivation to continue conservation practices when financial incentives end. The team is developing interventions that target the gap between valuing conservation and implementing practices, assessing their effectiveness and creating guidance for scaling up the proposed interventions.

Novel Farmer-to-Farmer Learning Approaches to Cultivate a Culture of Conservation in the Mississippi River Basin

Year Awarded  2023

FFAR award amount   $127,676

Total award amount   $262,200

Location   Sparta, WI

Program   Achieving Conservation Through Targeted Information, Outreach and Networking (ACTION) Program

Matching Funders   Walton Family Foundation

Grantee Institution   University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension

This project is testing two engagement approaches to increase farmer willingness to adopt conservation practices. These approaches facilitate peer learning among farmers. The first approach is a series of virtual meetups for farmers to foster peer-to-peer conversation about implementing conservation practices. The second approach is a mini-grant program that will support pairs of farmers and farm advisors to implement edge-of-field practices, learn how to become opinion leaders and develop multimedia to encourage other farmers to adopt conservation practices.

Equipping Conservation Professionals and Farmers with Tools to Deliver Edge of Field Practices

Year Awarded  2023

FFAR award amount   $226,636

Total award amount   $480,426

Location   Ames, IA

Program   Achieving Conservation Through Targeted Information, Outreach and Networking (ACTION) Program

Matching Funders   Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition, Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership, Walton Family Foundation

Grantee Institution   Iowa State University

The cost and complexity of technical assistance is a major barrier to large scale adoption of edge-of-field conservation practices. This project is equipping professionals and farmers to deliver edge-of-field practices at scale in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. Researchers are studying models being used to implement these practices and are compiling intervention and engagement strategies that can be tailored to local conditions and target audiences. The project is using these studies to produce data-driven decision support tools that will allow farmers to scale up practices.

Increasing Water Productivity, Soil Carbon, and Sustainability of Integrated Multi-Crop Systems Using Field-Scale Research

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $7,657,633

Total award amount   $16,362,948

Location   Manhattan, KS

Matching Funders   Bayer Crop Science, Iowa State University, Kansas State University, LandScan, LI-COR, Mississippi State University, The Ohio State University, The University of Kansas

Grantee Institution   Kansas State University

Increasing crop yields while improving soil and watershed health requires understanding how agriculture management interacts with local environmental conditions. To date, this research remains fragmented and limited in scope. Kansas State University researchers are tackling these knowledge gaps and improving precision agriculture through an expansive study across the U.S. Corn Belt and Great Plains exploring how crop, soil and water management affect the soil microbial communities that drive agroecosystem functions. This project will investigate how combinations of cover crops, nitrogen, crop rotation and tillage, and water management under variable soil water conditions influence soil microbial communities that drive nutrient availability and loss.

U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative: Improving Dairy On-Farm Sustainability through Improved Soil Health and Manure Management

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $10,000,000

Total award amount   $23,200,000

Location   Rosemont, IL

Matching Funders   Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), Newtrient and other Net Zero Initiative partners

Dairy farmers face increasing pressure from the private and public sectors to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This grant to the Dairy Research Institute addresses research gaps in feed production and manure-based products that support the dairy community’s Net Zero Initiative, an industry-wide effort to adopt practices and technologies that reduce GHG emissions and improve environmental health.

Irrigation Innovation Consortium Funds Seven Research Projects

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $533,126

Total award amount   $1,512,550

Location   Fort Collins, CO

Matching Funders   The consortium, which is headquartered at Colorado State University, includes four other U.S. land-grant universities: University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Kansas State University, Texas A&M University and California State University-Fresno. The consortium’s founding and sustaining industry partners are: FFAR, Aqua Engineering, Irrigation Association, JAIN Irrigation, LI-COR, Lindsay Corporation, Northern Water, Valmont, Hunter Industries, Toro, Rubicon, Colorado Corn Growers Association and Senniger Irrigation Inc.

As freshwater resources become ever more precious, research in irrigation technology is critically needed to maximize efficiency. Water use efficiency is necessary to ensure resiliency in agricultural and landscape systems. The Irrigation Innovation Consortium is awarding seven grants tat enable industry and the public sector co-develop, test, prototype and improve equipment, technology and decision-support systems. 

New Crops ATLASS (Analytics Telenetwork: for Landscape, Agronomic, and Sociocultural Scalability)

Year Awarded  2021

FFAR award amount   $966,273

Total award amount   $1,939,773

Location   Salina, KS

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   The Land Institute, The Perennial Agriculture Project

Next-generation perennial grains are domesticated as nutrient-dense crops that can diversify the food supply, increase soil health and reduce irrigated water use. However, researchers do not have enough time and resources to conduct the conventional field research essential to develop reliable future seed supplies and optimize management practices. The Land Institute is implementing a civic science program to work with volunteers, farmers and land-grant extension programs to strategically collect data on cultivating next-generation perennial grains at small scales and test civic science as a method for advancing next-generation crop domestication.

FFAR Grant Addressing Surface and Groundwater Pollution on Farms

Year Awarded  2020

FFAR award amount   $316,000

Total award amount   $632,231

Location   Avondale, AZ

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   Stroud Center and the Science Technology and Research Institute of Delaware (STRIDE)

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of chemical compounds used in hundreds of applications. Due to their high thermal stability, resistance to chemical degradation and related waste disposal, PFAS is an environmental concern. Stroud Center researchers, in collaboration with STRIDE Center for PFAS Solutions, are examining the occurrence and migration of biosolid-derived PFAS in soil and water on agricultural fields.

FFAR Awards Grant to Reduce Water Waste in Crop Irrigation

Year Awarded  2020

FFAR award amount   $650,000

Total award amount   $1,300,000

Location   Davis, CA

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   University of California, Davis

Sensors currently available to growers to measure plant water status are prohibitive. UC Davis researchers are developing a small sensor sensitive enough to measure as little as a one percent change in leaf thickness and volumetric water content at the same time. These two measurements provide growers with clear, consistent data to calculate the plant’s water status.

Precision Irrigation Scheduling for Specialty Crops

Year Awarded  2019

FFAR award amount   $500,000

Total award amount   $1,323,242

Location   Boulder, CO

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   The University of Arizona Yuma, Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture, University of California, Western Growers Association

Farmers growing specialty crops deal with a multitude of complexities such as lacking access to cost-effective irrigation guidance tools. Specialty crops are often over-irrigated which can jeopardize food security. GeoVisual Analytics researchers are improving irrigation guidance and grower adoption of precision irrigation technologies by analyzing data and field measurements.