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

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471 Grants found

Outcome-Based Identification of Best Agronomic Practices to Reduce N Footprint in Agroecosystems

Accelerating Coffee Breeding Through Developing Tools to Screen for Critical Disease & Pest Resistance 

International Lettuce Genomics Consortium 4: Pre-competitive Foundational Research for Lettuce Breeding

Reducing the Carbon Footprint of U.S. Beef Cattle Production – a Texas Pilot Program

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Mapping Trees in Future Climates: Integrating Knowledge, Data and Tools to Enhance Agroforestry Adoption for Climate Resilience 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $300,000

Total award amount   $642,085

Location   Madison, WI

Program   AgMission

Matching Funders   Canopy Farm Management, Great Lakes Protection Fund, Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust, Savanna Institute and University-Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Grantee Institution   Savanna Institute

The Savanna Institute is producing high-resolution future climate suitability maps across the Midwestern U.S. that can be incorporated into tools to inform climate-smart agroforestry adoption.

Kansas State University Provides Data on Nitrogen Management Practices in the Great Plains 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $872,560

Total award amount   $1,745,125

Location   Manhattan, KS

Matching Funders   Kansas Fertilizer Research Fund, Kansas State University and the United Sorghum Checkoff Program

Grantee Institution   Kansas State University

Limited data is available that evaluates nitrogen losses and provides producers with the information needed to reduce nitrogen fertilizer application rates for water-limited crops by using climate-smart agriculture practices. Kansas State University researchers are examining the key components of the nitrogen cycle in water-limited grain sorghum production under various climate-smart agriculture practices.

Tribal Agriculture Fellowship Inaugural Cohort 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $2,500,000 over five years

Location   Fayetteville, AR

Matching Funders   Farm Credit, Farmer MacJohn Deere and Native American Agriculture Fund

The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and the Native American Agriculture Fund created the Tribal Agriculture Fellowship (TAF) program to create opportunities for students to advance their education in agriculture, increase specialized knowledge and promote sustainability of agriculture in Tribal communities. The TAF program selected 10 students to its inaugural cohort to advance their education and careers in an agriculture-related field. TAF is a fellowship program dedicated solely to supporting the educational and professional development of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students pursuing technical, undergraduate and graduate degrees in agriculture.

FFAR Fellows Program 2022 Cohort 

Year Awarded  2022

Matching Funders   North Carolina State University

A unique three-year fellowship that prepares up to 48 graduate students to be the next generation of food and agriculture scientists by using an interdisciplinary approach to career readiness. Fellows work with university and industry representatives, as well as their peers, to conduct urgent research and engage in professional development.

Noninvasive Wellness Monitoring of Broiler Growout Using Continuous Audio Analytics (2022) 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $300,000

Location   Atlanta, GA

Program   SMART Broiler

Matching Funders   McDonald’s Corporation and Tyson Foods

Grantee Institution   AudioT

This research is developing a scalable, low-cost audio-monitoring tool that tracks bird vocalizations to alert farmers to broiler welfare and behavior. Bird vocalizations can provide insight into flock status and can be a complementary tool to video-based systems.

Flockfocus – Developing Automated Surveillance Tools to Safeguard Chicken Welfare (2022) 

Year Awarded  2022

Total award amount   $1,000,000

Location   Belfast, Northern Ireland

Program   SMART Broiler

Matching Funders   McDonald's Corporation and in-kind support from multiple partners

Grantee Institution   Queen’s University Belfast

Existing methods for assessing animal welfare rely on human observation and subjective scoring which can be inaccurate and time consuming.This research is transferring intelligent surveillance techniques used for tracking humans to provide real time monitoring of individual birds within a flock. This camera-based technology, called FlockFocus, represents a significant improvement to monitoring technology currently available to the industry and has the potential for revolutionizing animal welfare in other sectors.

OPTICFLOCK: Welfare benefits of automated assessment of broiler chicken welfare 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $325,000

Location   Oxford, United Kingdom

Program   SMART Broiler

Matching Funders   McDonald’s Corporation, Munters and Tyson Foods

Grantee Institution   University of Oxford

Existing methods for assessing animal welfare rely on human observation and subjective scoring which can be inaccurate and time consuming.This research is refining and extending the testing of a novel camera and computer system called OPTICFLOCK. The project is comparing key welfare outcomes, including hockburn, foot pad lesions and lameness, in commercial flocks managed with or without the technology and incorporates strategies to facilitate producer adoption of OPTICFLOCK technology.

Nitrogen SAVings through soil hEalth (NSAVE): Leveraging regenerative agriculture to reduce nitrogen inputs, increase farmer profits & mitigate climate change 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $998,784

Total award amount   $2,427,633

Location   Ames, IA

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   Growers Edge, Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Meridian Institute, Midwest Row Crop Collaborative and Practical Farmers of Iowa

Grantee Institution   Practical Farmers of Iowa

Nitrogen is critical to plant growth and yields. Soil health practices can increase nitrogen availability, but farmers cannot determine by how much, so they apply additional, synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, which is costly, contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and can negatively impact land and water ecosystems. This research is quantifying how adopting soil health practices can reduce the need for nitrogen inputs without sacrificing yield. Farmers need this scientifically sound economic information to make the best decisions for their land.

Novel Strategies to Improve the Understanding of Liver Abscess Formation in Beef Cattle 

Year Awarded  2021

Total award amount   $250,000

Location   Lubbock, TX

Matching Funders   Texas Tech University

Grantee Institution   Texas Tech University

The exact cause of liver abscesses is unknown. However, once they are formed, they are highly susceptible to the Fusobacterium necrophorum (F. necrophorum) bacterium, resulting in major economic loss to producers due to impaired cattle performance and lower carcass value. This research investigates the gastrointestinal location, concentration and movement of F. necrophorum and Salmonella enterica, as well as the other organisms that live in the intestines of feedlot cattle with liver abscesses. This first phase of Hales’ research will inform a methodology to reduce F. necrophorum through a direct-fed microbial.