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

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94 Grants found

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FoodShot Global Challenge #3 Bioactive Foods GroundBreaker Prize (Maryland) 

Year Awarded  2022

Total award amount   $240,000

Location   College Park, MD

Program   FoodShot Global Challenge

Matching Funders   FoodShot Global

Grantee Institution   University of Maryland

FoodShot Global’s GroundBreaker Prize recognizes rising scientific stars whose research has identified technological and ecological tools that enable farmers to optimize yields and the long-term health of the land. Dr. Ray Weil, professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland, received $240,000 for his work at the intersection of BioActive Foods, Precision Protein and Innovating Soil to improve human nutrition by addressing low sulfur soils that may cause deficiencies in key amino acids in African countries. Dr. Weil will develop innovative management practices that use Indigenous resources and plant diversity to help soils and agroecosystems provide crops with enough sulfur to increase yields and farmer income, while enhancing the amino acid profiles – and hence the nutritional quality – of the protein in grain legumes such as bean, peanut, cowpea and soybean.

FoodShot Global Challenge #3 Bioactive Foods GroundBreaker Prize (Massachusetts) 

Year Awarded  2022

Total award amount   $120,000

Location   Roxbury, MA

Program   FoodShot Global Challenge

Matching Funders   FoodShot Global

Grantee Institution   Foodshot Global

FoodShot Global’s GroundBreaker Prize recognizes rising scientific stars whose research has identified technological and ecological tools that enable farmers to optimize yields and the long-term health of the land. Josh Trautwein, CEO of About Fresh, received $120,000 for his work in BioActive Foods to deploy user-centered design and technology, including the Fresh Connect debit card, to create a scalable model for increasing access to healthy foods in low-income communities. About Fresh’s Fresh Connect platform enables healthcare organizations to make targeted investments in healthy food for people and to measure the impact of their investment, fulfilling the BioActive Foods goal of improving access to nutrient-dense and optimized foods that support brain, immune system, cardiovascular, metabolic and gut health.

AgMission™ Grant Aims to Improve Climate-Smart Farming Adoption 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $150,000

Total award amount   $400,000

Location   Federal Way, WA

Program   AgMission

Matching Funders   Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and World Vision

Grantee Institution   World Vision

Climate change is threatening agriculture globally, and small-scale farmers in low- and middle-income countries are particularly vulnerable. To strengthen their resilience, FFAR and Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) awarded a $300,000 competitive grant to World Vision through AgMission, an initiative co-created by FFAR and the World Farmers’ Organisation to unlock agriculture’s potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This joint investment will enable in-depth examination of small-scale farmer adoption of climate-smart agriculture in India, Kenya and Bangladesh.

Expanding OpTIS, a remote sensing tool to accelerate soil health and climate-smart practices 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $1,784,805

Total award amount   $3,592,805

Location   Arlington, VA

Program   AgMission

Matching Funders   The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Tillage Information Center and Regrow Ag

Grantee Institution   The Nature Conservancy

AgMission awarded The Nature Conservancy a $1,784,805 grant to expand the scale and scope of the Operational Tillage Information System (OpTIS). OpTIS is a remote sensing tool that gives the conservation and agriculture communities vital data to help farmers accelerate soil health and climate-smart practices.

Plant-Based Precision Irrigation Management for Improved System-Level Sustainability 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $753,206

Total award amount   $1,507,062

Location   Athens, GA

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   University of Georgia

Grantee Institution   University of Georgia

Cotton, which contributes billions to the United States’ economy, faces escalating threats from climate change-induced droughts. Cotton growers urgently need water management strategies to maximize productivity while minimizing water use. University of Georgia researchers are developing cotton-based precision irrigation scheduling strategies to ensure optimal water use to improve water use efficiency, ensure yield stability and enhance economic productivity.

UC Davis Receives FFAR Grant to Help Improve Vineyard Soil Health 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $999,003

Total award amount   $2,600,000

Location   Davis, CA

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   Jackson Family Wines

Grantee Institution   University of California Davis

Regenerative agriculture, which uses holistic farming and grazing practices to strengthen soil health and crop productivity, may help grape vines become more resilient to changing climate conditions. However, more research is needed to increase adoption of regenerative agriculture practices on vineyards. FFAR awarded a Seeding Solutions grant to the University of California, Davis to assess the effects of regenerative practices on vineyard soil health.

Tuskegee University Endowment 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $1,000,000

Total award amount   $2,000,000

Location   Tuskegee, AL

Matching Funders   Clif Bar & Company

Grantee Institution   Tuskegee University

This award establishes an endowment to advance organic agriculture and farming practices in the Southeast through the university’s College of Agriculture, Environment and Nutrition Sciences. The endowment will also focus on increasing the equity in organic farming, including developing a network of organic research among Southeast academic institutions, with a focus on HBCUs.

AgMission CIAT Grant Evaluates the Risk of Climate Disruption for Key Crops across Geographies 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $100,000

Total award amount   $200,000

Location   Palmira, Colombia

Program   AgMission

Matching Funders   PepsiCo

Grantee Institution   International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)

CIAT researchers are identifying and assessing the likelihood of future extreme weather events and their potential impacts on yields and quality of key crops in North America, South Africa, Egypt and Brazil.

Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) Grazing Research in the U.S. Northern Great Plains 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $1,550,000

Total award amount   $3,100,000

Location   Tempe, AZ

Matching Funders   McDonald's USA

Grantee Institution   Arizona State

Researchers are investigating whether Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing, in relation to widespread continuous grazing practices, contributes to measurable differences in overall soil health, environmental sustainability and farmer profitability within the U.S. Northern Great Plains.

Expanding development of a predictive model to quantify the risk reduction associated with specific soil health practices for use by private & public lenders & insurers to incentivize the transition to resilient, climate-smart agriculture 

Year Awarded  2022

FFAR award amount   $715,611

Total award amount   $1,449,610

Location   Grass Valley, CA

Program   Seeding Solutions

Matching Funders   Paul and June Rossetti Foundation, Mighty Arrow Family Foundation, J.M. Kaplan Fund, Great Island Foundation and Records-Johnston Family Foundation

Grantee Institution   Land Core

This research is generating an unprecedented market-based, actuarially-sound model to quantify farm risk mitigation through the adoption of good soil health practices. The model will provide agricultural lenders and insurers who price risk an economic rational to factor in incentives such as better terms or lower loan rates and insurance prices to producers adopting good soil health practices.