For questions related to the online submission system, please contact FFAR’s Grant Management team at grants@foundationfar.org.
For questions related to the Seeding Solutions grant program, please contact FFAR’s Grant Team at grants@foundationfar.org.
For questions related to the Challenge Area, AgMission or Programmatic Questions, please contact the appropriate Scientific Program Director:
Soil Health: LaKisha Odom (lodom@foundationfar.org)
Sustainable Water Management: Kathleen Boomer (kboomer@foundationfar.org)
Next Generation Crops: Jeff Rosichan (jrosichan@foundationfar.org)
Advanced Animal Systems: Nikki Dutta (ndutta@foundationfar.org)
Health and Agriculture Nexus: Rebecca Gyawu (rgyawu@foundationfar.org)
Urban Food Systems: John Reich (jreich@foundationfar.org)
AgMission: Allison Thomson (athomson@foundationfar.org)
We only accept scientific or programmatic and grants inquiries by email. We strive to respond to inquiries within two business days, but our response time depends on the volume of questions received and the complexity of the questions asked. Please note that we do not monitor this mailbox on evenings, weekends, or federal holidays.
Soil Health
The Soil Health Challenge Area aims to increase soil health by building knowledge, fueling innovation, and enabling adoption of innovative practices. FFAR believes that strategic soil health research is essential to increasing farmer and rancher productivity and profitability. We support research that provides a better understanding of what soil health is, how it is measured and how to manage and optimize the sustainable delivery of the ecosystem services that soils provide.
While FFAR will not seek to limit pre-applications to specific target areas within this Challenge area, we encourage applications that propose innovations that address the following research topics:
- Climate resilient soil management practices
- Assessments of the Soil Microbiome
- Measurements of microbial processes
- Investigations of microbial communities at different scales, including spatial, temporal and molecular
- Soil Enhancing Techniques
- Alternative Soil Amendments
- Optimization of Nutrient Use Efficiencies
- Linkages between farm productivity and soil health
- Quantitative assessments that demonstrate Soil health practice adoption and their connection to or impact on economic, socioeconomic, and physical health
- Novel/innovative strategies to address barriers to adoption of soil health practices
Sustainable Water Management
The Sustainable Water Management Challenge Area aims to enhance and protect an adequate supply of healthy natural waters to sustain long-term agricultural production and human/environmental health under shifting climate conditions. FFAR seeks to fund cross-disciplinary research that directly informs decisions related to sustainable water management in agricultural production, fostering broad-scale adoption of advanced management practices.
While FFAR will not limit pre-applications to specific target areas within this Challenge Area, we encourage applications to address the following:
- Evaluation of potential or unrecognized threats to ground- and surface-water resources
- Innovation in the designs, techniques, or strategies to advance sustainable water management
- Development of precision decision tools and modeling systems to support sustainable agriculture and water management in the face of climate change
- Investigation of how to use science-based information effectively to address stakeholder concerns and effective outreach strategies to increase adoption of conservation management strategies
Next Generation Crops
FFAR supports the advancement of novel, nutritious, profitable and resilient on-farm crops. There is a strong emphasis on increasing crop diversity and use of new technologies to benefit consumers, producers and the environment. FFAR seeks to fund projects with an emphasis on innovative technologies and environmentally-sound production practices, as well as the discovery and development of new end uses for both conventional and non-traditional crops. We also prioritize advanced breeding methods and development of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance for crops grown in organic and conventional cropping systems with the aim of providing increased farmer profitability and environmental resilience. FFAR is seeking ground-breaking research leading to increasing adoption of innovations across the US food system.
While FFAR will not seek to limit pre-applications to specific target areas within this Challenge Area, we encourage research applications that address any of the following areas:
- Crop diversification
- Crop resiliency
- Accelerated breeding methodologies
Preference will be given to applications that include:
- Emphasis on how we can increase on farm profitability.
- Creating additional consumer-based value at the farm level.
- More multifaceted teams that include economists and soil health. Thinking beyond the primary target and extend that team to include people who are thinking about things from different perspectives.
Advanced Animal Systems
The Advanced Animal Systems Challenge Area aims to support innovations and collaborative partnerships that improve animal health, welfare and productivity, antibiotic stewardship and the environment.
FFAR will not seek to limit pre-applications to specific topics within the Advanced Animal Systems Challenge Area. Pre-applications should describe innovative research, coupled with transformative partnerships, with the potential to shift paradigms in livestock production.
Projects that directly involve producers or end-users, with potential for large-scale adoption of results, are highly encouraged.
Urban Food Systems
The Urban Food Systems Challenge Area explores areas of innovation with the potential to transform urban food systems to improve food and nutritional security, human health outcomes, economic opportunities, and food system resiliency. FFAR supports innovative, systems-level approaches aimed at creating healthy and equitable food systems. Emphasis is placed on transdisciplinary approaches that take into account the connections between urban food systems and the urban environment, in addition to the connections between rural and urban communities to achieve this goal.
While FFAR will not seek to limit pre-applications to specific target areas within urban food systems, we strongly encourage applications that take advantage of data and infrastructure that spans different sectors to address the following research topics:
- Increase our understanding of the impact a region’s collective or potential production systems as part of an overall strategy to promote urban health and well being, ecosystem services, or climate variability risk mitigation
- Technologies and/or interventions that promote food and nutritional security within urban populations, including:
- Utilizing existing interventions in novel ways
- Transportation and/or the delivery of healthy and nutritious food
- Increasing the affordability of healthy and nutritious food
- Utilizing data across sectors to develop novel solutions
- Increasing our understanding of a region’s foodshed
- Systems and technologies that advance the food and agriculture economy within a region, including:
- Products: regional production, high-value products
- Circular Economy: food production/system byproducts
- Urban environment: design/organization to promote economic viability and efficiencies that enhance farmer profitability
Health-Agriculture Nexus
The Health-Agriculture Nexus Challenge Area supports innovative, systems level approaches (both technological and non-technological) aimed at reducing food and nutritional insecurity and improving human health in the United States and around the globe.
COVID-19 has caused major disruptions across the food system, which affected food security in various communities throughout the U.S. In the 2022 Seeding Solutions program, Health-Agriculture Nexus Challenge Area is seeking ground-breaking research leading to viable alternative distribution mechanisms to increase efficiency and resiliency of the distribution of and access to affordable and healthy foods, especially produce and protein products. Projects should take into consideration ecosystem factors needed to provide a viable, scaled solution such as affordability, consumer behavior, material sustainability (i.e., packaging), ability to scale and/or replicate nationally, as well as the social, environmental and economic impacts. Projects that emphasize these food distribution/access issues in underserved population(s) are strongly encouraged.
AgMission
The objective of AgMission is to support research, innovation and data systems to advance knowledge of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices and increase their adoption. CSA refers to practices that enhance resiliency and adaptation of agricultural lands and production systems as well as practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and/or increase soil carbon.
AgMission is a collaboration between FFAR, the US Farmers and Ranchers in Action and the World Farmers’ Organisation and prioritizes research that is co-designed with agricultural stakeholders and engages farmers and ranchers directly. While FFAR will not seek to limit pre-applications to specific target areas, we encourage applications that address the following research areas:
- Identify and quantify the greenhouse gas emissions reductions (CO2, N2O and CH4) from CSA practices in combination with any associated agronomic and economic costs or benefits in specific geographies and production systems.
- Advance understanding of agricultural production systems that can withstand greater variability in precipitation and greater temperature extremes.
- Examine and define the social, cultural, educational and/or technological conditions that lead to successful adoption and persistence of CSA practices