In partnership with PepsiCo, the AgMission™ initiative, co-created by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the World Farmers’ Organisation, is launching a funding opportunity for research to accelerate the adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) and improve climate resiliency of farms and food value chains for commodity crops in North America, Australia, Europe or South Africa.
Donor Name: Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research
Country: United States
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/22/2023
Size of the Grant: $1.5 million
Duration: 3 years
Details:
FFAR invites applications to develop paired research and practice implementation projects that identify opportunities for increased adoption of climate resilient practices and document the impact on key physical and economic variables at the farm level. Specifically, this opportunity seeks to identify practices that promote climate resilience and align with regenerative agriculture goals, including building soil health and fertility, reducing greenhouse gas emissions or increasing soil organic carbon. Additional regenerative co-benefits of practice adoption may include reducing fertilizer loss to watersheds and increasing biodiversity on working lands.
Program Priorities and Requirements
AgMission seeks projects that identify and demonstrate best practices for enhancing the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change, including extreme weather events.
Research should test the use of CSA practices to develop climate resilience to specific potential future climate impacts, while monitoring for any impact on GHG emissions and include a comparison of the CSA practice system to alternative practice systems representing current or historical management in the region. Projects that both drive adoption by producers new to the practice and document the impact of CSA practices on farm economic and/or environmental resilience, including GHG emissions impacts, will be prioritized.
Proposals should focus on agricultural systems that include at least one of: corn, wheat, oats, canola, soy or sugar beets in North America, Australia, Europe or South Africa. The practices or method to identify appropriate practices to be implemented and/or evaluated should be clearly detailed. These practices should be selected to reduce the potential harm of climate change impacts to crop yield and quality, including impacts from increasing temperatures and extreme weather events made more frequent by climate change. They anticipate the selection of practices will form one objective of the research project. Projects should explore questions related to whether and how regenerative practices enhance resiliency to climate impacts. This may include analyses and comparison of previous adoption within a region and/or evaluating the future impacts on the role of regenerative practices in contributing to the resiliency of farms to extreme events and/or other methods and project design.
Successful projects will:
- Collaborate with farmers and agricultural value chain stakeholders in the region of interest and incorporate stakeholder perspectives, questions and concerns in the project design.
- Emphasize close collaboration between researchers and implementor organizations with a track record of direct engagement with farmers to ensure the project generates in-field impact as well as valid research.
- Test strategies and make recommendations on how to effectively increase adoption of regenerative practices with a community of agricultural producers.
- Include monitoring and/or estimation of the GHG impact from the adoption of climate resilient practices and demonstrate increased adoption of CSA practices across the region of study.
- Evaluate the impact of the selected CSA practices on crop yield, crop quality and future security of food supply from the study region.
- Document both the economic and environmental impact of the practices on farm level resiliency.
Funding Information
At the discretion of the AgMission Executive Committee, they will award up to $6 million in grants through this program with individual projects not to exceed $1.5 million over three years.
Eligibility Criteria
- AgMission welcomes applications from domestic and international project implementers, higher education institutions, non-profit and for-profit organizations, and US government-affiliated research agencies. Collaborative multi-institution applications are encouraged.
- Any individual(s) with the skills, knowledge and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research as Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) may apply to the program through their home institution or organization.
For more information, visit FFAR.
