U.S. Department of Agriculture: Urban, Indoor and Emerging Agriculture

Deadlines: A letter of intent is due July 11, 2022; application deadline is September 22, 2022

The Urban, Indoor, and other Emerging Agricultural Production Research, Education and Extension Initiative (UIE) is a competitive grant program implemented in 2022 to support research, education and extension activities that facilitate development of urban, indoor, and other emerging agricultural production systems. The UIE emphasizes activities on several segments of the value chain, including production, harvesting, transportation aggregation, packaging, distribution, and marketing needs. The UIE program seeks applications that address all of the following:

• Explain the magnitude of the most urgent and critical needs or problems for urban, indoor, or emerging agriculture and how they will be addressed in the grant;
• Focus on opportunities to develop and strengthen:
  • income or employment,
  • enhanced quality of life and access to safe nutritious food for urban and Native American communities,
  • estimated or actual economic return for UIE food production systems,
  • private industry investment,
  • site selection and reduce barriers to land access;
• Describe a meaningful approach for blending research and extension expertise and other outreach and implementation approaches throughout the project to address principal objectives;
• Provide evidence that the project is aligned to stakeholder-provided priorities as follows:
  • identifying and promoting the horticultural, social, and economic factors that contribute to successful urban, indoor, and other emerging agricultural production systems,
  • analyzing the means by which new agricultural sites are determined, including an evaluation of soil quality, condition of a building, or local community needs,
  • developing new crop varieties and agricultural products to connect to new markets;
• Present expected solutions or improvements and how these will be assessed and measured;
• Address the potential costs of a proposed solution and describe how it can be scaled to be sustainable in the short term and long term; and
• Explain how the project will strengthen urban, indoor, or other emerging agricultural and food-production systems and how results will be adopted or applied at a local, regional, or national level.

Applicants must propose an “integrated” project, meaning that at least two of the three are included: research, education, and extension activities.

Amount: $9,400,000 is available for grants of up to $1,000,000 each. The average award size will be $50,000- $1,000,000. Conference grants may not exceed $50,000.

Eligibility: The following types of applicants may apply:
(A) State agricultural experiment stations;
(B) colleges and universities;
(C) university research foundations;
(D) other research institutions and organizations;
(E) Federal agencies;
(F) national laboratories;
(G) private organizations, foundations, or corporations;
(H) individuals; or
(I) any group consisting of two or more of the entities described in subparagraphs (A) through (H).

Link: https://www.nifa.usda.gov/grants/funding-opportunities/urban-indoor-emerging-agriculture

This post was filed under: