Nearly $1.2 Million Awarded to Further Sustainable Ag Research
GRIFFIN, Georgia – The Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) program has awarded nearly $1.2 million in grants to further sustainable agriculture research across the Southern region for FY2012.
Improving soil quality to reduce yield and reduce diseases in organic rice production, breeding organic corn varieties to resist GMO contamination, extending the market season in high tunnels, and mapping sustainable farm systems are just a few of the projects funded through Southern SARE’s Research & Education Grants – the organization’s flagship grant program that emphasizes a whole systems approach to sustainable agriculture led by teams of interdisciplinary researchers.
Projects funded include:
LS12-248 Quantifying the Multiplier Effect: What sustainable local food systems can mean to local communities; $211,000; North Carolina State University; Nancy Creamer, 919-515-9447, nancy_creamer@ncsu.edu
LS12-249 Improving Soil Quality to Increase Yield and Reduce Disease in Organic Rice Production; $225,000; Texas A&M University Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Beaumont; Fugen Dou, 409-752-2741, f-dou@aesrg.tamu.edu
LS12-250 Extending the Market Season with High Tunnel Technology for Organic Fruit Production; $214,948; University of Arkansas; Curt Rom, 479-575-7434, crom@uark.edu
LS12-251 Mapping Sustainable Farm Systems: An integrated focus on upper South new producers as catalysts of “good stewardship”; $270,000; University of Kentucky; Keiko Tanaka, 859-257-6878, ktanaka@email.uky.edu
LS12-252 Developing Sustainable Tropical Leguminous Cover Crop and Green Manure Mulch Systems for Low-External-Input Crop Production in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Florida; $223,000; University of the Virgin Islands Agricultural Experiment Station; Stuart Weiss, 340-692-4020, sweiss@uvi.edu
LS12-253 Breeding Organic Corn Varieties to Resist GMO Contamination; $48,183; University of Tennessee; Dennis West, 865-974-8826, dwest3@utk.edu
Research & Education Grants award up to $300,000 for up to three years of project activities and are open to teams of researchers from public and private institutions such as 1862 and 1890 land-grant universities, environmental agencies, USDA-ARS, non-governmental organizations, and community based organizations.
In addition to the Research & Education Grant awards, Southern SARE has also funded its Large Systems Research Grants for FY2012. Large Systems Research Grants are an extension of Research & Education Grants, designed to assist systems research teams with funding to help keep research teams and research infrastructure together over the many years needed to obtain useful and meaningful long-term systems research results.
The awards are funded for a maximum of $100,000 per year for three years with the opportunity for additional three-year renewals.
The Large Systems Research Grant funded for FY2012 includes:
LS12-247 CEFS Long-Term Systems Research: Providing the building blocks of resilient food production systems; $100,000 for three years; North Carolina State University; S. Chris Reberg-Horton, 919-515-7597, chris_reberg-horton@ncsu.edu
Research & Education Grants will not be offered for FY2013 ( read more), however, the next grant cycle is expected to open in March 2013 with awards announced in February 2014. The next Call for Proposals for Large Systems Research Grants will open in September with awarded grant projects announced in February 2013.
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Published by the Southern Region of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Southern SARE operates under cooperative agreements with the University of Georgia, Fort Valley State University, and the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture to offer competitive grants to advance sustainable agriculture in America's Southern region.
