Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Calling for 2023 Farmer Grant Proposals
The Call for 2023 Northeast SARE Farmer Grants is now available. Approximately $750,000 has been allocated to fund projects for this grant cycle. Awards typically range from $5,000 to $30,000, depending upon a project’s complexity and duration.
The online system for submitting proposals will open on Oct 1, 2022. Proposals are due no later than 5:00 p.m. EST on November 15, 2022.
Northeast SARE Farmer Grants provide the resources farmers need to explore new concepts in sustainable agriculture conducted through experiments, surveys, prototypes, on-farm demonstrations or other research and education techniques. Projects address issues that affect farming with long-term sustainability in mind.
Farmer Grants help farmers try new things that could improve their operations, according to Grant Coordinator Candice Huber.
“Farmers are natural problem solvers,” Huber says. “They see something that needs to be done and build a solution. Northeast SARE provides an opportunity for farmers to try solutions that improve quality of life, profitability, and environmental impact.”
Northeast SARE funds projects in a wide variety of topics, including marketing and business, crop production, raising livestock, aquaculture, social sustainability, climate-smart agriculture practices, urban and Indigenous agriculture and more. Last year, the cap for Farmer Grants increased from $15,000 to $30,000.
“We’re looking for people to pay a reasonable wage for their work on a grant project,” Huber says. "The additional funding is also more realistic for complex projects with more collaboration, education, and replication to increase the strength of results."
An informational webinar featuring multiple Farmer Grant recipient Tommye Lou Rafes will take place at 12:00 p.m. on October 4, 2022.
Rafes says the benefits of a SARE grant go beyond financial support. There's an emotional support to knowing that your problem is valid and worth spending time to study.
"Every day I walk around, and I have questions and I have problems," she says. "To have someone say 'Tommye, this is valuable, and this is something other people can learn from and hopefully this will help other people'... that was a big validation for me."
The Northeast region includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.
Learn more about Farmer Grants – northeast.sare.org/farmer
View the full call for proposals – northeast.sare.org/farmergrantcall
Register for the webinar – northeast.sare.org/farmergrantwebinar
View previous SARE Projects – projects.sare.org/