The Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Program is inviting farmers and growers to submit proposals to its Farmer Grant Program.
Proposals are due online by 5 p.m. on Nov. 16 for projects starting next spring. Funded projects, which are capped at $30,000, will be announced in late February 2022.
The call for proposals, including detailed instructions on how to apply, is posted on the Northeast SARE website at www.northeastsare.org/farmergrant. Questions about the grants program should be directed to northeastsare@uvm.edu.
A webinar about this grant program will be offered on Oct. 5 at noon. Although free, registration is required at https://go.uvm.edu/sarefarmergrantwebinar. The webinar will be live captioned and recorded. To request a disability-related accommodation to participate, please contact Deb Heleba at debra.heleba@uvm.edu or (802) 651-8335, ext. 552, by Sept. 21.
Northeast SARE Farmer Grants are intended for farmers who want to explore new concepts in sustainable agriculture through experiments, surveys, prototypes, on-farm demonstrations or other research and education techniques. Grants are not intended to provide start-up funds or be used to finance farm equipment or expand farm operations. Successful proposals explore new paths to sustainable agriculture or plan projects that are useful to other farmers.
The grant program is open to farm business owners and farm employees from all types and scales of farms (including urban agriculture and aquaculture) in the New England states, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. Indigenous growers are eligible as are farmers working on farms affiliated with an institution or a nonprofit organization so long as the farm meets Northeast SARE definition of a farm.
Northeast SARE encourages projects submitted from, or in collaboration with, women, the LGBTQ+ community and Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC).
Applicants may search the national SARE database for previously funded projects and topics.
Northeast SARE is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and housed within University of Vermont Extension.