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Grant Program Helps Farmers Research and Demonstrate New Ideas
Farmers always have new ideas for improving their operations. The problem is that those ideas usually require money. Now there is a way to match funds with ideas to improve the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of farming.
The North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NCR-SARE) Program is currently accepting applications for their 2006 Farmer Rancher Grant program. NCR-SARE awards grants to farmers and ranchers for innovative on-farm research, demonstration, and education projects. The program provides up to $6,000 for individual grants and up to $18,000 for grants awarded to groups of three or more farmers.
Larry Jacoby and Judy Moses of Downing, Wisconsin received a grant to help them market goat meat and lamb to Somali immigrants and other ethnic groups.
“SARE grants have allowed us to collaborate with other producers to address niche markets in our community that would have been too risky to explore without this support,” commented Judy.
“Also, the grant writing process helped us develop and refine our idea by brainstorming with producers, extension agents and marketing professions. We believe this process would have been helpful even if our grant hadn’t been funded.”
Other SARE farmer grants in Wisconsin have funded research on nutritional differences in milk from cows on pasture, supported establishment of a demonstration orchard on the Bad River Indian Reservation, helped farmers fine-tune grazing systems, allowed farmers to evaluate new crop varieties, and contributed to a wide range of other innovations. Projects funded by SARE are listed on the web at http://www.sare.org/reporting/report_viewer.asp.
NCR-SARE grants are awarded based on how well projects will improve long-term profitability, help the environment, and advance social goals such as producing healthy foods, enhancing quality of life on the farm, and supporting communities.
Last year NCR-SARE funded 47 grants totaling $414,489. This year farmers and ranchers throughout the North Central Region will once again have the opportunity to apply for roughly $400,000 in grant assistance.
The 12 states that comprise the North Central Region are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The NCR-SARE program receives its funding through the United States Department of Agriculture.
Grant proposals are due in the NCR-SARE office by December 1, 2006. Interested applicants may contact NCR-SARE at 1-800-529-1342 or ncrsare@unl.edu for more information. The current Farmer Rancher Grant Call for Proposals application is on the NCR-SARE web site at http://www.sare.org/ncrsare/prod.htm.
For more information, contact Diane Mayerfeld, the Wisconsin SARE Coordinator, at (608) 262-8188 or dbmayerfeld@wisc.edu; or Joan Benjamin, the North Central SARE Farmer Rancher Grants Coordinator, at 402-472-0809 or jbenjamin2@unl.edu.
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Click here to download a high resolution (300 dpi) photo for this story.
Photo caption: "Will Allen is part of a group of vegetable growers who received a SARE Farmer Rancher Grant in 2001 to market their produce to urban residents."