Applications Invited for Agricultural Research Project Grant

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About the Organization

At Grow Further, we engage farmers, scientists, and individuals in participatory innovation for global food security and sustainable agriculture.

Our members come from different backgrounds, but we all come eager to learn from each other, invest in the future of food, support scientists with overlooked ideas, and help small-scale farmers.

About the Grant

Grow Further invites agricultural researchers to submit proposals for funding, and in some cases also management assistance.

We don’t pretend to have all the good ideas and don’t believe in micro-management, but we do like to be clear about what we have in mind. Here are a few guidelines.

Socio - economic Goals:

We support grants relevant to smallholder farmers and other populations at risk of food insecurity and improve one or more of the following:

Nutrition: This includes both improving nutrient levels in crops (e.g., biofortification) and improving the raising of species that are already nutritious (fruits and vegetables, fish, etc.).

Climate adaptation: This encompasses not only heat tolerance but also almost all types of biotic (pests, diseases, weeds, etc.) and abiotic (heat, drought, salinity, submergence, cold, soil nutrient, etc.) stress tolerance in both crops and livestock.  Anything that reduces the risk of farming or helps farmers on marginal lands is likely also climate adaptation.  We also count work on adaptation to increased carbon dioxide levels as climate adaptation.

Farm income: This mainly encompasses facilitating the production of high-value products or improving the quality of existing products, but can in some cases involve lowering the cost of production.

Species:

We fund research on domesticated species relevant to food and nutrition security, including cereals; legumes; edible roots and tubers; fruits and nuts; vegetables and edible mushrooms; forage crops; animals raised for meat, milk, and/or eggs; and species that support food production (cover crops, bees, draft animals, etc.).

This does not include timber; biofuels; crops and livestock raised for fiber; crops grown for recreational substances; ornamental plants; herbs and flavorings unless there is a clear connection to food security; etc.  Projects that seek to improve the yields of major commodity grains do to some extent improve nutrition and farm income but are not our primary focus.

Disciplines:

We will consider proposals from a variety of disciplines, including information and communication technology in agriculture as well as more traditional disciplines like agronomy, crop science, plant protection, animal science, veterinary medicine, soil science, and agricultural engineering.

We are fairly discipline-agnostic, but as a practical matter may prioritize some disciplines over others early in our organizational development for reasons of grant size, risk, or time frame.  For example, we may need to show results relatively quickly and thus in the short term need to prioritize something like app development over something like fruit tree breeding.

Knowledge Systems:

We generally fund applied field research, including on-farm trials, as opposed to basic laboratory research.  However, for scaling up technologies we plan to rely on private-sector commercialization, government agricultural extension services, or affiliated impact investment funds rather than philanthropic capital.  Here’s how we look at potential grants within a larger knowledge transfer system:

Type of knowledge transfer	Minimum	Preferred
Teaching or capacity building	Researchers are adequately trained	Capacity building is integrated into work (e.g., training graduate students)
Extension or commercialization	Partners exist who can take results to scale	Adoption is integrated into work (e.g., on-farm trials)
Bottom-up knowledge	Obvious concerns about cultural acceptance have been addressed by market research	Bottom-up or indigenous knowledge is baked in (e.g., testing farmer ideas)

Grant Size

We generally make grants in a range of $10-100,000 per year.  Grants generally last for 1-5 years.  Particular grant announcements may include more specific ranges.  Our grants are considered cost-reimbursable.

Eligibility

All types of organizations, public, private, and nonprofit, are in principle eligible to apply, though we may apply additional due diligence to for-profit entities.

We anticipate awarding most grants to institutions based in low, lower-middle, or upper middle-income countries, though this is not a requirement as long as the grant benefits smallholder farmers and other populations at risk of food insecurity in these countries.  As a privately funded organization, we have flexibility to work in countries that aid agencies do not consider as a strategic priority.

How to Apply

To apply, please

Download the application form and instructions here.

Fill out the application form, including appropriate attachments, and submit it using the form below. For security reasons, we do not accept Zip files. Please submit a merged Word or PDF document including all attachments. A merged PDF document can be created by using the “print to PDF” function for individual files and merging the resulting PDF files using free software or online services available by searching for “PDF merge”.

Submit Grant Application

Submit Grant Application

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Tags Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Innovations and Technology Research Others