WASHINGTON, D.C. - March 6, 2017 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) today announced $1.35 million in available funding to provide agricultural producers with training and data to strengthen their business management skills. Funding is made through NIFA's Farm Business Management and Benchmarking (FBMB) Competitive Grants Program, authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill.
"Farm managers need knowledge and skills to solve agricultural and educational challenges," said NIFA Director Sonny Ramaswamy. "The FBMB program engages producers through extension activities and bv offering big data to help them make smart financial decisions."
The FBMB program supports projects to improve the farm management knowledge and skills of agricultural producers, and maintain the national, publicly available farm financial management database that has detailed financial and production benchmark information with data on farms by type, size, and location.
Eligible applicants include state agricultural experiment stations; colleges and universities; university research foundations; other research institutions and organizations; federal agencies; national laboratories; private organizations or corporations; and individuals.
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The deadline for applications is April 17, 2017.
See the request for applications for details.
Examples of previously funded projects include a low-cost data gathering tool for dairy farmers at Penn State, and a Cornell University project to increase the number of New York and Ohio farm entries into the national database maintained by the Center for Farm Financial Management at the University of Minnesota. The project seeks to strengthen benchmark production and financial information and ultimately improve farm profitability.
NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and extension and promotes transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges. NIFA support for the best and brightest scientists and extension personnel has resulted in user-inspired, groundbreaking discoveries that combat childhood obesity, improve and sustain rural economic growth, address water availability issues, increase food production, find new sources of energy, mitigate climate variability and ensure food safety. To learn more about NIFA's impact on agricultural science, visit http://www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts, sign up for email updates or follow us on Twitter @usda_NIFA, #NIFAimpacts.
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