Regenerate Virginia Healthy Soils Grant Program
AFT’s Healthy Soils Grant Program, offered in collaboration with the Virginia Soil Health Coalition, encourages producers and partners to pilot impactful ideas that innovatively fill gaps and address barriers to the adoption of soil health-building systems. This program aims to incentivize the adoption of practices and transformation of systems that go above and beyond current standards, supporting farmers, ideas, and expenses that are ineligible for other programs. Awards up to $30,000 for a single producer or $50,000 for a group of producers will be considered.
ELIGIBILITY:
The following are eligible applicants:
- Individual farmers operating in Virginia, including nonprofit or for-profit farms
- Groups of farmers, including producer associations
- Eligible costs include farmer labor; equipment purchase or rental; farm inputs and operating costs, including insurance; payments to technical service providers, consultants, or advisors; infrastructure; purchase of livestock, seeds, or plants; etc.
Projects must:
- Be entirely located in Virginia
- Address one or more of the principles of soil health, ideally through an innovative or holistic systems approach
- Include an educational/outreach component (e.g. field day, case study, social media output, etc.)
- Include a description of the way soil health will be assessed
- Have a project completion date of no more than two years from the time of receipt of funds.
- Be willing to share findings and results, including possibly collaborating with AFT or Virginia Soil Health Coalition partners to collect and analyze relevant data.
APPLICATION PROCESS:
Applications for the 2024-2025 grant cycle will be accepted October 15th through November 15th, 2024. The link to apply will appear on this page on October 15th. Reach out to Amanda Cather for more information: acather@farmland.org