In order to encourage and support women’s venture in the field of agriculture U.S. government, especially the USDA or The United States Department of Agriculture provide the Government Farm Grants For Women. Follow the article to get ideas on how to get a farm grant for women.
Maybe, you wonder why women in agriculture get government grants. It is because women face many different challenges in this field, such as limited access to land and capital compared to the male farmers. Grants are also the attractive solution to traditional funding.
Grants support women in the farming field, such as funding their education and conference budget, or agricultural projects to build infrastructures. Government programs provide these grants, and there are many nonprofits along with other organizations offer farm development financial assistance.
Steps to Get Government Farm Grants For Women
- The first step is to decide the purpose of the grant application. Make sure you have already figure out what will you do with the grant money before you apply for it. The usual purpose to apply for a government farm grants for women is for research, education, new product development as well as farming process enhancement through more sophisticated tools.
- Figure out how you keep the project going after the grant fund provision is no longer available. Government grant or any grant come in a certain amount and limited timeframe just to kick-start the project until it able to look for the fund by itself. Grant provider will choose to award the grant to a project that will be sustainable even after the grant expired.
- Spend some time and effort to conduct a small research. It helps you find every government farm grants for women available in the current calendar year from grant provider organization. For example, The United States Department of Agriculture or USDA. This department offers a SARE or Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program. You can find many grant program each year specifically to support and advance research, development and education in the field of agriculture.
- Visit the organizations’ website to find information about available grant at the current time as well as the types and purposes of project they are supporting.
- Once you find grants that are suitable for your project, the next step is to check your eligibility and whether you can meet the requirements for the grant or not.
- If the eligibility and requirement are all ok, then the next step to do is to compose a decent grant proposal. Make sure to follow the rule and format have given by the grant provider. Pay attention to this, because there are too many cases of grant application being turned down because the applicant fails to follow the required format or rule from the organization.
- Check the content. The grant proposal has to contain the project purpose and description, the background motive, positive effect on the community as well as the projection on how the project will be funded after the grant period is over.
- Check and revise your proposal. Make sure that you compose the proposal by using clear, concise and simple language. Don’t forget to check if there’s any grammatical mistake or typo. This will damage the granter impression on you and jeopardize the chance of your project to be awarded the grant.
- The last step to get grants for women farmers is to submit the proposal to the grant provider organization. Pay attention to the deadline and make sure that all required attachments are complete.
Types of Government Farm Grants For Women
Here are some options of government farm grants for women:
Young Farmer Grant Program
This program is from the National Young Farmers Coalition to support young farmers who are starting agricultural careers. The grant program provides 75 grants and each of the project offers $5,000, with the additional membership to the coalition. The recipient of the grant can use the money to start, to run, and to grow farm operations without extra limitations.
Furthermore, the organization offers 50% minimum of the grants to the Black, Indigenous and other people of color. Also, the 50% is for non-binary, trans farmers, and female farmers. If you want to apply for this grant, you can visit the official website of the National Young Farmers Coalition.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
The USDA provides several grant programs to help women farmers, but not all of these programs are limited to women. There are some options available through the USDA program.
You can apply for Minorities and Women Farmers and Ranchers Loan. The FSA has a big commitment that a portion of their program is to help underserved ranchers and farmers, including women. If you want to apply for these loans, you must be a volunteer for your race, ethnicity, or gender. The requirements, purposes, and amounts of the loan depends on the program. But, if you are Muslim, you must not take any loans because it is Haraam.
SARE Grants
The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Grant Program offers competitive grants for the sustainable programs in research and education. Moreover, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture supports the SARE grants for the U.S. based farmers, researchers, ranchers, extension agents, graduate students, and educators.
The eligible projects include pest, weed management, and on-farm renewable energy. SARE is available for the qualified recipients in four geographical regions. Those are North Central, Northeast, South and West with unique grant opportunities.
Individual grant pages provide information about the available amounts, the requirements and the eligibility of the applications. For example, the Northeast SARE provides some grant programs, such as Research and Education Grant Program, Farmer Grant Program, Partnership Grant Program, and many more.
If you want to be eligible for this grant, make sure that you select the geographic area and review the possible grants. After that, you can follow the instructions for every program that you want to apply. Every grant has a list that contains relevant program coordinator that you can contact with some questions.
That is all about the available grants you can try for finding support since you are female farmers. Using these grants will help you decrease the burden to start your agricultural business.
References:
- Beginning Farmers (http://beginningfarmers.org/funding-resources)
- Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (http://www.sare.org/)
- National Council of State Agricultural Finance Programs (http://stateagfinance.org/)
- Images: michiganradio.org
