The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded two Fund for Rural America grants totaling $725,000 to projects involving a UC SAREP researcher. A grant for $400,000 will be conducted in California with investigators from SAREP, the UC Davis Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, while the second grant, for $325,000, will be conducted with investigators at Cornell University and Iowa State University.

The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (the Farm Bill) authorized money for the Fund For Rural America to expand economic opportunities for rural Americans; $80 million per year is being divided between two areas: rural development and research. Less than 7 percent of the Fund for Rural America applicants were funded during the first year of the granting program. The grants involving SAREP were awarded in the research category.

"We are very excited to be participating in two large-scale projects that link sustainable agriculture with rural community development," says Bill Liebhardt, SAREP director.

Gail Feenstra, SAREP food systems coordinator, is leading the California component of the project "Retain Farmers' Markets and Rural Development: Entrepreneurship, Incubation, and Job Creation," conducted with researchers from the Cornell Farming Alternatives Program and Iowa State University Department of Sociology ($325,000). The project will demonstrate and promote the economic development potential of farmers' markets as rural enterprise incubators.

Feenstra will also be a collaborator on the grant "Increasing Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture and Positive Community Impacts," which received $400,000. This project brings together the expertise of UC researchers, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission to increase adoption of sustainable agriculture practices and build farmer leadership skills to strengthen connections in local communities. Former SAREP associate director Jill Shore Auburn and Feenstra helped write the grant request for the project, which will now be headed by Karen Klonsky from the UC Davis Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics.