 Well, thanks, Dean. Again, I'm Rob Myers. So the way the USDA Sustainable Ag Research and Education program is set up is that unlike a lot of federal grant programs, most of our employees are actually university employees scattered across the country. In fact, we have over 30 people that work for the program and only one of them is a federal employee, our national director in Washington. All the rest of us work at various universities. So you'll hear that as we're going through this. I'm based at the University of Missouri as a plant science faculty member, but then serve as a regional director for the SARE program. We have two pots of funding that we administer through SARE at a regional level. One of them is for extension related activities, what we call our professional development program. And the other is for our research and education activities. So that's Dr. Beth Nelson at University of Minnesota. And she'll be speaking in a moment after I do some introductory material. We also have a variety of education resources I'm going to be talking about. A lot of people think that SARE is just a grants program, but really much more than that. And that's another way that we're different from a lot of USDA programs. So what I'd like to do is to give you a little bit of just general overview of what SARE is about. And then we'll dive into each of the five different grant programs that we have and talk a little bit about those. We'll go through this fairly quickly so that hopefully we'll have some time for questions and get you out of here by one o'clock. So first of all, what is SARE? Some of you are familiar with it, but if you're not, we are a grants and outreach. And I want to emphasize an outreach program to advance sustainable innovations to the whole of American agriculture. We did this seminar a couple of years ago at Kansas State and one of the longtime agronomy faculty came up to me and said, Well, that was really interesting. I thought SARE was just about organic agriculture. And so I've never bothered applying to it. And I said, no, no, SARE funds all kinds of aspects of agriculture organic, because I don't know, maybe 10 or 15% of our portfolio and certainly something we support. But as you'll see in a minute, we really fund a lot of different aspects of agriculture. Really anything that you do in agriculture or horticulture, obviously can have a sustainable component. And that's what we're about is trying to move all that we do in agriculture and horticulture forward in a more sustainable fashion. We try to be say that we're kind of take a new and different approach in SARE. SARE was really within USDA, at least one of the first strongly grassroots based grants programs. We try to be very practical and problem solving, certainly doing good science, but one program that is inclusive. So we have a strong emphasis on farmers, as many of you've heard. You can have the greatest research idea in the world, the best methodology. But if you don't have farmers involved in your project, you're not going to get funded. So that's a key component of SARE that's maybe different from a lot of the other USDA grant programs. This grassroots basis also is reflected in how we review our proposals. We have strong farmer involvement, NGOs, state and federal agency partners that are involved in reviewing our application. So it's, although we have a good emphasis on science, and in fact our research proposals go through a technical review committee. We have a diverse group of people that look at these proposals to make sure that we are solving problems that are going to help farmers and ranchers in the long term. Our model is that our funds flow out through four regions rather than one central office. Those regional groups have what we call administrative councils that make the priorities. And we also have SARE outreach. I'll come back to that. Our funding comes through the USDA National Institutes of Food and Agriculture, like a lot of the USDA grant programs you see. But we are involved in partnerships with other USDA agencies, particularly NRCS, but we even work with other agencies and certainly a lot of land grant partners. The SARE model is the one that you've seen before. We're talking about the three-legged stool, profit over the long term, stewardship of our nation's land and water resources and quality of life for farmers, ranchers and their communities. And that community component is very important. You hear a lot about local food systems today, other aspects of quality of life and communities. So that's a big part of what we try to think about in SARE. So three different components that we talk about comprising sustainability. Our model also involves partnerships heavily with extension and other ag professionals and educators, really in every state and even the island protectorates. And this is a slide I want to particularly emphasize. I mentioned a minute ago in starting that we're not just organic ag, we do lots of different types of ag. So you'll find if you looked at the hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of projects SARE has funded, you're going to find projects in all of these areas. Whether it's energy, marketing, taking a systems approach, that's an important part of what we try to do. Again, communities, diversification, lots of soils projects in the livestock area. Grazing has been a common thing but we've also funded many other types of livestock projects. So don't feel like if you are not doing what you might think, well this is a big sustainable ag project or organic, there may be, you may have a very particular idea related to a horticultural crop or a cover crop or IPM. I mean lots of different things fit into this portfolio. SARE has been around for 25 years now. A couple of indicators, 79% of the producers say that they feel like they improved their quality. These are producers who get direct grants from SARE, you're going to be hearing about those in a second. 64% of those producers said SARE helped them achieve higher sales. And we do have farmers also involved in some of our bigger research or extension projects. And of the educators involved, 75% said that at least one additional program was done to share innovation. So we feel it is a program that has an impact. As far as graduate students, I know we have several graduate students in the room. 75% of our projects that are in the research area have employed graduate students and about half of our students co-author scholarly papers. So those are a few of many indicators that we look at. Since 1988, SARE has funded over 4,000 projects nationally. The one key thing to know is we've got a pretty good database on nearly all these projects. It's called MySARE, M-Y-S-A-R-E. And anybody can go in there, you don't have to be a SARE grantee. You just have to create a simple account with a username. And then you can go in and search that database for all the different types of projects we funded. You can do it by state, by region, by type of grant. Let's say you want to look for farmers that have done something with blueberries. You can go in and look for those types of projects and pull up their annual and final summaries. So that's a good resource to have. We do have in the North Central region five different grant programs. Each region varies their programs a little bit as you look at these four different regions. The 12 North Central states are up there in gold. And these are the five grant programs we have. So we're going to take a minute to go into these in more depth. But the research and education, professional development, grad student, farmer rancher, and youth educator. And then just what have we funded in Michigan? If we look over that last 25 years, close to $6 million now have gone to Michigan projects. These are projects directly to lead project leaders in Michigan. There have been other funding that would have been part of multi-state grants. And of these, a lot of them in the red have been the farmer rancher, which are smaller projects, but over 100 projects directly funding farmers in the states. But even if you look at like graduate student, 29 projects there, quite a few. 37 research and education projects. So pretty good portfolio projects here in Michigan. Michigan's been one of our more successful groups. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Beth Nelson, our regional director for research and education. And as Rob said, we are stationed kind of in different places. So I am stationed at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul campus. We are hosted by the biosystems and bioproducts engineering division there. My background is actually in physiology. I came through with a PhD in plant physiology at the University of Minnesota. But we're being hosted in BBE right now. So I'm going to talk to you about, as a part of that, I'm the regional coordinator for our research and education activities. But then I also do directly coordinate our research and education grant program and our graduate student grant program. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the research and education program. It's our largest grant program. We fund projects for $200,000 for up to three years. Those are usually collaborative projects with teams of farmers, researchers, extension educators, nonprofits. Just large groups of people working on a sustainable agriculture project. These are pretty highly competitive projects. At the $200,000 level, we get about 150 pre-proposal applications. It does go through a pre-proposal process. And this year we funded eight projects at the end of it. So it's pretty competitive. They can be research or education demonstration projects. For the research projects, we do emphasize outreach even for research projects. So there will be some sharing of information along the way. So when we go through our review criteria, that's always one of the things that we look at is whether there is outreach in the project. Grants do go primarily to organizations rather than individuals, but it does not have to be a land grant institution. It can also be if you're working in partnership with other organizations, nonprofits, or also other universities or colleges. Again, we fund eight to ten grants per year, and those projects are in a wide array of areas. So that's pretty much that grant program. There are aspects that you can use to increase your chances. So one of the things that they look at is, Rob mentioned the MySIR database, and looking back at past projects that have been done. Reviewers like to see that you have looked at what's already been done in that area. Farmer involvement is a big one, as Rob said. If you don't have farmers involved, even in a research project, either on your advisory committee, maybe as part of justifying the project, you did a survey and farmers have indicated that they need this work. Those are the kind of things that we're looking for. And then on-farm demonstrations, of course, are great too, but they don't have to have that question. Can you share some examples of what those ate more last year? I would have to look at the list right away. We just sent out the letters. I will look it up while the others are talking and then get back to you about that. We actually just sent out a press release that listed the eight projects that were funded. Marie, didn't that went out like last Thursday? Maybe if you can look that up and read those off when we get done, that would be great. We'll read off the titles anyway. Those are usually pretty good explanations of what was funded. So I'm just going to say a little bit more then about the timeline for this. It is a pre-proposal process this year. We just also released the call for proposals for the R&E projects. They will be due October 24th. We're using an online application system now. So they'll come in that way. The timeline is that we review those and we invite full proposals probably in late January and those will be due in April. We generally invite about 25. We try to really narrow it down at that point from the pre-proposals to the proposals so that you've got a one in three chance if you make the proposal cut. Then funding decisions are made in July and the funds are available in October. So we've actually sped that up. It used to be a much longer process. It was almost 15 months and we've cut about three or four months out there. So now you've got the funding available when you start in October. So then the second grant program that I coordinate is a graduate student grant program. And I had the pleasure of meeting with some of the graduate students who currently have grants or have just finished up or were just awarded. Michigan actually this year out of the 19 graduate student grants that we awarded Michigan State had five of them. So got a lot of graduates exciting projects coming in. Those grants are small. They're up to $10,000. It's not meant obviously it doesn't support a graduate student. It's meant to support an aspect of their thesis project. It doesn't have to be their whole thesis project. It might let them do something that lets them interact with farmers or do an on-farm test or farmer survey, something like that. You do have to be a currently enrolled graduate student when you receive the funding and the graduate student writes the proposal and leads the work on the project. From our point of view, this is a researcher development tool. So this is to give a graduate student a chance to write a grant, manage and administer a grant. And often your grants administration will want your advisor will be the actual PI on the grant. But we do ask that the graduate student does all the work of requesting no cost extension, doing budget revisions, those kind of things to get the experience doing that. So we send out the call for proposals for those. Usually in late February those are due in May. We fund about 12 to 16 grants. This year we had a lot of good grants. We funded some extra ones with some leftover funds we had. And then the funds are actually available in September. So you hear at the end of July and you can actually start the funds September 1st or as soon as your office can get them processed. So that's basically the graduate student grant program. I should mention that our online, our website, really has a lot of good information about our grants. And that website is www.northcentralsare.org. And if you go to the grants, it's got a lot of good information. Even some samples, the sample call for proposals from last year so you can begin looking at that and planning ahead. And we'll answer questions at the end. So, what did I do with my glasses which are on top of my head? Yeah, you've all done that, I know. So I can't read it, I don't have my glasses. So, Koya, I have to use Marie's phone. Uh oh, uh oh. Okay, so integrating perimeter trap crops and row cover into curbit crop farming systems. There's another improved cover crop options for corn belt farmers. Tomato grafting, developing grower recommendations for the Great Plains and enhancing our understanding of the rhizobiome. Promoting sustainable biological control of the soybean aphid by examining the effect of biodiversity as the parasitoid wasp. Oh, here we go. Phylinus, who? Phylinus. Nope. Ethyleneus, is that right? Phylinus. Okay. Close enough. I knew there was a reason I didn't want to read the list. Understanding the impacts of grazing and baling corn. Residue on subsequent crop yields across various soil types with different erosion potential. Neonatal calf diarrhea reducing impacts and antibiotic use with natural therapies. And then there's a protecting diversified direct market and value-added operations with smart business structures, written agreements, and regulatory compliance. I think that was like writing up sample agreements for land lease and that type of thing. And then high quality beverage raw materials for the craft brewing industry. So those were the R&E grants, the eight R&E grants this year. So with that, I think we'll go ahead and take questions at the end. And I'm going to go ahead. I think that the last comment I wanted to do was just to emphasize, as Rob said already, that stakeholder involvement is critical. If you don't have farmer involvement in your grant in one way or another, SARA is not a good funding source for you, so they won't make it through. So with that, I think I am going to turn it over to Joan. Okay, I'm Joan Benjamin and I'm Associate Regional Coordinator for North Central Region, SARA. I coordinate our Farmer Rancher Grants and our Youth Educator Grants. And I'm located at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, which is the only 1890 school in our region. So the Farmer Rancher Grants are a program that is really unique in that it gives farmers and ranchers the opportunity to try and solve problems on their own farms and ranch using their own ideas with sustainable agricultural solutions. We ask them to share that information with others. And so what we have is three opportunities for them. There's an individual grant for up to $7,500. Partner grants for two people working together from separate operations. Those are for up to $15,000. And then group grants for three or more people who are working together. They have to be farmers or ranchers and they're also from separate operations for up to $22,500. We have a very simple definition of a farmer. It's someone who raises crops or livestock, especially as a business. Very broad definition to try and be as inclusive as possible. So there's not a dollar amount? There's no dollar amount. There's no income level they have to have. They don't have to own land. That's it. Someone who raises crops or livestock, especially as a business. And that also allows us to include things that others might not consider farming like maybe forestry or agroforestry, aquaculture. So it's very broad. The applications are due November 14th this year and the application forms will come out. The call for proposals will come out the end of this month. We do encourage people to work with extension and non-government agencies. They have to have outreach in there. We really encourage this. We're wanting people to share the information that they come up with through these grants. They're grants that are very small, but what we get out of them is tremendous because people are working with their own ideas. They're incredibly enthusiastic and they put a lot of their own money and resources into these projects. And so when we see these small amounts, you might not think a lot happens, but we've got great results from them and we give out 45 to 50 of these. In the past we gave out 50, but since we've recently raised the amounts, we give out about 40 to 45 of these a year. Over the years it's become a considerable number of grant opportunities and you can go to our website, as Rob mentioned. It's www.sare.org. You can click on project reports from all of these grant programs. You can find the project reports and see what the results were. There we go. The other grant program is the Youth Educator Grant Program, which I also coordinate. This one is open to youth educators and again we have a very broad definition. Basically it's anyone who teaches young people about sustainable agriculture qualifies as a youth educator. We've had everyone from people involved in formal education to home schoolers. We're just looking for people who are going to be innovative, creative and try and get young people involved with sustainable agriculture. The idea behind these grants, which are also very small, these are $2,000 grants, is to provide opportunities for youth in the north-central region We want the youth and their parents to try out sustainable agriculture practices and see sustainable agriculture as a viable career option. When you look at this, you think, well, what can people do for $2,000? And it's actually pretty amazing because what's happened with the majority of these grants, I would say over three-quarters of these grants, when they're awarded, it acts as a catalyst. People from the community come around in support of the project and over three-quarters of them have actually not needed all of their $2,000 once people start donating things to help the project out. So it really acts as a catalyst. The call for proposals will come out the end of this month and those are due November 1st. All right, we'll just have a few slides to wrap up here. So first of all, our fifth grant program is our professional development program. This is the one that uses our extension funding. These are competitive grants that are again once a year, up to $75,000. This is where pre-proposals are due in May, normally mid-May, and then those that are selected to be advanced to full proposals in September with approval in November. So some of our extension funding goes to those competitive grants and those could be training around nutrient management. It could be integrated pest management. It could be a particular style of production, such as intensive grazing management. It could be training around marketing systems. It's really the same wide range of topics you see for our research projects, but aimed at training for educators. It could be extension educators, NRCS, even Votech AG teachers, a wide variety of audiences. So we've had some very innovative projects in this area. I know one of them in Michigan has been training around IPM through an academy here. And then we also take some of our extension money and we put that out through each of our states in the North Central region. So we give $50,000 each year to Michigan State University that is administered by our two state SARA co-coordinators. So Dale Mutch, who many of you know, Dale, raise your hand. And Dean Boss over here. They work together to administer that small amount of funds to do travel scholarships for people that are interested in going to a sustainably oriented agriculture meeting. They do funding for workshops and trainings and farm tours in the state and also have mini-grants available. Dale and Dean also spend some time doing what we call face of SARA activities. So if you're putting on a meeting and you'd like to have some of the SARA information there, we have a nice booth that goes out with some of our publications and resources. Again, many of those are available for free. So those bulletins would be available for farmers or others to pick up. And then we have a variety of initiatives that we pursue through these various mechanisms such as the mini-grants. You might have a small idea and you think, well, this isn't quite ready for a $200,000 proposal yet, but I need just a little bit of seed money to test that out. Talk to Dale and Dean. They may be able to help you out in the way of a mini-grant to get started with that idea or to put on a workshop or something in that area. So, again, a pretty wide range of mechanisms available to help you get started with a project. I mentioned earlier that we're not just a grants program. We're also an outreach program. If you look at USDA grant programs, they don't have any communications staff whatsoever. We actually have not only a full-time communications person in each region, but some national communications and education staff. So, because of that, we've been able to develop a wide range of publication and information resources. I think we have something like 15 bulletins that are typically 12 to 18 pages. Those are all available for free, including in bulk form. Then we have these books that are available for free online or if you want to order the actual hardbound copy, you can purchase those for a small amount. There's lots of fact sheets and videos and other material. So, please take a look at that. That's all available through our main website, sarah.org, or you can get through it through the North Central SARA website. But that's something that a lot of work has gone into developing. As far as new directions for the future, well, we are looking at possibly doing a matching program. We'll see what we can do with that funding. But there's a proposal that there would be some bigger projects that would be based on putting that federal money together with some state funds. So, that's a possibility. We're working to further broaden our outreach to all facets of American ag. So, to that end, for example, we're doing a national conference on cover crops and soil health this winter. And that will be definitely involving some people from Michigan. And then we're also, again, trying to strengthen our training for ag professionals that are broadly defined. So, working harder with NRCS to get them involved, do trainings for them on topics like soil health. It might be on something specific like building high tunnels under organic farming. It could be really a wide range of practices that we might work with them on. So, I wanted to stop there and thank you for your attention and see what questions you have for the three of us. Rich? This question is probably directed to John. The question is about with the grad program and the youth program, have you been getting applications that would be urban ag in nature? And are you considering urban ag as part of those programs? Urban agriculture is definitely considered a part of agriculture through a north-central region, Sarah. And yes, there have been many urban agriculture projects that have been funded. And I guess that question will also apply to the other programs. Are you starting to see some applications in the other programs that would be more urban ag in nature? Yes. How's that? Yeah, so we are getting ones for urban farming, urban ag. Yeah, plenty of them going around. And actually, from both farmer rancher and youth educator, we've seen a lot. Those two areas particularly focused a lot on the... Those dollars could go a long way. Exactly. You may have said that with commercial beekeepers being included in farmer rancher categories? Certainly. Beekeepers, and there have been actually a lot of bee projects lately. And in the past, bees were considered livestock, but that's no longer the case. Don't wait for the maker. That's no longer the case. And so, actually, if it's part of the project, the bees can be included as one of the expenses. I have a question. So if a research idea has a real narrow focus and is unlikely to impact many farmers or much acres, how much is it downgraded for that? You know, there are ideas that certainly cross many thousands of acres. So the question is, if it's narrow focus, so might have a big impact for a niche area. Like a specialty crop or something like that. Is that a big negative? And I would say it gets discussed. We just had this discussion a couple years ago about what does impact mean. And they have settled on the idea that it can mean that it's a large impact for a small group of people. So we definitely have funded projects that are for specialty crops like hazelnuts. We did a hazelnut project that has led to a big consortium and those kind of things. But it gets, you know, with just 8 to 10 grants we're kind of trying to balance hitting all of those different areas. Trying to have big impact in some areas to a broad number of farmers. But we, those will be funded as well. Yes. Okay, so the question is matching funds. We don't require matching funds so it does not get taken into account a lot. We have a little bit of a concern if the whole project needs the whole $400,000 so what happens if we award it? We ask you to kind of have figured out how you could divide that up so your project could go forward if we fund it and you don't get the other funds. That said so I just am coming out of the technical committee a month or so ago where we had these discussions about projects. We had a number of good projects that we did not fund and sometimes it comes to very small things that separate one that we decide to fund from another one and that is something that gets brought up. It's worth mentioning in your proposal that we also have funding from this other source to do this because that will someone say well they already have some funding to do part of this so this would leverage those funds and do more work with that so it can figure in it is not one of our main criteria. Yes. What kind of reporting is necessary along the way? So they all require so what kind of reporting is necessary so the projects have some requirement that you have to do an annual progress report for each full year that it's funded and the reports are not terribly extensive the progress reports for each year the R&E grants are three years you can often get an extension for a fourth year then you do a more comprehensive final report and those are all online but even the final report just asks you to look at impact what are further things that need to be done what have the outcomes been farmer adoption those kind of things so I don't think the reporting is too onerous and they all have the same type of reporting requirement even the youth ed and the farmer rancher I'll let Joan say a little more about that We do have the same requirement as she mentioned for youth ed and farmer rancher they do have to turn in an annual report in a final report for those programs and all the programs actually are reporting online which most of them do then you also have the option to add photos, graphs, charts everything is also able to be uploaded online the farmer rancher and youth educator grants are a little bit of an exception we are going to offer those calls for proposals online this year for the first time but we will still hold open the option that people can apply via email and handwritten which is almost unheard of anymore but we find that if we do not want to exclude people from this and we do not want to then we need to have those options open go ahead I just want to follow up on the matching funds what I heard and I want to make sure I'm clear that if you have money and you're asking for a grant to make something happen that looks more positive because it's okay if we gave this they could actually do it if you're saying we've asked for money in these four places and you don't have it yet you have a negative because what happens if you're trying to do this and you don't get the other three places yeah I would say you have to make sure you've clearly said this is the part we plan to do with this grant not we can only go forward if we also get the money from this other source I want to just re-emphasize something Beth said the SARA program does not require matching funds which is different from many of the current USDA grant programs so it is not a factor really in our evaluation I was going to say the other thing that's a little bit different it is an online application but it is not grants.gov I knew that would get a positive so we don't require a lot of those forms that you have to get in that way so it's basically questions about what your outreach plan, your evaluation plan those types of things the funding support one that's about the only and one cover page those are about the only things that are like some of those longer ones where you've got a lot of paperwork to upload with them so along those lines with the farmer rancher and youth educator grants these are some of the simplest grant applications you will find and so if you know people who've never applied for a grant before these are not intimidating or they're not meant to be and they it's much simpler to start with one of these in many different grant programs so we're actually interested in granting these are the categories do you discourage if we were going to apply for something in all three even though maybe two in one time we're looking at something on the youth side and also what we're representing for what is your opinion on that I don't think that's an issue so is there different projects oh sorry I need to repeat the question so if you have like several projects you're looking at and you want to apply to multiple grant programs would that be a negative and it would not be a negative so as long as you've outlined what you want to accomplish with that part of the project that would be fine in fact we have funded sometimes a graduate student working in an area and an R&E project working in a very similar area in the same year so can you describe the grant with your process please so are you talking about the well so they're all a little bit different that's to our reviewers or is it one panel okay so I will start with the R&E one and that's the most complex so the R&E the pre-proposals come in we divide our administrative council so we're Ron you heard Rob say that the way we're organized is we actually have an administrative council that decides the directions of our programs as well as actually approves the funding so that's our fiscal authority so they vote on which ones to fund and they are the ones who review the pre-proposals so they get together they choose three or four that they want to come forward from each of five groups we issue those invitations and then we have a completely separate we have 20 members on our I should say 20 members on our administrative council those are researchers educators members of state agencies and then farmers non-profit representatives so it's pretty diverse group we invite the proposals and then the proposals are reviewed by a technical committee it's about another 20 member committee they each review each proposal and they do for each so they also can have broad expertise we try to have expertise in each of the areas that we're doing funding in but we do seek two external reviews of people who are actually working in that topic for each grant so we have those two reviews those are shared with the technical committee they actually come together and meet for a day and a half and it's kind of a traditional grant panel where they discuss all the grants and choose the ones they recommend for funding and those actually get the applicant get feedback they get some feedback it kind of depends on what the reviewers have written up we do share the comments we sometimes we'll paraphrase them but we do share the comments with applicants so sometimes in the pre-proposal process those are pretty sparse so there's not as much information as applicants would like another thing that we do we actually have a separate question on the grant that says is this your are you coming have you submitted before if you have please address the comments that you got and that really does go in your favor and you've turned down for a grant and you can see the point of some of the comments and can address those to do that that does get talked about in the review they do say that was something that we would have liked to have this is one that came back they addressed that well we should fund this one so the graduate student is much simpler it's just one no pre-proposal process it's just a group of AC members and a few outside people and that's just a simple review and again we do share the comments they're not as extensive as the other as there are any proposals okay for the farmer rancher grants we have a review committee of about 29 farmers and ranchers who all go over it before the meeting and then they have an in-person meeting where they discuss all the proposals and make a recommendation to the administrative council the youth educator is a smaller group of about 10 people they are mostly administrative council members they review it and have a conference call to decide who's funded well I think we're a little bit past one so we'll stop our official program here but Beth and Joan and I and Marie as well as Dean and Dale will be here for a little while if you have further individual questions we want to thank you all for coming and look forward to interacting with you in the future thanks