What this program funds
The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) is USDA's flagship competitive grants program, funding research, education, and extension across the food and agricultural sciences. "AFRI" is an umbrella over several annual requests for applications — in recent years a Foundational and Applied Science RFA (spanning areas such as plant and animal health and production, food safety and nutrition, bioenergy and natural resources, agricultural systems and technology, and agricultural economics and rural communities), an Education and Workforce Development RFA, and a Sustainable Agricultural Systems RFA for large, integrated projects. Standard research grants typically run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years, while the largest coordinated projects can reach several million.
Eligibility in plain English
- Eligibility is set per program area in each RFA, but colleges and universities are eligible across essentially all of them; many areas also admit other research organizations, federal agencies, and in some cases individuals.
- There is no career-stage restriction, and many program areas offer new investigator designations or seed-grant types with adjusted expectations for preliminary data.
- Projects can be research, education, extension, or integrated combinations — and the RFA states which types each program area accepts.
- Some program areas require a letter of intent before a full application. Read the current RFA for your specific area, and confirm logistics with your research development or sponsored programs office.
What you'll need to submit
- A project narrative responding to the specific program-area priorities in the current RFA, with the page limits and structure that RFA defines.
- Submission through the federal application system, coordinated by your sponsored programs office, with the standard federal package: budget and justification, biographical sketches, current and pending support, and facilities descriptions.
- Data management plan and, where applicable, plans for the education or extension components of integrated projects.
- A letter of intent first, if your program area requires one — check the RFA's deadline table carefully, since dates differ by area.
Tips for this mechanism
- Apply to a program area, not to "AFRI." Each program area has its own priorities, deadlines, budget caps, and sometimes its own LOI requirement. Proposals written to the umbrella rather than to the specific priority language reliably underperform in panel.
- Email the national program leader before writing. Each program area lists a USDA scientist as its point of contact, and they will tell you frankly whether your idea fits the priority — the cheapest review you will ever get.
- Make integrated projects genuinely integrated. For RFAs that require research plus education or extension, panels are experienced at spotting a research project with an outreach paragraph attached. Budget and personnel should visibly back every component.
- Use the new-investigator lane if you qualify. The designation and the smaller seed-grant types exist precisely so early-career applicants are not judged against veterans' preliminary data — take the adjusted bar when it is offered.
Related programs
- USDA NIFA Specialty Crop Research Initiative and other NIFA competitive programs
- USDA SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education)
- NSF programs in plant genomics, ecology, and engineering biology
- DOE Office of Science bioenergy and environmental research programs