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Sustainable Student Farm

2100-2542 County Road 1300 E
61802 Urbana , IL
United States
Illinois

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Projects at this location

Project Description
Solar Desalination

The Solar Desalination funding program will develop novel technologies or concepts using solar thermal energy to assist in creating freshwater from otherwise unusable waters. Thermal desalination is a potential solution to increase water supplies for municipal water and agriculture, and is an important technology to purify water produced from various industrial processes, including oil and gas production.

Community Food Projects

Community Food Projects are intended to bring together stakeholders from the distinct parts of the food system and to foster understanding of national food security trends and how they might improve local food systems.

Childhood Obesity Prevention Challenge Area

This AFRI Challenge Area focuses on the societal challenge to end obesity among children, the number one nutrition-related problem in U.S.

Foundational Program

The AFRI Foundational Program supports grants in the six AFRI priority areas to continue building a foundation of knowledge critical for solving current and future societal challenges. The six priority areas are:

  • Plant Health and Production and Plant Products
  • Animal Health and Production and Animal Products
  • Food Safety, Nutrition, and Health
  • Bioenergy, Natural Resources, and Environment
  • Agriculture Systems and Technology
  • Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities
Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS)

FOCUS projects aim to enable cost-effective solar energy systems that offer the best of today's existing technologies: high-efficiency conversion of sunlight to electricity and stored, dispatchable energy from heat.

Healthy Habits: Timing for Developing Sustainable Healthy Behaviors in Children and Adolescents

This program encourages applications that employ innovative research to identify mechanisms of influence and/or promote positive sustainable health behavior(s) in children and youth. Applications to promote positive health behavior(s) should target social and cultural factors, including, but not limited to: schools, families, communities, population, food industry, age-appropriate learning tools and games, social media, social networking, technology and mass media.

Office of behavioral and social sciences research

The missions of the office is to Enhance the impact of health-related behavioral and social sciences research, coordinate behavioral and social sciences research conducted or supported by the NIH, integrate these sciences within the larger NIH research enterprise,  and Communicate health-related behavioral and social sciences research findings to various stakeholders within and outside the federal government

Biological Technologies Office

DARPA’s biological technologies arm focuses on leveraging advances in engineering and information sciences to drive and reshape biotechnology for technological advantage. BTO is responsible for all neurotechnology, human-machine interface, human performance, infectious disease, and synthetic biology programs within the agency.

Environmental Education (EE) Grants

This program supports environmental education projects that promote environmental awareness and stewardship and help provide people with the skills to take responsible actions to protect the environment.

Critical Agricultural Research and Extension (CARE)

The goal of this program is to invest in agricultural production research, education, and extension projects for more sustainable, productive and economically viable plant and animal production systems.

Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM)

The Office of Land and Emergency Management provides policy, guidance and direction for the Agency's emergency response and waste programs

 

Higher Education - Institution Challenge Grants Program

This program aims to increase institutional capacities to respond to State, regional, national, or international educational needs by strengthening college and university teaching programs in the food and agricultural sciences.

 

Sustainable Agriculture, Research and Education (SARE)

The purpose of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) program is to encourage research designed to increase our knowledge concerning agricultural production systems that:

Grants for Agricultural Research, Special Research Grants

Projects under this program aim to carry out research, to facilitate or expand promising breakthroughs in areas of the food and agricultural sciences of importance to the nation and to facilitate or expand on-going State-Federal food and agricultural research programs.

Local Food Promotion Program

The Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) offers grant funds with a 25% match to support the development and expansion of local and regional food business enterprises to increase domestic consumption of, and access to, locally and regionally produced agricultural products, and to develop new market opportunities for farm and ranch operations serving local markets. 

Environmental Engineering

The goal of the Environmental Engineering program is to support transformative research which applies scientific and engineering principles to avoid or minimize solid, liquid, and gaseous discharges, resulting from human activities on land, inland and coastal waters, and air, while promoting resource and energy conservation and recovery.

SUNSHOT Initiative

The SUNSHOT initiative is a national effort to support solar energy adoption by making solar energy affordable for all Americans through research and development efforts in collaboration with public and private partners.

Food Waste Reduction

This guide from the USDA Rural Development agency highlights the various ways the agency provides funding and support for food loss and waste reduction, reuse and composting.

Education and Literacy Initiative

The Education and Literacy initiative is dedicated to developing the next generation of research, education, and extension professionals in the food and agricultural sciences. 

Resilient Agroecosystems in a Changing Climate Challenge

This program funds research attempting to understand the interaction between climate variability and agricultural production systems to develop the plants, animals and management systems that will be robust and productive under changing environmental conditions while  providing the important ecosystem services needed from these lands. 

Energy for Sustainability

The program supports fundamental engineering research that will enable innovative processes for the sustainable production of electricity and fuels, and for energy storage. These processes must be environmentally benign, reduce greenhouse gas production, and use renewable resources.

Solar PVs on Fruit Farm Admin Building

To power an electric vehicle charging station at the Sustainable Student Farm, this project will install rooftop solar on the Fruit Farm Admin building. 

Vermicompost

The dining halls at the University residency halls produce an estimated average 14,962.5 pounds, or 7 tons, of food waste every week. To combat the amount of this food waste that goes to the landfills a pilot on-site  vermi-composting project on the Sustainable Student Farm will be created. The project has the potential to turn into a campus-wide vermi-composting model.

Sustainable Student Farm

The Sustainable Student Farm is a small-scale vegetable farm operated within the Crop Sciences department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign located on 10 acres of land at Lincoln Avenue and Windsor Road.  The farm serves as a production farm to supply our residence halls with locally grown, low-input sustainable food. In addition, the farm acts as a living laboratory to connect students, community members, and the state at large with regional, small-scale food systems.

Project Updates

  • 4/25/2023

    On April 25th, the Zero Waste iCAP team met to discuss the State Farm Center Recycling (ZW011) recommendation and brainstorm on the Zero Waste iCAP summary report for the 22-23 FY. 

    Meeting minutes are attached.

  • 12/8/2022

    On December 8th, the Zero Waste iCAP team met to discuss a new approach to creating recommendations for next semester.