The Berkeley Food Institute Seed Grant Program supports innovative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research projects that are aligned with the mission of BFI: to empower new food and agriculture leaders with capacities to cultivate diverse, just, resilient, and healthy food systems. Grant recipients are engaged in critical, cross-functional research projects at UC Berkeley and beyond.
Between 2013 and 2016, BFI provided more than $336,000 in funding through 13 faculty research seed grants including 57 principal investigators and 49 collaborators. Read a summary of those research projects here. During those first three years, BFI focused funding on smaller seed grants to support innovative ideas across a range of issues.
With an allocation from the California State Legislature, the Seed Grant Program returned for the 2021-22 funding cycle and offered two tiers of funding: research grants capped at $100,000, and collaboration grants capped at $10,000. BFI gave preference to proposals that examine at least one of two cross-cutting urgent themes: adaptation to climate change and agri-food systems inequality.
The recipients of the BFI Seed Grant Program are listed below.
BFI is not currently accepting grant applications for the Seed Grant Program. However, BFI is accepting proposals on a rolling basis for our Research Storytelling grant. Read more about the Research Storytelling grant here.
