Grants for Flower Farmers
There’s money out there available to YOU to help grow your farm, invest in upgrades and machinery, and to implement practices that prioritize soil health and sustainability. For those with a curious mind, there’s also funding to embark on all sorts of research. Take a look at the database I’ve compiled below to see what you might qualify for.
Click on each photo to be taken to the grant’s website.
Environmental Quality Incentives Program Grant (EQIP)
This program, run through the NRCS, commonly assists farmers with season extension through reimbursement funds for high tunnels. It also helps with projects such as upgrading irrigation, well constraints, greenhouse heating and cooling systems, erosion control, natural wildlife planning (including finding a native hedgerow planting, carbon planning (including compost and mulch applications).
Specialty Crop Block Grant (SCBG)
Administered by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, it was created to help states increased the competitiveness of their specialty crops, by providing research, training, infrastructure, and marketing support to projects that benefit multiple stakeholders rather than individual farms, making it a grant that necessitates wide collaboration.
Value Added Producer’s Grant (VAPG)
Administered by the USDA’s Rural Development division, this grant exists specifically for farmers seeking to begin or expand production on value-added activities. It can contribute to marketing, distribution, and other costs associated with value-added production. Cut flower farmers are eligible in some instances if they produce in ways that fit the program’s standards.
SARE Farmer & Rancher Grants
These are grants made for farmers who want to investigate a problem or answer a question on the farm. Perhaps you want to see how changing plant spacing affects yield, how no-till practices affect production on your farm, whether you could produce an ultra-early dahlia crop under tunnels—the sky is the limit.
The Fruit Guys Grant
This program provides annual grant awards to small farms and agricultural nonprofits that support sustainable agriculture projects with large positive impacts on the environment, local food webs, and farm diversity.
NYFC Young Farmer Grants
The goal of this fund is to provide financial assistance for any cost that currently limits your ability to start, run, or grow your operation in the way you’d like. It can be used for anything that will further your goals as a farmer, even if that means just getting started.
ASCFG Grower Grants
These grants are geared toward new growers and are a great opportunity to fund all types of research on your farm. As with all grants, if you’re thoughtful, conservative, results-oriented, and always looking for how your research will benefit the industry as well as the specific goals of the program, there’s nothing stopping you from creating a competitive application.
State-Specific Grants
Different farm grant opportunities pop up each year on a state-by state basis. Though by no means exhaustive, this list includes some state-specific resources.
Brighter Future Fund Grant
This grant from American Farmland Trust seeks to uplift, support, and amplify the work of a wide range of farmers through allocating funds to help farmers 1) Improve farm viability; 2) Access, transfer, or permanently protect farmland; or 3) Adopt regenerative agricultural practices.