A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Grants and Funding

Ok, here's another one. Funding. Where does your funding come from, what seem to be AP friendly granting agencies, and how do you fund your research?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by matthew ferrell on June 21, 2011 at 11:27am

Our funding is set to run out in a year or two. We were funded by the late Senator Bryd to get us going. We are now trying to get our farm written into the state budget, being that we do both research and are a demonstrative extension farm. We are also persueing various USDA grants.

Permalink Reply by Nate Storey on June 21, 2011 at 4:49pm

I've had a hard time with grants- over a thousand hours, lots of high quality grants, and not a penny. The last one was shot down by a bunch of aquaculturalists on an industry review board. I've gone in a different direction. I started a manufacturing business and now that funds my research. It's kind of goofy, but it works. It's been really hard to fund research through granting agencies. WRAC was the last grant I submitted and it got shot down. Not really looking for grant money now. I guess I don't really need it now. The whole community and extension stuff should be good for your funding search though- lots of money being allocated in that direction. . . Good luck- let me know how it goes!

Permalink Reply by matthew ferrell on June 21, 2011 at 5:14pm

Do you own ZIPGrow?

Permalink Reply by Nate Storey on June 22, 2011 at 3:27pm

Yeah. That's me. It's still small, but picking up steam. I developed the towers and displays as part of my research here. The IP was just sitting there, so I licensed it back and found a way to manufacture. I also realized that to fund my research I would have to boot-strap it. Going for grants was wasting my time. So now the company is going, and paying for my research. :) The goal is to get it cheap enough that almost anyone can do commercial production with it. It's just an economies of scale thing. The more I sell, the cheaper I can make it.

Could you use some towers? I still can't afford to donate towers, but for research folks I can do cost for small quantities.

Permalink Reply by matthew ferrell on February 26, 2012 at 9:38am

Nate
For funding we have been hitting the specialty crop grant opportunities. No word yet if we will be getting these, and they are small in nature(25,000 and less), but there are several out there. Hopefully we hit two or three this year.