Deadline: September 30, 2025
The National Geographic Society is calling for proposals on Building Resilience in Agriculture. This funding opportunity will support innovative projects that apply science and innovation in a real-world context, focused on feasible, nature-positive solutions.
The projects should have measurable outcomes on the resilience of farms, farming communities, and natural ecosystems in the farming landscapes to the realities of changing climates and extreme weather events. The projects will demonstrate, measure, and support practices and approaches that are regenerative. The project’s main goals must aim to make farms, farming communities, and natural ecosystems more resilient and demonstrate two or more of the following outcomes:
- Soil Health: Build the health and fertility of the soil to support a healthy and productive ecosystem above and below ground.
- Climate Mitigation and Adaptation: Increase resilience to climate change impacts, sequester carbon, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- Watershed Health: Improve watershed health through reducing nutrient runoff and the quantity of water needed for farms and communities to thrive.
- Biodiversity: Protect and improve biodiversity across agricultural landscapes – examples include forest conservation and restoration, bees and other pollinators for crops as well as improving the soil microbiome.
- Improved Livelihoods: Improve livelihoods in locally contextualized ways, ensuring farmers’ access to training, decision making and resources to implement sustainable agricultural practices and achieve improved farm performance.
Benefits
Grant recipients become National Geographic Explorers, will join the Explorer Community, and will be eligible for future learning, capacity building, and networking opportunities.
In addition, grant recipients:
- may need to be available to travel to Europe for an event soon after receiving notification of awards in January, 2026;
- will travel to the National Geographic Society’s Base Camp headquarters in Washington DC for a multi-day gathering to meet Society staff and key partners in 2026.
- may receive additional mentorship, training, and other elevation opportunities as individuals and as a cohort; and,
- might be featured in communications materials by the Society and/or the funding partner that may include (but are not limited to) video and photography related to themselves, the project, and their results, shared through various media platforms.
Eligibility
- Requested project budget may not exceed $150,000;
- Applicant must not be a current National Geographic Society staff member;
- Applicant must be over the age of 18;
- Project must be completed within 2 years of receipt of funding;
- Applications must be submitted in English, although English does not have to be the PI’s primary language;
- The project includes one or more of the following terrestrial food crops: corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, sugar beets, oilseeds (i.e. canola, sunflower, rice bran), rice, oats, cocoa, oil palm, raisins and soy;
- The project has a predominant field or land component where solutions are applied and tested on a farm, in a farming community, or in a landscape adjacent to cultivated land;
- The application includes project collaborator(s) who have appropriate farming or farming community expertise and local connections.
Application
They will only accept applications that are submitted through the application portal. Applications submitted through email, mail or post will not be accepted.
For more information, visit National Geographic Society.
