Assistance program
Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI)
$3.4 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 10.310
- What it does
- The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) awards research, education, and extension grants to improve rural economies, increase food production, stimulate the bioeconomy, mitigate impacts of climate variability, address water availability issues, ensure food safety and security, enhance human nutrition, and train the next generation of the agricultural workforce. AFRI funds both single- and multi-function research, education, and extension grants that address key problems of national, regional, and multi-state importance. AFRI-funded projects sustain all components of agriculture, including farm efficiency and profitability, ranching, renewable energy, forestry (both urban and agroforestry), aquaculture, rural communities and entrepreneurship, human nutrition, food safety, biotechnology, and conventional breeding. These projects also create jobs and help develop the next generation of agriculture and food scientists. AFRI-funded integrated projects must include at least two of the three functions of agriculture knowledge – research, education, and extension – to ensure delivery of science-based knowledge to people, allowing them to make informed practical decisions.
- Who benefits
- This initiative supports integrated and non-integrated programs. Please refer to Part III, A of the current Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Request for Applications (RFA) for the complete eligibility requirements.
- Who applies
- This initiative supports integrated and non-integrated programs. Please refer to Part III, A of the current Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Request for Applications for the complete eligibility requirements.
- Authorized by
- 7 U.S.C. § 450i
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments