NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing next generation agriculture in Southern Georgia (GA)

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on agriculture in Southern Georgia. With a $74 billion annual impact in Georgia, agriculture is key to improving community prosperity and quality of life in the region. This Development Award is focused on robust, adaptive rural innovation that will leverage Georgia's two land grant universities (University of Georgia (UGA) and Fort Valley State University) and community assets to build an Integrative Agriculture (IA) infrastructure "in place." IA means farming systems with environmental, economic, social, and intergenerational sustainability. "In place" means teaming with local communities to build capital where people live: a 20-county region in South Georgia with diverse population of ~650,000 residents.

The effort will create long-term resiliency in the region through the Development Award's six interlocking "gears"-economic development, community, innovation-in-place, workforce development, use-inspired research, and quality of life. This vision will be realized through trusted community networks of local government, schools, community colleges, industry and nonprofit partners.

Georgia's small specialty crop farms face unique challenges in technology, labor, farmer diversity, decision-making, and resources. Through use-inspired R&D, farmers will leverage this effort to develop a new IA ecosystem. Projects will translate cutting-edge research in precision agriculture, value-added agricultural manufacturing, renewable energy, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, and e-mobility.

UGA's Cooperative Extension, a trusted community partner deeply embedded in all 20 counties, will ensure that the effort is driven by and responsive to community needs. Two nonprofits with expertise in rural economic development, the Center on Rural Innovation and VentureWell, will partner with extension agents, and ultimately communities, to strengthen and diversify community economies with translation of the team's use-inspired research.

The Development Award will also enable the team to cultivate local entrepreneurialism and foster an innovation culture to bring forth product concepts to meet the local needs of the communities. This innovation-in-place approach can mitigate rural depopulation caused by increased automation. The team's workforce development programs, co-created with and delivered though the Technical College System of Georgia, with US Department of Agriculture insights, will provide the skilled workforce and innovators required for the new ecosystem, while concomitantly leading to measurable improvements in quality of life.

The team's Council for Innovative Inclusion will work closely with community leadership to engage the underserved in the innovation ecosystem. By the end of the planning period, the team's strategy of deep community engagement and innovation-in-place will have developed the relationships, empathy, and knowledge needed to fuel a successful NSF Engine.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.