Auburn University Receives $9.3 Million Grant

It’s time for your Southeast Regional Ag News. On the Ag Information Network, I’m Haylie Shipp.

Auburn University is one of three universities sharing a $28 million grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to establish an Institute for Rural Partnership to research the causes and conditions of challenges facing rural areas.

Auburn’s share of the grant—$9.3 million—is for a four-year period. Others receiving funding include the University of Vermont and the University of Wisconsin.

The goal of Auburn’s project is to leverage modern technologies to advance rural Alabama through poultry production and forest products.

Alabama is a global leader in the poultry and forest products agricultural industry sectors, with a $43 billion contribution from both industries to Alabama’s economy. Also, a significant percentage of the 210,000 jobs created in the state by these two industries are in rural Alabama.

The project also aims to reduce the pollution of bodies of water in rural Alabama by developing systems that manage and upcycle waste streams from agricultural processing facilities.