Iowa State’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture is funding 20 new competitive grants for research relating to sustainable practices and local agriculture.

The new grants, along with 15 renewal grants, will comprise about $713,000 of funding for research projects.

Laura Miller, communication specialist for the Leopold Center, said the funded research projects fall into three categories – policy initiatives, ecology initiatives or marketing initiatives. The grants are distributed for either one, two, or three-year research periods.

Miller said one of the new grants the Leopold Center is offering is for a policy initiative that focuses on supporting “sustainable production of biofuels feedstocks.” The biofuels grant alone is set at $40,000 and will fund two years of research.

The ecology initiative grants will fund research that focuses on “fitting agriculture into the larger picture” of the environment, Miller said. Six of these grants are available. Some projects that have been funded by initiative grants in 2008 include reducing pesticide use in vineyards and researching grazing prairie land.

Marketing initiative grants, Miller said, reward farmers and help them create farming systems that are profitable but still protect natural resources.

Mark Edelman, professor of economics, is a research leader for a project studying the feasibility of establishing an Iowa microenterprise foundation. Microenterprises are small businesses with fewer than five employees.

Edelman’s project is just one of many Iowa State projects to receive a grant from the Leopold Center.

He said the Leopold Center is interested in his project because of its collaborative research with the Community Vitality Center. The research examined Iowa’s entrepreneurial system over the last two years and found a lack of technical assistance and capital for entrepreneurs.

The microenterprise foundation would not benefit farmers exclusively, Edelman said, but would help all potential entrepreneurs. Microlending, the distribution of small loans to help provide capital for small businesses, is another avenue that has been deemed a possibility.

“We’re embarking on taking some initial steps for organizing and implementing a business plan and feasibility study for microlending in Iowa,” Edelman said.

He said loan clients would receive incentives for accessing technical assistance for their businesses, as well.

The Leopold Center will fund 13 grants for marketing initiatives, Miller said. She said the process for choosing grants began last summer, when the center issued a request for pre-proposals. The Leopold Center’s advisory board reviewed the pre-proposals, which were also peer-reviewed before being finalized.