Community Food Projects are intended to bring together stakeholders from the distinct parts of the food system and to foster understanding of national food security trends and how they might improve local food systems.

The AFRI Foundational Program supports grants in the six AFRI priority areas to continue building a foundation of knowledge critical for solving current and future societal challenges. The six priority areas are:

This program encourages applications that employ innovative research to identify mechanisms of influence and/or promote positive sustainable health behavior(s) in children and youth. Applications to promote positive health behavior(s) should target social and cultural factors, including, but not limited to: schools, families, communities, population, food industry, age-appropriate learning tools and games, social media, social networking, technology and mass media.

DARPA’s biological technologies arm focuses on leveraging advances in engineering and information sciences to drive and reshape biotechnology for technological advantage. BTO is responsible for all neurotechnology, human-machine interface, human performance, infectious disease, and synthetic biology programs within the agency.

This project is a significant expansion of the current local food partnership existing between the Student Sustainable Farm (SSF), Multifunctional Woody Perennial Polyculture (MWP), FSHN Pilot Processing Plant (PPP), and UIUC Dining.  Presently the Sustainable Agriculture Food System grows, processes, and serves on campus a variety of tomato sauces (pizza sauce is served across campus) and hot sauce.  Soon, the Sustainable Agriculture Food System will add a whole wheat flour milling line.  It have a very successful and growing program to provide quality, sustainable, and local food products

The Office of Land and Emergency Management provides policy, guidance and direction for the Agency's emergency response and waste programs

Opportunities for funding may be found under the following programs within The Catalog of Federal Assistance (CFDA) 

The purpose of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE) program is to encourage research designed to increase our knowledge concerning agricultural production systems that:

The Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP) offers grant funds with a 25% match to support the development and expansion of local and regional food business enterprises to increase domestic consumption of, and access to, locally and regionally produced agricultural products, and to develop new market opportunities for farm and ranch operations serving local markets. 

The SUNSHOT initiative is a national effort to support solar energy adoption by making solar energy affordable for all Americans through research and development efforts in collaboration with public and private partners.

The Education and Literacy initiative is dedicated to developing the next generation of research, education, and extension professionals in the food and agricultural sciences. 

The program supports fundamental engineering research that will enable innovative processes for the sustainable production of electricity and fuels, and for energy storage. These processes must be environmentally benign, reduce greenhouse gas production, and use renewable resources.

The dining halls at the University residency halls produce an estimated average 14,962.5 pounds, or 7 tons, of food waste every week. To combat the amount of this food waste that goes to the landfills a pilot on-site  vermi-composting project on the Sustainable Student Farm will be created. The project has the potential to turn into a campus-wide vermi-composting model.