SMART Broiler Program

Overview

About FFAR

We connect funders, researchers and farmers through public-private partnerships to support audacious research addressing the biggest food and agriculture challenges.

Our world is changing rapidly. Farmers are facing extreme weather, diminishing natural resources and a growing global demand for their crops. This is where we come in. Our unique public-private partnership model allows us to collaborate with diverse stakeholders to identify research opportunities that help farmers adapt to these challenges.

We advance food and agriculture science to develop tools, technologies and information that benefit farmers, consumers and the environment.

About the SMART Broiler Program

The SMART Broiler program aims to identify Sensors, Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technologies (SMART) solutions that provide objective and comprehensive information about broiler welfare across the supply chain. Existing methods for assessing animal welfare rely on human observation and subjective scoring. Technologies that automatically collect quantitative data on commercial farms, with 25,000-50,000 birds per house, can help producers significantly improve animal welfare.

Program-funded researchers developed and commercialized automated monitoring tools that objectively assess broiler chickens’ welfare. Through two phases of this project, FFAR challenged grantees to focus attention on specific aims, including:

* Phase I: Early technology testing and refinement
* Advance the development of hardware components and software configuration for accurate measurement of Key Welfare Indicators (KWIs), mobility and broiler behavior in commercial operations.
* Develop data management and processing tools for KWIs, mobility and broiler behavioral assessment.
* Phase II: Validation of welfare assessment tools
* Optimize hardware and software configuration for accurate measurement of KWIs, mobility and behavior in commercial broiler operations.
* Advance the development of data management and processing tools for KWIs, mobility and behavioral assessment.
* Build case for commercial investment in these tools.
* Phase I included 6 projects, and Phase II selected the top 3 promising projects to continue for further funding and research.
* By addressing these research needs, the SMART Broiler program has awarded $5.5 million across 9 executed projects to generate data-driven insights that inform future food system strategies.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* FFAR welcomes individuals or teams with social science, systems science, food systems and evaluative methods expertise to apply. 
* FFAR can contract with 1099s (independent contractors), for-profits and 501(c)(3) nonprofits