The Southeast Dairy Business Innovation Initiative (SDBII), housed in the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, is proud to announce that recipients of awards for the 2026 Farm Infrastructure Improvement and Precision Technology and Management Grants have been selected and notified. Both spring grant opportunities are focused on dairy producers for projects completed on farms to spur innovation and allow producers to continue to provide the Southeast region with fluid milk and other dairy products. Grant awards are made possible through funding from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (grant awards AM21DBITN1008, 23DBITN1017, & 24DBITN1021).
The application period for both farm grant opportunities closed in March and with 102 applications submitted; this round was SDBII’s most competitive grant call to date. In the Farm Infrastructure Improvement Grant call, 67 applications were submitted, totaling over $5M in funds requested. In the Precision Technology and Management Grant call, there were 35 applications submitted, totaling over $4M requested.
With the assistance of outside reviewers, final award decisions included 25 individual projects, each to a separate business entity. Seventeen Farm Infrastructure Improvement awards, totaling $1.4M, and eight Precision Technology and Management awards, totaling nearly $1M, will be issued from this round of funding. The recipients of these grant awards represent nine states within the SDBII region. Examples of funded projects include fans to mitigate heat stress, TMR mixers to improve ration consistency, robotic milking systems to improve labor efficiency, and activity trackers to improve heat detection and overall herd health.
Funded projects will be posted to the SDBII website here when all grant recipient contacts are in place.
The SDBII team would like to extend our gratitude to the Southeastern dairy producers who submitted applications this year. As mentioned previously, this round of applications was the most competitive that the program has seen, and it was apparent that each applicant worked diligently on their applications, and each project was impactful to the Southeast dairy industry.