Millions of acres of cropland across Florida, Georgia, and Alabama remain fallow during the winter, representing a missed opportunity to improve farm profitability and environmental outcomes. Barriers such as infrastructure limitations, market uncertainty, and operational challenges continue to constrain the adoption of winter cropping systems.

CHEERS aims to accelerate the adoption of winter cropping systems and support the transition to a profitable climate-smart circular bioeconomy across the Tri-State region. Through a co-production approach, farmers, ranchers, Extension professionals, industry partners, and researchers work together to identify barriers, develop solutions, and evaluate opportunities for integrating winter crops into existing agricultural systems. CHEERS seeks to enhance farm resilience and profitability while delivering environmental benefits such as improved soil health, reduced nutrient losses, increased carbon sequestration, and support for pollinators. The UF Water Institute supports the project through team science facilitation, coordinating team integration meetings and advisory board engagement to strengthen collaboration, communication, and shared decision-making across the project.

Funding: United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, $9,990,000 from 2025-2029.

This project is facilitated/supported by the Water Institute.

Project Participants

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Expected Outputs

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