STREAM
Systems for Tracking and Resilience in Efficient Agricultural-input Management
The Big Question
What if we could reduce American herbicide exposure from farm to table without raising the grocery bill?
The Problem
- Herbicides help make food more affordable, enable regenerative farming techniques, and increase the ability of American farmers to feed consumers. However, some herbicides that protect crops from weeds may have the potential for adverse effects in humans, animals, fish, and pollinators. Farmers, farm workers, and American consumers are often exposed to these herbicides and their formulation ingredients through food, water, soil, and air. Meanwhile, weeds are becoming resistant and pollinators, adjacent habitats, and rural communities can suffer from off-target runoff.
- Alternatives have long been sought, but no prior effort has resolved the fundamental balance between efficacy, health, safety, ecological impact, soil dynamics, and cost.
The Solution
- The Systems for Tracking and Resilience in Efficient Agricultural-input Management (STREAM) program is ARPA-H’s shared pledge to accelerate farm modernization and food supply security.
- The program aims to develop safer alternative crop protection formulations, improve monitoring of herbicide off-target spread, and create methods to remove or break down herbicides from soil and water before they get to consumers.
- If successful, STREAM will reduce the cumulative chemical burden borne by American consumers and agricultural workers, protect the soil and water on which our food supply depends, and give farmers economically viable alternatives to the herbicides they rely on today.
Only ARPA-H can…
- Work on next generation solutions at the intersection of agricultural chemistry and human health.
- Prioritize research into innovative, safe, and cost-effective alternatives to crop protection tools.
- Bridge the gap between state of the art and next generation farming by ensuring chemicals currently in use are removed from the environment after they do their work.
Solicitation
To achieve its goals, STREAM encourages experts from agricultural and weed sciences, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced chemistry, drone development, and other related fields to collaborate in teams that can address these complex objectives.
The program will pursue four coordinated technical areas:
- Develop next-generation herbicides and formulations by using artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover novel chemical compounds, biologically derived herbicides, and advanced biological treatments that selectively target weeds—including resistant species—while minimizing impacts on surrounding ecosystems.
- Advance precision and nonchemical weed-control technologies, including cost-effective physical weed-control approaches such as laser ablation and miniature autonomous weeders, machine vision-guided targeted herbicide application, real-time drift modeling, and U.S.-manufactured drone-based precision application systems that reduce chemical inputs while maintaining farm productivity.
- Improve monitoring of herbicides and associated chemicals by developing accurate, low-cost, continuous sensing technologies for compounds that are difficult and expensive to measure, enabling community-level monitoring and faster response when problems arise.
- Remove or degrade herbicides and associated chemicals by developing methods to rapidly break down agricultural chemicals in soil and water, intercept runoff before it reaches waterways, and reduce residues absorbed by crops.
Interested in this opportunity? Please apply through the Scalable Solutions Office's rolling submission ISO (ARPA-H-SOL-24-105), which is posted and maintained on SAM.gov.
Submissions must address one or more of the four technical areas above to be considered and are due no later than September 14, 2026 (11:59 pm ET).
STEPS TO APPLY:
- Access the Scalable Solutions solicitation (ARPA-H-SOL-24-105) from SAM.gov. This solicitation and its associated attachments and templates will provide details on eligibility, submission requirements, evaluation criteria, contact information, and the link to apply.
- Download all documents in the “Attachment” section. Be sure to follow all instructions provided in the Scalable Solutions ISO document and its associated documents for Solution Summaries. A template for the Solution Summary submission is provided.
- Submit a Solution Summary. To submit a Solution Summary, use the link provided in the solicitation documents. When submitting your Solution Summary, be sure to select "STREAM" from the Solution Summary dropdown list when prompted. Sign-in required to submit a Solution Summary. Submissions must be submitted by September 14, 2026 (11:59 pm ET).
- Await feedback: After submitting your Solution Summary, you should wait to hear back from ARPA-H with feedback before proceeding with a full proposal.
Questions about this opportunity? Inquiries must be submitted using the Ask A Question form on the ARPA-H Solutions site. Sign-in required. Be sure to select “STREAM” from the dropdown when prompted.
Program Manager
