Farming Innovation Programme Small R&D Partnership Projects Round 3

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• be or work with at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not-for-profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in 2 further applications. If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

Academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTO), charity, not-for-profit or public sector organisations can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have total eligible costs between £1 million and £3 million
• start by 1 June 2024
• end by 31 May 2027
• last up to 36 months
• be collaborative
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in England

If your project includes grant funding for farmers, growers or foresters, a minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by them in your application, must come from farmers, growers or foresters geographically based in England.

The aim of this competition is to:

• develop solutions with the potential to improve overall productivity, sustainability, resilience and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
• ensure solutions have positive outputs for farmers, growers or foresters in commercially relevant situations
• develop new agricultural solutions, by collaboration through engagement with end users and the UK research community in the innovation process
• accelerate adoption by ensuring knowledge exchange with the wider sector and other stakeholders

Your solutions must significantly improve:

• productivity
• sustainability and the environmental impact of farming
• progression towards net zero emissions
• resilience

Businesses within a supply chain, are encouraged to come together as a partnership to solve major challenges or opportunities.

Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the industry subsectors below:

• livestock
• plants
• novel food production systems
• bioeconomy and agroforestry

We are not funding projects that:

• do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
• are equine specific
• involve wild caught fisheries
• involve aquaculture for fish production or human consumption
• involve cellular or acellular production systems, fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi for human consumption
• are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use

An online briefing event was held on 2nd August: click here to view the recording.

Innovate UK KTN held an online Q&A and consortium building session on Tuesday 14th August, : click here to watch the recording.

Join Innovate UK KTN’s Farming Innovation Programme: Finding Information and Partners Group on LinkedIn here.

If you would like additional help in finding a partner, contact our Agrifood team.