Farming Futures: Environmental Resilience – Competition Q&A & Consortium Building Event

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Overview

This recording provides an opportunity to hear questions and answers on the competition with Defra and Innovate UK, as well as find potential collaborators. We recommend also watching the competition briefing recording from May 2023.

This competition is for innovators who want to apply for funding to work on collaborative R&D projects around on-farm environmental resilience. Projects should benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

Project ideas should aim to enable sustainable and resilient farming through addressing biotic and abiotic stresses in agriculture, horticulture and forestry.

About the Funding

The competition will fund projects with ambitious solutions aiming to support on-farm environmental resilience:

• Support specific recommendations from recent Defra reviews, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) act 2023 and the Government Food Strategy
• Resolve key issues affecting the sector, where sustainable and resilient farming solutions can mitigate climate challenges and increase productivity

The Funding is for:

• Business of any size
• Academic institution
• Charity
• Not for profit
• Public sector organisation
• Research and technology organisation (RTO)

You will need to collaborate with at least one other organisation to apply for this funding. All partner organisations need to be UK registered and a business must be leading the application for funding.

The project work should be carried out in the UK, and the intention is to exploit the project results from or in the UK.

There is a total of £12.5M funding available across two stands:

Strand 1: Feasibility

• Evaluating emerging solutions with the UK’s world-leading research base, agri-tech businesses, SMEs and the UK agricultural sector to develop innovations in agriculture, forestry and horticulture (this strand)
• Total costs of £200k – £500k
• Duration: 12 to 24 months

Strand 2: Industrial Research 

• Progressing emerging solutions to new products, processes and services with the UK’s world-leading research base, agri-tech businesses, SMEs and the UK agricultural sector to develop innovations in agriculture, forestry and horticulture
• Total costs of £500k – £1m
• Duration: 24 to 36 months (or for breeding projects up to 60 months)

Funding Scope

Projects must focus on one or more of the following agriculture production sectors:

Farmed Animals

• Monogastric
• Ruminant

Plant

• Broadacre: cereals, root crops, grassland
• Horticulture: field based and specialist growers
• Fruit: top fruit, stone fruit and soft fruit
• Vineyard
• Protected cropping: glass and polytunnel systems
• Controlled environment and vertical farming systems

Forestry

• Agro-forestry

Cross-sector

• Bioeconomy

The innovative technologies in your proposal could include one or more of the following biological (biotic) and physical environmental (abiotic) challenges:

• Integrated pest management
• Detection, prevention and management of diseases
• Agro-ecology
• Gene editing and breeding
• Regenerative cropping, livestock and mixed systems
• Livestock housing, nutrition, health and management
• Innovative fertiliser practices
• Soil resilience
• Water management and innovation

This list is not exhaustive.

This funding is from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Farming Innovation Programme, and is in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production (TFP) Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK.

Find out more:

If you would like to book a 1:1 meeting with a member of the Innovate UK KTN’s AgriFood team to discuss your queries related to the Farming Futures: Environmental Resilience Competition, or to get help in finding a collaboration partner, click here.

Competition Briefing Recording (recorded 22nd May)

Feasibility

Industrial Research

Book a 1:1 meeting with a member of Innovate UK KTN’s AgriFood team