Farming Futures R&D fund: Automation and Robotics Round 2

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with at least one other UK registered organisation

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK based farmer, forester or grower, or 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 two further applications.

All other organisation types and businesses not acting as a lead can collaborate on any number of applications.

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance.

We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline.

You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Your project must:

• have total costs between £500,000 and £2.5 million
• last between 12 and 36 months
• start by 1 March 2027
• end by 28 February 2030
• be collaborative

Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

If your application is successful, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.

See further guidance on green box subsidies WTO Guidance for support in Agriculture. Applicants receiving this type of support must ensure that there is minimal to no distortion of trade and comply with the requirements of Annex 2 of the Agriculture Agreement.

The aim of this competition is to fund collaborative projects with ambitious solutions for robotics and automation in agriculture, horticulture and forestry to:

• address key issues affecting the sector, where automation and robotics can mitigate challenges such as productivity, resource use efficiency, food quality and traceability, waste, crop and animal health, animal welfare and sustainability
• reduce the reliance on seasonal labour in agriculture where automation and robotics are seen as the most viable solution
• support the specific recommendations for automation innovation funding from Defra reviews including the Automation in Horticulture review
• align with the Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy that identifies Agri-Tech as a Frontier Industry within the Advanced Manufacturing sector plan

The innovative technologies in your proposal must focus on one or more of the following and be applicable to agriculture, horticulture and forestry:

• robotic and intelligent automated machines and systems for static or mobile operation
• imaging, sensing, and monitoring devices and systems to collect and store data and associated intelligent systems to process data for management records and to drive management decisions and automated actions
• post harvest automation for on farm and immediate post farm gate operations only, including horticultural and field crop preparation, packing and supply chain systems
• intelligent systems for on farm food storage management and monitoring
• intelligent systems for on farm energy management and monitoring

Your project must seek to significantly improve:

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

You must be able to demonstrate how the solution and output will benefit farmers, or growers in England.

Your project must:

• demonstrate environmental benefits and societal impact
• include clear project deliverables for measuring the sustainability of your solutions, and how they are preventing negative impact upon the sector
• ensure your solutions are closely aligned with industry priorities to deliver business orientated and transformative opportunities
• consider how it will encourage dissemination and knowledge exchange to the wider sector

We are not funding projects that:

• are equine specific
• involve wild caught fisheries
• involve aquaculture for fish production or human consumption
• involve cellular expression of proteins for human consumption or cultivated meat
• involve 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
• do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
• are relevant to non-food or ornamental plants only
• involve forestry harvesting operations and associated heavy equipment
• involve food processing and manufacturing
• that are primarily to develop another product or technology that have automation only to support the key product or technology

We cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance: giving a subsidy to an organisation on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of its products to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage: giving a subsidy to an organisation on the condition that it uses a set percentage of UK components in their product

An online briefing event will be held on 6 August 2026 at 2pm. Click here to join.

An online Q&A session and consortium building event will also be held on 13 August 2026. Click here to register for the event.