Farming Innovation Programme - feasibility round 2

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £5.5million in innovation projects. This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge.

The aim of these funding competitions is to:

• investigate early stage solutions that have the potential to substantially improve the overall productivity, sustainability and resilience of farming, and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
• prioritise solutions that will have positive outputs for farmers, growers and foresters in commercially relevant situations
• accelerate research and development of new agricultural solutions by actively engaging collaboration with the wider UK research community in the innovation process

Your proposal must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

This is one of two competitions:

• Farming Innovation Programme – feasibility round 2 (this competition – project costs £200k-£500k, feasibility studies, closes 31st Oct)
• Farming Innovation Programme – small R&D partnership projects round 2 (project costs £1m-£3m, for industrial research, closes 2nd Nov)

It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure they are applying to the correct competition for their project.

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.

Please 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.

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total costs between £200,000 and £500,000
• start by 1 April 2023
• end by 31 March 2025
• last up to 24 months
• be collaborative
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in England
• have a minimum of 50% of any grant requested by farmers, growers or foresters, allocated to farmers, growers or foresters based in England

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations (at least one)

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

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

Scope

The aim of this competition is to fund feasibility studies investigating new solutions that will address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities.

Your solutions must significantly improve:

• productivity
• sustainability and environmental impact
• progression towards net zero emissions​
• resilience

Your project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

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

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

Supporting events

Innovate UK held an online briefing webinar on 22nd August 2022: click here to watch the briefing recording.

An online Q&A session will be held on 1st September at 11am.

KTN will hold an online consortium building event on 6th September, 10am-noon: click here to attend the consortium building event.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact KTN’s Agrifood team.