Up to £56,000 available for Farming Innovation Programme (UK)
Deadline: 6-Jul-22
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced Farming Innovation Programme: Research starter Pilot to provide an entry point for farmers, growers or foresters that have bold, ambitious, early-stage ideas solving major problems that impact their business.
This may help them exploit new significant opportunities for their business or industry sub-sector.
The funding for this competition is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge.
Aims
The aim of this competition is to:
investigate early-stage solutions with the potential to substantially improve overall productivity, sustainability, resilience and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
prioritise solutions that have positive outputs for farmers, growers or foresters in commercially relevant situations
accelerate development of effective new agricultural solutions by working with end-users and collaborating with the wider UK research community in the innovation process
Themes
Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the four industry subsectors:
livestock
plants
novel food production systems
bioeconomy and agroforestry
Scope
The scope of the competition is feasibility studies investigating new solutions to industry identified challenges, or opportunities for farmers, growers or foresters that have the potential to significantly improve:
productivity
sustainability and environmental impact
progression towards net zero emissions
resilience
Projects must focus on developing on-farm or immediate post farmgate solutions.
Your project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or forestry in England.
Funding Information
Project cost details are not required at the EoI stage.
At the full application stage your total project costs must be between £28,000 and £56,000.
Project Criteria
Your full stage project must:
have total eligible costs between £28,000 and £56,000
start by 1 August 2022
end by 31 July 2023
last up to 12 months
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
Eligibility Criteria
Lead organisation:
To lead a project your organisation must:
be an active farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in England
be able to evidence that you are an established business, including sole traders and partnerships
have a UK bank account
not have been awarded Innovate UK funding as a project lead within the last 5 years before 6 July 2022
To collaborate with the lead at the full stage, your organisation must be a UK registered organisation or a farmer, grower or forester based in the UK.
A business can only lead on one EoI application.
For more information, visit https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1158/overview#eligibility