EOIs: Farming Innovation Programme – Research Starter Round 4 (UK)

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest in innovation projects. This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is a partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge and delivered by Innovate UK.

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

Specific 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

Project Size

• At the full application stage your project’s total costs must be between £28,000 and £56,000.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that:
  • are equine specific​
  • involve wild caught fisheries
  • are cellular or acellular production systems, fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi​
  • are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use
  • are aquaculture, including algae and seaweed for human consumption
  • do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your full stage project must:
    • start by 1 October 2024
    • end by 31 March 2026
    • last between 6 and 18 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in England
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a full stage 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 commercial 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 14 February 2024
  • The aim of this funding is to enable a commercial farming, growing or forestry businesses to investigate their own idea.
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead in the full stage competition, an organisation must be a farmer, grower or forester based in the UK or be a UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors will be allowed in the full stage of this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • A farming, growing or forestry business can only lead on one EoI application.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.