UK: Farming Innovation Programme – Feasibility (Round 3)

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), will invest up to £4.5 million in innovation projects.

This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with Innovate UK’s Transforming Food Production (TFP) Challenge.

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

This will include projects that:

• 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

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.

Specific Themes

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

• farmed animals
• plants
• novel food production systems
• bioeconomy and agroforestry

Funding Information

• Project size: Your project’s total costs must be between £200,000 and £500,000
• The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has allocated up to £4.5 million, working in partnership with Innovate UK Transforming Food Production Challenge. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• For this competition if any grant is requested by farmers, growers or foresters in your application, a minimum of 50% of that amount must be allocated to farmers, growers or foresters geographically based in England.
• If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.
• For a feasibility study project, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:
  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • If you are successful, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture.
  • Your project must:
    • start by 1 May 2024
    • end by 30 April 2026
    • last between 12 months and 24 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.
  • You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
  • 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 project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
  • Academic institutions cannot lead.
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs in the application.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition. All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • 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.
  • Academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTO), charities, not for profits or public sector organisations can collaborate on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.