Key Features
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £12.5 million across the two strands of this competition. This will be to develop innovative solutions for sustainable and resilient farming. This funding is from Farming Futures R&D Fund.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £12.5 million
Opens: 22nd May 2023
Closes: 19th Jul 2023
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £12.5 million 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.
Your proposal must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.
This competition is split into 2 strands:
This competition will address the challenges to plants, crops and farmed animals, from both their biological (biotic) and physical environments (abiotic).
It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
The aim of this competition is to fund collaborative development of projects with ambitious solutions. Solutions provided will enable sustainable and resilient farming through addressing biotic and abiotic stresses in agriculture, horticulture and forestry to:
The innovative technologies in your proposal could include one or more of the following biological (biotic) and physical environmental (abiotic) challenges:
This list is not exhaustive.
Your project must seek to significantly improve:
You must be able to demonstrate how your solution and output will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.
Your proposal must:
Your project must focus on one or more of the following agricultural and horticultural production sectors:
Farmed animals
Plant
Forestry
Cross-sector
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.
Please see further guidance on green box subsidies in the 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.
Your project
Your project must:
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 and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
To lead a project your organisation must:
Academic institutions and research organisations cannot lead or work alone.
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
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 are allowed in this competition.
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. We 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.
A business, can only lead on one application in each strand but can be included as a collaborator in 2 further applications in each of the 2 strands of the competition. If you are successful you will be asked to confirm you have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.
If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.
Applicants must ensure that all of the proposed work within projects, both that in the UK and internationally, will comply with the UKRI guidance on the use of animals in research and innovation.
Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations and compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.
You can use a previously submitted application when applying for both strands of this competition.
Innovate UK are not funding projects that :
Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has allocated up to £12.5 million, across the two strands of this competition, working in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge. This competition is delivered by Innovate UK.
If your project has farmers, growers and foresters requesting grant funding, a minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by those organisations, must come from farmers, growers or foresters geographically based in England.
Funding will be in the form of a grant.
The total funding available for the competition can change.
The funders have the right to:
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 but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.
For feasibility studies projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:
Research participation
The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 50% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.