Key Features
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £4.5 million for feasibility projects. This funding is from the Industry-led R&D Partnerships Fund, a part of the Farming Innovation Programme.
Programme: Defra
Award: Share of up to £4.5 million
Opens: 18th Sep 2023
Closes: 15th Nov 2023
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 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:
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:
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 here 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 must:
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.
To lead a project your organisation must:
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Academic institutions cannot lead.
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:
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.
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. 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 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.
Use of animals in research and innovation
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 Innovate UK 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.
Defra are not funding projects that:
Defra cannot fund projects that are:
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:
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.
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