Key Features
Farming, growing or forestry businesses based in England can apply for a share of up to £5 million for on-farm trial and demonstration projects, to improve adoption of new ideas or solutions in the agricultural sector.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £5 million
Opens: 4th Jun 2026
Closes: 29th Jul 2026
Innovate UK alongside Defra are investing up to £5 million to support on-farm trails and farm experiments projects.
The aim of this competition is to support innovative on-farm trials or experiments to test ideas or solutions and demonstrate that they will address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities.
Projects must address on of the following sectors:
To be eligible for this competition, your project must have total costs of between £50,000 and £200,000 and last between 6 and 24 months. Projects must start before 1st December and end by 30th November 2028. Projects must embrace innovation principles and be willing to share results with other farmers, growers and foresters and have a Project Facilitator as part of the project team who is listed in the ADOPT Innovate UK Business Connect database and collaborate with at least one other UK farmer, grower or forester that is claiming grant funding.
Lead Organisation: To lead a collaborative project, organisations must be an active farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in England with a UK bank account. Lead organisations must collaborate with at least one other farming, growing or forestry business of any size in the UK and be able to evidence that you are an established commercial business. Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
Project team: To collaborate with the lead, you must be an active commercial farmer, grower or forester in the UK. You can collaborate with the lead applicant if you are a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation, research organisation or research and technology organisation.
Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations that do not claim any funding for work on the project. These costs must be covered from their own resources and can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home counties and exploit the results outside the UK.
Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used in the application, but you must state why UK subcontractors could not be used.
Number of applications: Eligible organisations can only lead on one application. Any further applications by the same organisation as lead will be made ineligible. An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. Organisations not leading an application can collaborate in any number of applications.
Previous Applications: Previously submitted applications can be used in this competition.
Innovate UK will not fun the following projects:
Defra alongside Innovate UK has allocated up to £5 million to fund on-farm trial projects. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
A minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by farmers, growers or foresters must be allocated to farmers, growers or foresters based in England.
For industrial research projects, you can 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 60% 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 60% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding
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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