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The Farming Futures R&D Fund: Automation and Robotics Round 2 provides funding for collaborative industrial research projects developing advanced automation and robotics technologies for agriculture, horticulture and forestry.
Defra has allocated up to £20 million to the competition, which is delivered in partnership with Innovate UK as part of the Farming Innovation Programme. The programme is designed to accelerate the development of technologies that improve productivity, sustainability, resilience and resource efficiency while helping reduce reliance on seasonal labour.
Projects must demonstrate clear and measurable benefits for farmers or growers in England and should deliver solutions that are closely aligned with industry needs and capable of creating transformative commercial opportunities.
Key Dates and Funding
Opens: 3 August 2026
Closes: 30 September 2026
Funding: Projects must have total eligible costs between £500,000 and £2.5 million
For industrial research activities, businesses can receive funding for eligible project costs of up to:
Research organisations undertaking non-economic activities can collectively account for up to 30% of the project’s total eligible costs.
Programme Overview
The competition aims to support ambitious automation and robotics projects that address some of the most significant challenges facing UK agriculture.
Projects should demonstrate how advanced technologies can improve areas such as:
Projects must also consider how knowledge and learning from the innovation will be shared across the wider agricultural sector.
Technology Scope
The proposed innovation must focus on one or more automation and robotics technologies applicable to agriculture, horticulture or forestry.
Eligible technologies include:
Projects should demonstrate how the technology delivers measurable improvements over current approaches and has a realistic pathway towards commercial adoption.
Priority Sectors
Projects must focus on one or more of the following agricultural, horticultural or forestry sectors.
Farmed Animals
Eligible areas include:
Projects may address areas such as automated monitoring, feeding, welfare management, health assessment or other robotic and intelligent systems relevant to livestock production.
Plants
Eligible areas include:
Heavy forestry harvesting machinery is specifically outside the scope.
Who Can Apply
The project must be led by a UK-registered business of any size and must be collaborative.
The lead must collaborate with at least one other eligible UK organisation.
Eligible collaborators include:
The lead organisation and at least one other organisation must claim funding.
No single organisation can account for more than 70% of total eligible project costs.
Why This Competition Matters
Agriculture is facing increasing pressure to produce more efficiently while reducing environmental impacts, managing labour shortages and improving resilience.
Automation and robotics have the potential to transform the way farms, horticultural businesses and forestry operations work by increasing productivity, improving precision and reducing reliance on manual labour.
This competition provides businesses with the opportunity to collaborate with farmers, researchers and technology specialists to develop solutions that can move beyond technical development and towards practical adoption in real commercial settings.
How Inventya Can Help
A strong application must demonstrate not only technical innovation, but also a clear agricultural need, measurable benefits for farmers or growers, and a credible route to commercial adoption. Inventya can help applicants build a proposal that brings these elements together into a clear and competitive funding case.
Our support includes:
Inventya helps agri-tech innovators combine technical ambition with a strong commercial and industry case, ensuring proposals clearly demonstrate how the technology can deliver real value to farmers, growers and the wider UK agricultural sector.
