The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will work with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to invest up to £8 million in innovation projects.

This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge.

The aim of this competition is to:

• drive the development and demonstration of solutions that have the potential to substantially improve overall productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability
• help the sector mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change
• ensure solutions deliver positive benefits for England’s farmers, growers, or foresters in commercially relevant situations
• accelerate research development and demonstration of new agricultural solutions by driving collaboration through active engagement of end users and the wider UK research community in the innovation process
• enable adoption by demonstrating knowledge exchange to the wider sector and other stakeholders

Your proposal must be able to demonstrate how the project will:

• work with end users across the supply chain to identify the major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities
• benefit farmers, growers, or foresters in England
• build understanding of how your approach can best achieve widespread use, developing a theory of change, working with economists, social scientists, and other relevant experts
• have scalable solutions that can be taken up widely and have widespread impact
• demonstrate how the project will support a transformative change in the agriculture or horticultural sectors
• develop and deliver a knowledge exchange (KE) plan that identifies the targets for the solution with a clear dissemination plan
• how you will exploit the outputs of the project, and expected outcomes in terms of solution adoption

Your project’s total costs must be between £3million and £5million.

If you are successful, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the 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:

• have total costs between £3 million and £5 million
• start by 1 February 2023
• end by 31 January 2027
• last up to 48 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in England
• have a minimum of 50% of any grant requested by farmers, growers or foresters, allocated to farmers, growers or foresters based in England

To lead a project, your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size,
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• involve at least one grant claiming academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not-for-profit or public sector organisation

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK business of any size or a UK registered:

• academic institution
• charity
• not-for-profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.