The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), will invest up to £11million 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 these funding competitions is to:

• develop solutions with the potential to improve overall productivity, sustainability, resilience, and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
• ensure solutions have positive outputs for farmers, growers or foresters in commercially relevant situations
• develop new agricultural solutions, by collaboration through engagement with end users and the UK research community in the innovation process
• accelerate adoption by ensuring knowledge exchange with the wider sector and other stakeholders

Your proposal must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

This is one of two competitions:

• Farming Innovation Programme - small R&D partnership projects round 2 (this competition)
• Farming Innovation Programme - feasibility projects round 2

It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure they are applying to the correct competition for their project.

If you apply to the wrong competition you will be made ineligible and will not be sent for assessment, you cannot transfer your application.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

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Eligibility

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

Your project must:

• have total eligible costs between £1million and £3million
• start by 1 June 2023
• end by 31 May 2026
• last up to 36 months
• be collaborative
• 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

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.

Lead organisation

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other UK organisations
• be or work with at least one grant claiming small medium enterprise (SME)

Academic institutions and research organisations cannot lead.

Project team

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)

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.

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during 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 eligible project costs.

Subcontractors

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.

Number of applications

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 institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not-for-profit or public sector organisation can collaborate in any number of applications.