Deadline: 01-Dec-21
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) is pleased to launch Farming Innovation Programme – Small R&D Partnership Projects to fund industrial research studies developing new solutions that will address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities.
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of £11million for Small R&D Partnership Projects, from the Industry-led R&D Partnerships Fund, a part of the Farming Innovation Programme.
This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge.
Aims
- The aim of this competition is to:
- develop solutions with the potential to improve overall productivity, sustainability, resilience, and move existing agricultural sectors to net zeroensure solutions have positive outputs for farmers, growers or foresters in commercially relevant situationsdevelop new agricultural solutions, by collaboration through engagement with end users and the UK research community in the innovation processaccelerate 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.
Themes
Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the industry subsectors :
- livestock
- plants
- novel food production systems
- bioeconomy and agroforestry
Funding Information
Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £1million and £3million.
Projects Criteria
Your project must:
- have total eligible costs between £1million and £3million
- start by 1 June 2022
- end by 31 May 2025
- last up to 36 months
- carry out all of its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in England
- have at least 50% of the farmers, growers or foresters involved based in England
Eligibility Criteria
To lead a project your organisation must:
- be a UK registered business of any size
- collaborate with other UK organisations
- work with at least one 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)
Subcontractors
- Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and 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 also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.
- They expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
Guidelines
- Your solutions must significantly improve:
- productivity
- sustainability and environmental impact of farming
- progression towards net zero emissions
- resilience
- Businesses within a supply chain, are encouraged to come together as a partnership to solve major challenges or opportunities.
- Your project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.
- They aim to fund a portfolio of projects, across a variety of technologies, markets, industry sectors, technological maturities and business size.
For more information, visit https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1049/overview
