Deadline: 28-Feb-23
Round two of the £3.5m Carbon Innovation Fund (CIF) partnership with Co-op is now open for applications to support organizations reducing carbon emissions from the food and farming industries.
Fund Aims
- The aim of the second round of the Carbon Innovation Fund is to decrease farmers’ reliance on soy-based feed and synthetic fertilisers through funding projects and trials, while encouraging collaboration that further test and scale up innovative solutions.
- The fund will endeavour to:
- Increase support to projects that may be risky for other funders e.g. because of the size of the organisation or because they have only conducted a pilot so far.
- Increase testing and scaling up of alternative solutions to soy-based feed and synthetic fertilisers that reduce farming costs and benefit the environment
- Increase access to knowledge, techniques and skills in the agriculture and aquaculture sectors
- Increase farmers’ confidence, skills and knowledge to transition successfully into a new era of managing cost, efficiency and sustainability of their inputs
- Strengthen existing or create new networks and collaborations between farmers and other stakeholders that bring together solutions to common challenges
- Reduce costs for farmers, consumers and have positive impact on the environment through the adoption of alternative solutions to soy-based feed and synthetic fertilisers.
Funding Information
Grants of £75,000 to £200,000 are available to organisations working to reduce reliance on soy-based animal or fish feed and/or synthetic fertilisers.
What types of projects would they support?
They are looking to fund a range of different mechanisms which can help to reduce their reliance on soy animal feed and/or synthetic fertilisers. Some examples are listed below.
- Alternatives to soy-based animal or fish feed
- Alternatives to synthetic fertiliser, or ideas which would reduce their negative impacts
- On-farm trials of alternative feed or fertiliser which will measure success and impacts on measures such as yield, costs, biodiversity increases, nitrogen management, etc
- Thinking laterally to reduce reliance rather than create alternatives such as breeding new strains of crops, better nitrate management on farm, building multi-stakeholder networks to tackle issues together, agroecological cluster demonstration projects, etc
Who can apply for funding?
If you are eligible, you will:
- Be running a project that reduces UK farmers’ reliance on soy-based animal or fish feed and/or synthetic fertilisers;
- Have evidence that a pilot of your work has been completed (you do not have to need to completed this yourselves);
- Be legally constituted, have a bank account in your organisation’s legal name, and at least two unconnected (unrelated and not married) people on your board or management committee;
- Have evidence that your project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
- Have proof this project will not lead solely to a private gain;
- Commit to open-source sharing of information, processes and learnings;
- Demonstrate collaboration and/or co-operation within your project, and;
- Carry out your project in the UK
What can’t they fund?
- Policy and lobbying initiatives
- New ideas, without any sort of pilot or trial in the first instance
- Projects that cannot commit to open-source sharing. This includes any work on patenting or intellectual property which leads to private gain
- Projects focusing on feed additives, instead of reducing reliance on soy specifically
- Projects which do not support farmers directly, e.g. developing meat alternatives
- Retrospective projects and costs
- Projects taking place outside of the UK
For more information, visit Co-op Foundation.