Deadline: 24-Nov-21
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has announced Farming Innovation Programme: Research starter Pilot to provide an entry point for farmers, growers or foresters that have bold, ambitious, early-stage ideas solving major problems that impact their business.
This may help them exploit new significant opportunities for their business or industry sub-sector.
This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge. This is an expression of interest (EoI) competition. If your application is successful, you will be invited to apply to a full stage competition.
Aims
The aim of this competition is to:
- investigate early-stage solutions with the potential to substantially improve overall productivity, sustainability, resilience and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
- prioritise solutions that have positive outputs for farmers, growers or foresters in commercially relevant situations
- accelerate development of effective new agricultural solutions by working with end-users and collaborating with the wider UK research community in the innovation process
Themes
Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the four industry subsectors:
- livestock
- plants
- novel food production systems
- bioeconomy and agroforestry
Scope
- The scope of the competition is feasibility studies investigating new solutions to industry identified challenges, or opportunities for farmers, growers or foresters that have the potential to significantly improve:
- productivity
- sustainability and environmental impact
- progression towards net zero emissions
- resilience
- Projects must focus on developing on-farm or immediate post farmgate solutions.
- Your project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or forestry in England.
Funding Information
Project cost details are not required at the EoI stage. At the full application stage your project’s total eligible costs must be between £28,000 and £56,000.
Project Criteria
Your full stage project must:
- have total eligible costs between £28,000 and £56,000
- start by 1 August 2022
- end by 31 July 2023
- last up to 12 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
Lead organisation:
- To lead a project your organisation must:
- be a farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in England
- be able to evidence that you are an established business, including sole traders and partnerships
- have a UK bank account
- not have been awarded Innovate UK funding as a project lead within the last 5 years
- To collaborate with the lead at the full stage, your organisation must be a UK registered organisation or a farmer, grower or forester based in the UK.
- A business can only lead on one EoI application.
For more information, visit https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1047/overview