Farming Innovation Programme - large R&D partnership projects

The scope of this competition is to fund industrial research and experimental development projects that will address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities.

Your solutions or project outputs 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 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 sector
• develop and deliver a knowledge exchange (KE) plan that identifies the targets for the solution with a clear dissemination plan
• exploit the outputs of the project, and expected outcomes in terms of solution adoption, for example, number of end users, area of land, and percentage of production using the new solution

Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the industry subsectors below:

• livestock
• plants
• novel food production systems
• bioeconomy and agroforestry

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

Eligibility

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

Briefings

Online applicant briefing event, Tuesday 5th April, 11.30am: register to attend

Online consortia building event, Wednesday 20th April, 10am: register to attend

If you want help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Agrifood team.