A share of £7.8 million in grant funding is being offered for Small R&D Partnership Projects (Round 4)
Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, is funding research and development competitions aimed at benefiting farmers, growers and foresters in England. The programme seeks to support collaborations that improve productivity, sustainability, resilience, reduce environmental impact, and help the agricultural sector progress toward net zero.
The Farming Innovation Programme is driven by multiple thematic priorities, reflecting environment, productivity, sustainability and resilience. Proposals are expected to align closely with these themes to maximise impact.
For this competition, your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the industry subsectors below:
Projects should contribute to increasing productivity in farming, horticulture or forestry through innovation in technologies, processes or services.
Innovations must reduce environmental impact, including lowering emissions, reducing resource use, or improving biodiversity in agricultural systems.
Solutions should help farming, growing or forestry businesses become more resilient to challenges such as climate change, market volatility or supply chain pressures.
Especially in later‐stage competitions, there is an emphasis on moving innovations toward market, ensuring they are usable by farmers and foresters, with knowledge exchange and end‐user involvement.
Overall, projects under the Farming Innovation Programme must be collaborative, aligned with real on-farm needs, and demonstrate potential for practical benefit. With competitions spread over a number of funding “types” (Research Starter, Feasibility Studies, R&D Partnerships, ADOPT etc.), there are routes for ideas at different stages.
Lead organisation must be a UK registered business (of any size) for the Small R&D Partnerships competition. Collaborators can include other UK businesses, research organisations etc.
All project work must take place in the UK; results are expected to be exploited in England.
Projects must be collaborative (i.e. involve more than one organisation) and include end-users (farmers, growers, foresters) in the design, testing or advisory roles.
Projects must meet the cost and duration thresholds: for this round, total eligible costs between £1-3 million and duration up to 30 months.
The UK team has a strong track record in securing some of the most competitive national and European grants on behalf of its clients, with a full understanding of how a project should be presented to stand the highest chance of success. Each year in the UK alone, we are responsible for the submission of more than 100 funding applications across all sectors and priority areas. Based on this extensive experience, through careful project selection and using key insight into how a project should be best positioned, we consistently achieve success rates that are more than 5 times the typical success rates for UK national schemes and EU programmes.
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Here are some other funding opportunities that may be of interest.
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