The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £12.5 million in innovation projects.

This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge.

Defra and Innovate UK will work in collaboration to deliver a portfolio of projects that meet the objectives of the Farming Innovation Programme to develop innovative solutions that increase the productivity and sustainability of farming. The focus of this competition is sustainable farm-based protein production.

The aim of this funding is to:

• accelerate the development of novel and disruptive technologies, that will transform traditional farm protein production systems into more sustainable models
• support innovation with the potential to grow the sustainable protein industry and create new sources of resource efficient, low emission proteins
• support significant improvements to farming productivity, environmental sustainability and resilience in the sector and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
• accelerate R&D of game changing opportunities by building diverse consortia including the UK agricultural sector and relevant research expertise
• support projects that demonstrate environmental and societal impact, and include clear project deliverables for measuring the sustainability of the solutions and how they are preventing negative impact upon the sector
• encourage dissemination and knowledge exchange to drive impact and wide uptake in the farming sector

Your proposal must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

This competition is split into 2 strands:

• Strand 1: Farming Futures R&D Fund: Sustainable farm-based protein, Feasibility studies
• Strand 2: Farming Futures R&D Fund: Sustainable farm-based protein, Industrial research (this strand)

It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure they are applying to the correct strand for their project.

Eligibility

If you are successful, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.

Please see further guidance on green box subsidies here WTO Guidance for support in Agriculture. Applicants receiving this type of support must ensure that there is minimal to no distortion of trade and comply with the requirements of Annex 2 of the Agriculture Agreement.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £500,000 and £1 Million
• start by 1 April 2023
• be collaborative
• 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 that is requested by farmers, growers or foresters, allocated to farmers, growers or foresters based in England

For non-breeding projects, your project must:

• end by 31 March 2025
• last up to 24 months

For breeding projects only, your project:

• must end by 31 March 2028
• can last up to 60 months

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian source.

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK-registered business of any size
• be a UK-registered academic institution
• be a UK-registered research and technology organisation (RTO)
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations

If the lead organisation is an academic institution or an RTO it must collaborate with at least 2 businesses of any size.

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)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition. All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.