Grant News

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) is offering up to £9.8 million in grants to farmers, growers, and foresters in England who are developing innovative solutions to improve productivity, sustainability, and resilience in the agricultural sector.

The grants are part of Defra's Farming Innovation Programme, which is a partnership with UKRI's Transforming Food Production Challenge and delivered by Innovate UK. The aim of the programme is to support the development of new agricultural technologies and practices that can help the sector move to net zero emissions.

To be eligible for a grant, projects must:

• Have the potential to improve overall productivity, sustainability, resilience, and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
• Have positive outputs for farmers, growers, or foresters in commercially relevant situations
• Be developed through collaboration with end users and the UK research community
• Ensure knowledge exchange with the wider sector and other stakeholders

The project’s total costs must be between £1 million and £3 million. To lead a project your organisation must:

• Be a UK registered business of any size
• Collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• Be or work with at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

The application closing date is the 25th October 2023.