Overview
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), in partnership with Innovate UK, will invest up to £7.8 million in agricultural innovation projects through the Farming Innovation Programme.
The aim is to support collaborative projects that:
- Develop solutions to improve productivity, sustainability, resilience, and progress towards net zero
- Deliver positive outputs for farmers, growers, or foresters in commercially relevant situations
- Accelerate adoption by ensuring knowledge exchange with the wider sector
- Strengthen collaboration between the UK research community and end users
Projects must demonstrate clear benefits for farmers, growers, or foresters in England.
Scope
Proposals must develop innovative agricultural solutions that significantly improve:
- Productivity
- Sustainability and environmental impact
- Progress towards net zero
- Resilience
Projects should bring together supply chain partners to address major sector challenges or opportunities. Collaboration with end users is essential.
Key themes and topics
Projects must address an industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the following subsectors:
- Farmed animals
- Plants
- Novel food production systems
- Bioeconomy and agroforestry
Defra will take a portfolio approach, funding a range of projects across different markets, technologies, and maturity levels.
Project duration
Projects must last up to 30 months
- Start by 1 July 2026
- End by 31 December 2028
Projects must start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day
Award value
Eligible project costs must be between £1 million and £3 million.
Funding rates
Funding will be awarded as a grant, with the following maximum contributions for industrial research projects:
- Micro and small organisations: up to 70% of eligible costs
- Medium organisations: up to 60%
- Large organisations: up to 50%
Research organisations undertaking non-economic activity can claim up to 30% of total project costs, funded at:
- 100% for RTOs, charities, not-for-profits, public sector bodies, and research organisations
- 80% of full economic costs (FEC) for Je-S registered academic institutions
- If grant funding is requested by farmers, growers, or foresters, at least 50% of the total grant amount must go to organisations based in England.
Eligibility criteria
Your project must:
- Have eligible costs of £1m–£3m
- Be collaborative (with at least two organisations applying for funding)
- Be led by a UK business of any size that is an established commercial entity (sole traders and partnerships eligible)
- Include at least one grant-claiming SME (micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise)
- Carry out all work in the UK and exploit results from or in England
Collaborators can include:
- UK-registered businesses of any size
- Academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTOs)
- Charities, not-for-profits, and public sector organisations
Additional rules:
- A business can only lead one application but may collaborate on two further applications
- Academic institutions, RTOs, charities, not-for-profits, and public sector organisations may collaborate on any number of applications
- Subcontractors are allowed but must provide fair market value; overseas subcontractors require strong justification
- Funding awarded to primary agricultural producers will fall under the WTO “green box” exemption for agriculture.
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