The Farming Innovation Programme is part of Defra’s investment in innovation, research and development.

Defra is partnering with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to fund projects that benefit farmers, growers and foresters in England. 

All funding will be awarded through competitions. This means applications for each competition will be judged, and only the successful ones will be funded. 

The programme’s aims are to: 

• help farmers, growers and foresters increase productivity, sustainability and resilience
• reduce the environmental impact of agriculture and horticulture
• apply agricultural research to provide real benefits for farmers, growers and foresters
• use science to develop solutions for the practical challenges in agriculture and horticulture

To get funding, you must work in collaboration with a team.

Once the competition is open, Innovate UK Business Connect can help you find the right people to work with (opens in new window) on your project. 

Each competition will have webinars or briefing events that will be available on the competition webpage itself.

Which competition to apply for

You should consider the type of work you want to do and the amount of funding available. 

You want to	Competition name	Project size	Length (up to)	Who can lead
Explore an idea and develop a team	Research Starter	£28-56K	18 months	Farmers, growers, foresters
Check if an idea works in practice	Feasibility Studies	£200-500K	2 years	UK Businesses
Develop a new product or service	Small R&D partnerships Large R&D partnerships	£1-3 million £3-5 million	3 years 4 years	UK Businesses UK Businesses
Work on longer-term innovations	Farming Futures R&D	£500K – £6 million	2 to 5 years	Research organisations or UK businesses

Plan ahead – competition schedule

Competitions will be published on the Innovation Funding Service as they open, with full eligibility and application information for each one. 

You can find early information here to help you plan ahead.

Competition name	Status
Farming Futures R&D – Nutrient Management, Phase 2	As part of the Spending Review process, Defra is finalising its future funding plans and will convey details once confirmed. Stay up to date with the Defra Farming Blog and subscribe for more information.
Small R&D Partnerships (round 4)
Feasibility Studies (round 4)
Farming Futures R&D – Net Zero Farming

More about the Farming Innovation Programme

Funding will be awarded through a range of competitions from 2021 for a number of years. 

This is part of Defra’s Farming and Countryside Programme (opens in new window).

All the competitions in the programme have been developed so that insights from science and business can be applied to challenges in agriculture and horticulture.

We want to encourage this collaboration to develop solutions and improvements that can meet real environmental and industry challenges.