Farming Futures R&D Fund: Climate Smart Farming IUK Competition Launched

The aim of this Innovate UK (IUK) competition is to fund industrial research studies developing ambitious new solutions reducing farming emissions and adapting to a changing climate. These must address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities.

Projects must focus on solutions to reduce emissions in existing agricultural practices or enhance resilience to climate change in one or more of these four industry subsectors:

• Livestock
• Plants
• Novel food production systems
• Bioeconomy and agroforestry

A total of £12.5 million has been allocated to the competition. Applicants who are successful in this Expression of Interest (EoI) stage will be invited to apply for a full stage competition. Each project’s total costs at full stage must be between £3 million and £6 million and can last up to 48 months.

This competition is open to collaborations only. To lead a project, an organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, an academic institution or a research and technology organisation (RTO). If the lead organisation is an academic institution or an RTO it must collaborate with at least one UK registered business of any size. To collaborate with the lead, the organisation must be a UK business of any size or a UK registered academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or RTO.

Project work must be carried out in the UK. Applicants must intend to exploit the results from or in England. A minimum of 50% of any grant must be awarded to farmers, growers or foresters based in England.

The deadline for applications is 18 May 2022 (11:00 BST).