IUK Announces Farming Futures R&D Fund

Delivered by Innovate UK (IUK), the Farming Innovation Programme has been set up to fund ambitious research and development projects to overcome barriers and create a more productive and sustainable farming sector. Projects will benefit England’s farmers, growers, foresters and other businesses to conduct R&D to help boost productivity, enhance sustainable practices, improve environmental outcomes and reduce carbon.

IUK is awarding funds through two competitions running in parallel:

• 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

The focus is sustainable farm-based protein production. Projects must be within one or more of the four industry subsectors: Livestock; Plants; Novel food production systems (such as algae, seaweed, insects, etc); and Bioeconomy and agroforestry.

A total of £12.5 million has been allocated to this competition for both strands. For the Feasibility Studies competition, each project’s total costs must be between £200,000 and £500,000. For the Industrial Research Competition, each project’s total costs must be between £500,000 and £1 million.

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 two businesses 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.

Both competitions open on 25 July 2022. The deadline to submit an application is 21 September 2022 (11:00 BST).