Farming Futures R&D Fund: Low Emissions Farming

This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, which is delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

Defra and UKRI will work in collaboration to deliver a portfolio of projects that meet the objectives of the Farming Innovation Programme.

The aim of this competition is to fund collaborative projects that will develop new solutions to support UK farming working towards achieving low emissions. These must address major on-farm or immediate post-farmgate challenges or opportunities.

Project must address at least one of the following five key areas:

• Regenerative farming — for example, integration of regenerative techniques into productive systems for improved soil health, water quality, and biodiversity.
• Energy — for example, increasing efficiency in controlled environment agriculture, improved materials for glasshouses, or energy-efficient machinery.
• Methanisation (or biomethanisation) — a process based on the natural fermentation of organic matter to produce biogas, methanisation provides a use for organic waste, producing renewable energy and organic fertiliser. The biogas obtained from methanisation can be used directly to produce heat and electricity, and consideration must be provided for the handling of any CH4 and CO2 byproducts, with a focus on on-farm utilisation.
• Reducing GHG emission in livestock production — for example, methane-inhibiting feed additives, novel housing systems, or enhanced breeding.
• Innovations to support land management — including productive paludicultural systems; agroforestry, energy crops and biomass production, and deployment of biochar for carbon sequestration through application to land.

Project must:

• Develop ambitious solutions that will reduce emissions in existing farming practices
• Carry out a life cycle assessment (LCA) for the solution developed
• Demonstrate impact and measure of carbon as a number to facilitate foot printing and potential trading, but other emissions must not be ignored
• Demonstrate and measure wider environmental benefits, as contributors to low-emission farming
• Encourage dissemination and knowledge exchange to the wider sector and increase the maturity or market readiness of emerging solutions
• Ensure concepts are closely aligned with industry priorities to deliver business-orientated, transformative opportunities

Project must also demonstrate how the solution will significantly improve on-farm:

• Productivity
• Resilience
• Sustainability and progression towards low-emission farming

Projects must evidence how the solution will benefit farmers, growers, or foresters in England.

To lead a project, your organisation must:

• Be a UK-registered business of any size, an academic institution, or a research and technology organisation (RTO)
• Collaborate with other UK-registered organisations
• Involve at least one grant claiming business of any size

If the lead organisation is an academic institution or an RTO, it must collaborate with two businesses of any size.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must:

• Apply for funding when entering their costs into the application
• Include rationale for the collaboration and describe the structure in your application
• Ensure any one partner does not account for more than 70% of the total eligible costs