Full ADOPT Grant: Round 10

Key facts

About this grant

Summary from the official listing on Find a Grant (GOV.UK):

Description

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £5 million for on-farm trials and farm experiment projects. This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.

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

The aim of this competition is to support innovative, on-farm trials or experiments to test ideas or solutions and demonstrate that they will address major on-farm or immediate post farmgate challenges or opportunities.

Your project must have the potential to significantly improve one or more of the following:

• productivity
• resilience
• sustainability and progression towards net zero farming

Your proposal must demonstrate to other English farmers, growers or foresters how the idea or solution will be of benefit to them.

If you are unfamiliar with the Innovate UK application process, you may wish to explore the ADOPT Facilitator Support Grant. The support grant is designed for applicants to engage with an external Project Facilitator to aid in the project scoping and application submission to the ADOPT Full Grant competition.

There is also a Support Hub available for applicants needing to request information or general support.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it.

We consider a range of factors when determining whether to provide funding to applicants. This includes an assessment of prior conduct, such as any outstanding payments owed to Innovate UK or UKRI. Such factors may influence the funding decision, potentially resulting in a refusal of funding or an award subject to additional scrutiny.

We also reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions. This may be in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations or broader government funding decisions.

This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information.

Project size

Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £50,000 and £200,000.

Accessibility and Inclusion

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance.

We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline.

You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Eligibility

Who can apply

Your project

If your application passes the technical assessment, any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.

See further guidance on green box subsidies WTO Guidance for support in Agriculture. Applicants receiving this type of support must ensure that there is minimal to no distortion of trade and comply with the requirements of Annex 2 of the Agriculture Agreement.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £50,000 and £200,000
• last between 6 and 24 months
• start by 1 April 2027
• end by 31 March 2029

Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs.

Lead organisation

To lead a collaborative project you must:

• be an active farming, growing or forestry business of any size based in England
• be able to evidence that you are an established commercial business, including sole traders and partnerships
• have an eligible UK bank account
• collaborate with at least one other farming, growing or forestry business of any size, based in the UK

It is desirable that you also collaborate with other UK registered organisations.

If you are part of a farming or growing co-operative, you should apply individually.

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Organisations that are not profit driven or do not have a commercial focus, including Community Interest Companies (CICs) and charities, are not allowed to lead in this competition.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, you must be an active commercial farmer, grower or forester based in the UK.

You can also collaborate with the lead applicant if you are a UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the l

Details are copied from the official source and can change. Check the official listing before you apply. Grant Writing Company is not affiliated with this funder.