Sustainable Farm-Based Protein Competition

The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will invest up to £12.5 million in innovation projects.

This funding is part of Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme which is delivered in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge.

Defra and Innovate UK will work in collaboration to deliver a portfolio of projects that meet the objectives of the Farming Innovation Programme to develop innovative solutions that increase the productivity and sustainability of farming. The focus of this competition is sustainable farm-based protein production.

The aim of this funding is to:

• accelerate the development of novel and disruptive technologies, that will transform traditional farm protein production systems into more sustainable models
• support innovation with the potential to grow the sustainable protein industry and create new sources of resource efficient, low emission proteins
• support significant improvements to farming productivity, environmental sustainability and resilience in the sector and move existing agricultural sectors to net zero
• accelerate R&D of game changing opportunities by building diverse consortia including the UK agricultural sector and relevant research expertise
• support projects that demonstrate environmental and societal impact, and include clear project deliverables for measuring the sustainability of the solutions and how they are preventing negative impact upon the sector
• encourage dissemination and knowledge exchange to drive impact and wide uptake in the farming sector

Your proposal must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.