Full ADOPT Grant: Round 1

Overview

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:

• Productivity
• Resilience
• Sustainability and progression towards net zero farming

Your project must focus on testing and trialling ideas or solutions that are either new or not yet widely used.

You must demonstrate to other English farmers, growers or foresters how the project will benefit them.

You must outline how you will communicate and share the outputs from your trial or experiment during and after your project.

Specfic themes

Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one or more of the following sectors:

• Agriculture
• Horticulture
• Agro-forestry

Eligibility

Your project must:

• Have total costs between £50,000 and £100,000
• Last between 6 and 24 months
• Start by 1 November 2025
• End by 31 October 2027
• Intend to exploit the results from or in England
• Carry out all of its project work in the UK
• Embrace open innovation principles and be willing to share results with other farmers, growers or foresters
• Have a Project Facilitator as part of the project team who is listed in the ADOPT Innovate UK Business Connect database

Funding

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has allocated up to £2 million, working in partnership with Innovate UK to fund on-farm trial projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

A minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by farmers, growers and foresters must be allocated to farmers, growers or foresters geographically based in England.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.

For industrial research projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• Up to 80% if you are an active farming, growing or forestry business based in England, Wales or Scotland
• Up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation, including active farming, growing or forestry businesses based in Northern Ireland
• Up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• Up to 50% if you are a large organisation

ADOPT Facilitator Support Grant: Round 1

This competition offers a £2,500 grant to farmers, growers or foresters in England to engage a Project Facilitator to support their Full ADOPT Grant applications. The aim is to improve application quality, widen access to ADOPT funding and build innovation expertise within the farming sector. As an eligible Project Facilitator, we can support your application and you can claim back some of the cost of working with us. Book a free consultation to discuss.