Farmer in a Field farming and planting
A farmer plants rice in fields outside Hanoi at night as they try to beat a looming heatwave, a practice that is becoming more common across north and central Vietnam. Nhac NGUYEN/AFP News

Britain is trying to break new ground in agriculture as it seeks to unlock better and more innovative farming solutions through recently announced competitions.

On August 2, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) announced over £14 million in funding for the development of innovative farming solutions through two new rounds of competitions. This is part of the UK government's Farming Innovation Programme and seeks to increase sustainability in the agricultural sector.

The new funding will fulfil the government's net zero ambitions as it drives the agriculture and horticulture industry towards net zero and sustainability.

This comes at a time when Britain called for sustainable agriculture to address global food security issues at the recent G20 meet which is a key agenda highlighted in 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Enhancing the productivity of the UK agriculture sector

This £14 million funding to develop new and innovative solutions for the farming sector is part of the UK government's agenda to invest in innovation and productivity in the UK agriculture sector. The UK government has reiterated its commitment to boost sustainability and productivity in the agriculture of the UK in the next three years through a series of investments worth £600 million. The plan is to enhance productivity in agriculture while fulfilling net-zero targets.

The competition invites applications from research organisations and agro-businesses along with farmers, growers and foresters who will showcase their ideas and innovative solutions for the UK agriculture sector.

Prior to this, the government backed with funding innovative farming solutions like improved soft fruit yield, battery-operated asparagus harvesting robots, and UV ray disinfection in the poultry and dairy industry etc in the previous rounds of the competition.

Innovative farming solutions to solve key issues

The UK Farming Minister, Mark Spencer encouraged everyone to take a look at the results of the previous competition rounds and get inspired to apply.

Spencer upheld the spirit of the competition which will encourage collaborations between the industry, research organisations and farmers, making it possible to bring many key ideas into the UK agriculture market.

Spencer highlighted how the methods chosen in the previous rounds of the competitions helped to enhance productivity in the agriculture of the UK and solved many challenges of the industry.

Commercialising innovative farming solutions to make sustainability feasible

Defra also published a guidance for the third round of competition which aims to commercialise innovative farming solutions chosen in the competition, making it open to the market. Developed in partnership with the Transforming Food Production Challenge, this £10 million worth of funding for the Small R&D Partnerships competitions will be delivered by Innovate UK.

The second round of the competition revealed innovative farming solutions like ways of breeding sheep naturally in a low carbon footprint manner, generating electricity from berry growing firms, automation in agricultural vehicles, sensors and picking.

The new guidance launched by Defra also has a £4.5 million Feasibility Studies competition which will provide the necessary support for testing of innovative farming solutions developed by businesses and researchers. This will help to understand the effectiveness and the efficiency of these new techniques in actual situations and how they can enhance the agriculture of the UK. Based on the feasibility of such testing, future investments will be made in the project.

The department's primary objective in funding such competitions is to find out early-stage innovative farming solutions which can increase the productivity of the UK agriculture sector, making it more sustainable and resilient, fulfilling the country's net-zero targets.

Some of the applicants that were successful in securing funding in previous rounds of the competition include fungal strains that fight insects and pests in wheat, reduction in chemical pesticide usage, and reduction in mechanical damage and crop yield loss from repeated spray usage.

The Small R&D partnership competition will be open to the public from August 14 while the Feasibility Studies competition will be open from September 18.

This comes at a time when Britain launched AI-enabled farm wildlife monitoring for the development of sustainable agriculture.

Maintaining the lead in the UK Agriculture sector

Dr Katrina Hayter of Innovate UK said that they are looking forward to selecting promising partnerships which will address the sustainability and efficiency challenges of the UK agriculture sector.

Hayter highlighted how feasibility studies form the basis of improvement in farming while R&D partnerships help in building innovative farming solutions, ultimately leading to successful commercialisation.

As of August 2023, Innovate UK has hosted 16 rounds of this competition since its inauguration in October 2021, making available £123 million in funding for innovative farming solutions. This happened under the UK government's £270 million Farming Innovation Programme.

The UK government also ascertained its commitment to maintaining UK agriculture at the forefront of new technology adoption by announcing £12.5 million in funding for the On-Fark Environmental Resilience competition at the recently concluded 'Farm to Fork' Summit. This competition ended in July and the selected projects would be intimidated by autumn this year.

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