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The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has now opened applications for the Productivity and Slurry Grant and the Animal Health and Welfare Grant through the second round of the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund.
This fund offers grants for specific items which will increase productivity, improve animal health and welfare and be environmentally sustainable.
Farmers (including contractors) can apply for a grant of between £1,000 and £25,000, with grants funding around 40% of the cost of specific items included in the Fund.
Following the first round of funding, DEFRA has reviewed and added to the list of items available under this grant. There are an additional 19 items to aid productivity, 2 items to improve slurry management and 66 items to support animal health and welfare.
Some examples of items eligible for funding under the grant are detailed below:
| Productivity & Slurry Grant | Animal & Health Welfare |
| Direct Drill 3m, 4m, 6+m | Mobile or fixed cattle and sheep handling systems |
| Direct Drill with fertiliser placement | EID panel reader for cattle and sheep |
| Retro fitted yield monitoring | Snacker feeder |
| Grain stirrers | Enrichment block holder for pigs |
| Tractor mounted stubble rake 6m | Automatic weigh scale for poultry |
| Slurry separators | Cameras for monitoring livestock |
However, following this review, some items from Round 1 of the funding have been removed.
The grant funding is competitive and will be allocated based on a scoring system, and therefore if the scheme is oversubscribed, funding will be allocated to those applications which best meet the objectives of the scheme.
Applying for the grant must be done online, through either the ‘Productivity & Slurry’ portal or the ‘Animal Health & Welfare’ portal, depending on which item is being applied for. If an application is successful, the applicant will receive an offer via email and from here they can accept the offer and purchase the items.
It is important that the item applied for is available, as it must be paid for and installed before the claim can be made for the grant payment. Currently, the claim submission deadlines are expected to be October 2023 for the Productivity & Slurry items and January 2024 for the Animal Health & Welfare items.
These capital grants will not be available in the long term so it is important to consider them now and to look at the full list of available items.
For more information or to find out how our Rural Property & Business department can help you please contact 01234 352201 or 01280 428010 or email bedford@robinsonandhall.co.uk
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has launched a new Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF), which offers grants to fund capital projects for small businesses and community infrastructure. The grant is worth £110 million and runs alongside existing DEFRA schemes, such as the Farming Investment Fund to acknowledge and assist with the specific challenges that rural areas often face.
The funding has been allocated to eligible local authorities and will be available from April 2023 to March 2025. The funding must be spent on capital projects in rural areas (i.e. buildings or equipment) for business or community purposes, in order to improve rural productivity.
For the purposes of the grant, a rural area is defined as:
1. Towns, villages and hamlets with populations below 10,000 and the wider countryside
2. Market or ‘hub’ towns with populations of up to 30,000 that serve their surrounding rural areas as centres of employment and in providing services
Example projects which could be funded include food processing equipment, converting farm buildings to other uses or rural tourism diversification such as event venues.
Some of the indicative local authority allocations are detailed below:
| Local Authority | Allocation |
| Bedford | £552,352 |
| Buckinghamshire | £1,828,695 |
| Central Bedfordshire | £1,061,854 |
| North Northamptonshire | £1,161,812 |
| West Northamptonshire | £1,367,953 |
The REPF submission window will be open from 3rd October to 30th November 2022, with the date of approval for funding proposals expected to be in January 2023. The REPF will start supporting investments from 1st April 2023 and the local authorities must allocate all funding by 31st March 2025.
A link to the REPF prospectus, which provides further details can be found here.
For more information or to find out how our Rural Property & Business department can help you please contact 01234 352201 or 01280 428010 or email bedford@robinsonandhall.co.uk
The Farming Investment Fund is an umbrella fund which provides farmers with grants to improve productivity on their farms in an environmentally sustainable manner.
The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has announced that the application window for the Improving Farm Productivity section of the Farming Investment Fund opened on 19th January 2022 and farmers will be able to apply for grants under this scheme until 16th March 2022.
This round of funding has a budget of £25 million with the main objectives being to boost farm production, as well as increasing farm and horticultural productivity.
DEFRA is offering grants of up to 40% of the costs for slurry treatment equipment, as well as robotics and innovation equipment which will reduce environmental impacts and improve efficiency on farm. The minimum grant available is £35,000 (40% of £87,500) with the maximum amount being £500,000.
Slurry treatment equipment
The grant can pay towards the costs of:
Robotics and innovation equipment
The grant can pay towards the costs of:
Further details of eligible items under the fund can be found here.
For more information or to find out how our Rural Property & Business department can help you, please contact 01234 352201 or email bedford@robinsonandhall.co.uk
With the end of 2021 fast approaching, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have finally provided details of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) early rollout, due to occur in spring 2022. The proposed rollout, the first element of the Environmental Land Management Schemes, is a slimmed-down version of the Sustainable Farming Incentive Pilot, the agreements of which are currently being implemented.
The SFI early rollout (SFI 2022) has seen amendments to the initial concept of the scheme, with policymakers listening to applicants’ and experts’ thoughts on the practicalities of operation. The agreements will last 3 years, with payments made quarterly. There will be no minimum or maximum land areas and applicants will be able to choose the specific land parcels included in the agreement. There will also be an element of flexibility to amend the agreement every 12 months – such as including additional land areas.
As with the SFI Pilot, the SFI 2022 requires applicants to enter land parcels into ‘Standards’, being:
The first two Soil Standards will be the focus for most applicants. These Standards will only have introductory and intermediate levels to start with. As with the SFI Pilot, the payment received is reflective of the level of Standard that is entered into.
A summary of the requirements and the related payments, per hectare, are summarized below:
Arable and Horticultural Soils Standard
Grassland Soils Standard
The advanced levels for both Standards are expected to be introduced from 2023. We have been told the Advanced Arable and Horticultural Soils Standard will focus on no-till and min-till farming.
Effort has been made to keep the Standards, and levels, as simple as possible to encourage implementation on the ground. However, there are specific nuances to several of the requirements, e.g. time requirements for the testing of soil organic matter. It is recommended that the full scheme is reviewed and considered in advance of the application window, which will be 10 weeks, opening in spring 2022.
The full scheme manual can be found at:
Sustainable Farming Incentive: how the scheme will work in 2022 – GOV.UK
If you would like more information or to discuss the options available, please contact a member of our Rural Team.
