Farmer Innovation Grants, are awarded through a competitive bidding process, to groups of English beef and sheep farmers who are interested to test or assess an element of best practice on-farm, or implement a piece of new technology which will help improve returns for their livestock enterprise. The aim of these awards is to facilitate projects which will result in valuable learnings, which AHDB can share with the wider beef and sheep industry.
How FIG works?
AHDB Beef and Lamb is offering funding to support groups of farmers wanting to adopt and evaluate an element of best practice on their farms or try out a new piece of technology. The funding is made over a one year period and will generally have a ceiling of £5,000. The funding allows groups of farmers to get technical help to set up their project and cover some of the costs associated, for example data collection and analysis, or advice on the best approach to address an issue on their range of farm circumstances. A budget for expected expenditure is required with an application. Funding for novel equipment is limited to £1000 per project and at the discretion of AHDB Beef and Lamb.
Farmer groups will be expected to contribute some of their own money and time to the project which should be shown in the proposal as a farmer contribution.
One of the conditions of the funding is that a report will be provided to AHDB to allow the lessons learnt to be communicated to other levy payers. A farm walk or event may also be requested to demonstrate the outcomes to other farmers. Funding for 2016 is now closed.
- Increasing business resilience by maximising the value of cover crops
- Investigating liver fluke testing and treatment options for finishing beef cattle
- Improved roundworm resistance detection in sheep
- Linking feed intakes and cost in real-time data to performance recording
- Cell grazing trial
- Optimising solar panel grazing platforms