Defra Farming Innovation Investor Partnership 2026

The Defra Farming Innovation Investor Partnership 2026 is a joint competition run by Innovate UK and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), offering £5m in total with applications closing on 17 June 2026. It is part of Innovate UK's £93m combined competition opening confirmed in May 2026. The competition is designed to attract private investor co-funding alongside public grant support for farming innovation businesses.

The Farming Innovation Investor Partnership model requires successful applicants to bring matched private investment alongside the public grant, making it a co-investment competition rather than a pure grant programme. Defra's co-leadership reflects agricultural productivity as a government priority, with funding available for agritech companies working on precision agriculture, plant science, sustainable inputs, and farm-level digital tools. The competition is explicitly designed to connect agritech startups with investors, using public funding to crowd in private capital into a sector that has historically been underfunded relative to other UK deeptech verticals.