Agriculture: Innovation
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that additional funding for the Farming Innovation Programme is allocated equitably by region.
Answered by Stephen Morgan
Since 2021, the Farming Innovation Programme has been Defra’s flagship for supporting research and innovation in farming and our investment in the research and development pipeline of innovative technology from concept to deployment aims to derisk adoption and enable wider take up.
Programme funding is awarded primarily on a competitive basis to ensure best value for money. A Checkpoint Evaluation published last year shows that the Programme has supported organisations and industries across the UK with some concentrations in the East and South East regions. However, we anticipate benefits from the broader outputs from projects, either through their learning or where they become commercially available, will be realised regionally over time.
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