ADOPT

Facilitator Support

Applications for Grants of £2500 from Defra for us to help write a full proposal for funding

Sub-Contractor

ARC can provide co-ordination and support with establishing and monitoring of on-farm comparison trials, measurement protocols, data sharing and analysis. Costs will depend on the project and level of support needed, but likely to start at £5000.

Research Partner

If the project is of mutual interest, we can join as a research partner. We can co-design the project questions and activties, onboard collaborators and support knowledge exchange.

What is ADOPT?

ADOPT (Accelerating Development of Practices and Technologies) is part of Defra's Farming Innovation Programme, aiming to bridge the gap between research and real-world farming. It funds farmer-led projects that test, adapt, and share knowledge about innovative practices or technologies, helping to speed up adoption across the industry.

Launched in 2025, it now provides grants of £50k–£200k to support farmers in England conducting on farm trials. The upper limit was increased from £100k to £200k in June 2026 following a successful first year of the porgramme. ADOPT also offers £2,500 facilitator support grants to help farmers bring in the expertise they need to develop a full proposal.

Where does ARC fit in?

Whether you're testing a novel input, a precision tool, a new crop type, or a management approach — we can help make it rigorous, relevant, and replicable.. ARC support farmers and ag-tech companies with various aspects of ADOPT funded work including:

Applications for Facilitator Support Grants of £2500 from Defra for us to help write a full proposal for funding
As a sub-contractor in projects to provide co-ordination and support with establishing and monitoring of on-farm comparison trials, measurement protocols, data sharing and analysis. Costs will depend on the project and level of support needed, but likely to start at £5000.
Where the project focus is of mutual interest we can join projects as a research partner, co-designing the projects questions and activities, on-boarding farmers and relevant partners, ensuring maximum success in generating knowledge and impact. In particular we are looking to pull together farmer groups to address:
- Nutrient Performance - testing technologies, practices and products for improved crop nutrition.
- Biostimulants for enhanced crop peformance - which products work in which situations?
- Disease detection - testing a range of new technologies to get better in season information on disease pressure to make better fungicide decisions

Whether you're testing a novel input, a precision tool, a new crop type, or a management approach — we can help make it rigorous, relevant, and replicable.

Contact ARC

Initial idea

If you have a research idea on farm, become an ARC Innovator and book a 30 minute initial discussion about developing your idea into a facilitator support grant.

Submit Facilitator Support Grant Application

Facilitator Support Grant

ARC helps you write a facilitator support grant application based on your initial idea. This grant provides you with £2500 to pay ARC to turn your idea into a full research proposal.

Grant Approval

95%+ Success Rate

ARC has a track record of successful applications and will support resubmission if required.

Write Full Proposal

Identify Farmer and Ag-tech Collaborators

ADOPT is about collaboration. a full proposal needs to include other farmers and potentially an ag-tech company brining new technology onto farm.

Submit Full Proposal

Unlock upto £200k in funding

The full proposal can support a maximum of £200,000 of collaborative on farm research. ARC has experience of writing strong proposals with detailed schemes of work that deliver results.

Approved

Grant Offer Letter

This confirms that ADOPT funding is available for your project.

Project Starts

Collaborative Research Begins

ARC can help share results from your project and will oftern work as a contractor on various aspects of the research.

ADOPT funding is for farmers. Project lead farmers must be based in England but farmer collaborators can be from other parts of the UK. Contractors and ag-tech partners can be based anywhere.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate schemes for farmers looking to lead on-farm trial proejcts.

Knowledge exchange and sharing results is a key requirement of ADOPT funding. Participants need to be open about the results of their trials. Time spent on knowledge exchange can be included in the project costs.

Farmers are responsible for paying contractors working on the project. Farmers are paid quarterly in arrears once the work has been completed. They are eligible for 80% of their costs upto £200,000 to be supported by the grant.

Crucially, farmers time to work on the project and share knowledge can be included in the project costs, effectively you get paid to ask and answer questions to improve how you farm.

Facilitator support grants are paid to the farmer so they can in turn pay to bring in external expertise to develop the full project proposal.

As long as work is completed inline with the project proposal, grant payments are not dependent on success. Inconclusive findings can be just as valuable as clear results. We make sure all results are shared as widely as possible so that people investigating similar topics can take them into account.

Yes, you can participate in more than one ADOPT project at the same time.

Join

Become and ARC Innovator ag-tech partner

Gain access to a network of forward-thinking farmers

Outline your idea

We regularly update our members on research opportunities

Proposal

Develop project

Work with interested farmers to develop the project plan and grant application.

Funding for on-farm trials

ARC can help you access ADOPT funding to carry out on-farm trials