The second round of the Countryside Productivity Small Grant is now open  for farmers in England. The Rural Payments Agency introduced the first round of its Small Grant Scheme under the Countryside Productivity programme last year with great success. The grant is part of the Rural Development Programme for England and gives grant funding towards for specific pieces of agricultural equipment which are targeted at improving efficiency, welfare and resource management.

The amount of money available is for a minimum of £3,000 of grant (£7,500 capital expenditure) up to a maximum of £12,000 (£30,000 capital expenditure). The grant will cover 40% of the “standard cost” cost of the item. Several smaller items can be selected to create an application totaling £3,000 – £12,000 of grant.

To receive funding you must be a farmer (agricultural contractors not included) and the item must be new and meet the minimum requirements of the list. It is not possible to claim on any equipment purchased before a claim has been submitted and approved. The list covers cattle, sheep, pig, precision farming, resource management and general equipment.

Top 10 grant funded items:

 

Item Specification Standard Cost
Mobile Cattle Handling Systems Consisting of a race, crush and penning for a maximum of 50 cattle on an integrated road legal trailer. The crush must have a ratchet rump bar with automatic head yoke and auto reset facility. £10,200
Cattle Crush (Automatic) With an internal width of 720mm, the crush will have a fully automatic head yoke with auto reset facility, complete access to both sides, rotating rump bar. The crush will be fully galvanised. £4,050
Cluster Flush System to back flush milking cluster to sanitise unit between cows. Cost is per cluster unit £1,013
Hand-held Automatic Teat Washing System Hand-held automatic teat washing brush which can wash, disinfect, stimulate and dries all in one visit to the cow. Maximum two per parlour. £5,950
Mobile Sheep Handling Systems Suitable for a minimum of 250 sheep with the aim to allow farmers to handle sheep on blocks of ground away from the main holding. Must include a gathering pen, forcing pen, drafting race, dosing race, side pens, the ability to fit plastic footbath and an integrated road legal trailer. £7,487
Sheep Handler Crate or clamp style sheep handler for efficiency dagging, dosing and sorting sheep. £3,273
EID Hand-held Devices Hand-held reader with RFID technology for individual reader with RFID technology for individual reading and recording of animal that must be capable of exporting data to a computer based software package for the active monitoring of livestock. £1,222
GPS for Precision Farming and Yield Mapping GPS must be a standalone GPS unit with automatic field boundary measurement and field recognition. It must have a minimum capability of straight and curved guidance modes with the ability to print maps.  Yield mapping must be an electronic device to connect to a combine of forage harvester to monitor crop yield during harvest. It will provide information on harvesting rate, with total and partial area (field) yield of crop. £1,366 – £4,730
Slurry Application Equipment A range of equipment including a trailing show slurry system including macerators, Dribble Bar and Shallow Injection systems £10,000- £22,169
Robotic Silage Pusher Robotic system with intelligent software and programmable for the intended feed passage. The equipment must have the capacity to detect the distance from the feed barrier along with the amount of feed in the passage. £12,000

 

Many of our clients were successful in the first round however this does not necessarily preclude them from receiving additional funding. If your grant in Round 1 was less than £9,000 then you can still apply for additional funding in this round.

 

The deadline for application submissions is 3rd September 2019. If you would like to apply or receive further information then please register your interest with us on 01684 853400 or email mikecluley@carverknowles.co.uk or aislynfirth@carverknowles.co.uk.