€17.8 million awarded to new European Innovation Partnership projects on the theme of environmental sustainability

Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon TD, has today announced that funding of €17.8 million has been allocated to eleven new projects under the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) measure of the CAP Strategic Plan 2023-2027.

Minister Heydon said: “The eleven new projects receiving funding today clearly show the importance of the EIP Programme in driving innovation at farm level, and in trialling and upscaling environmentally sustainable solutions to challenges faced by farmers. They include the provision to dairy, beef, sheep and tillage farmers of tailored strategies to facilitate their transition to regenerative agriculture, the promotion of regenerative agriculture practices to restore soil health, enhance biodiversity and improve the resilience of Irish farming systems, and a project dedicated to transforming nutrient management within Ireland’s tillage sector.”

EIPs are locally-led, collaborative projects which involve farmers trialling actions on farms to ensure practical outcomes and learnings that can easily be upscaled and shared.

The Minister continued: “The eleven projects selected address the theme of environmental sustainability in the farming sector, and will run for periods of between four and five years. Covering a broad range of topics and displaying a wide geographical spread, these projects are a clear demonstration of the willingness among farmers and the wider community to co-operate in dealing with environmental challenges on farms at a local level. I look forward to engaging on these projects as they proceed over the coming years, and to seeing how they will help to inform future policy development and to address key departmental priorities in the areas of soil health, regenerative and sustainable agriculture, organic farming, and the circular and bioeconomy.”