DEFRA has announced it is making more than £60m available to fund the scheme which offers grants of between £3,000 and £12,000 to support farmers who want to invest in specific pieces of agricultural equipment.

All the items included in the scheme have been identified as ones that will help farmers achieve improvements in either animal welfare, resource efficiency or nutrient management.

“This is an incredibly useful scheme enabling farmers to apply for grants worth up to 40% of the costs of 60 different items of farm equipment,” said farm consultant Helen Gosling.

“At a time when farmers are looking for ways to improve efficiencies and manage their land in more sustainable ways then this funding could be invaluable. However, it is important to act quickly, as applications for the first round of funding must be in by midday on 14 March 2018.

“If money is left over following the first round of applications, DEFRA has said it is possible that there will be further funding rounds,” she said. “However, you can only submit one application and we know the scheme has been extremely popular in the past and so demand is likely to be heavy.”

Items that are eligible for funding include a range of livestock handling systems, crushes, calving detectors, weighing equipment, calf feeders, EID devices, pasture plate meters and electric scraper systems.

Arable farmers are able to apply for funds to help them buy precision-farming equipment, including GPS units, yield mapping devices, variable rate controllers and direct or strip till drills.

DEFRA has introduced an online application process for the scheme and applications can be made either by the farmer themselves or by an agent on their behalf.

“Each application will be automatically allocated a score based on a set number of criteria and if the application scores highly enough, a grant will be awarded,” added Ms Gosling.