The grant round, with an allocated budget of $4 million over two years, provides the opportunity for successful applicants to uplift the agriculture sector’s data capabilities to consistently report against sustainability frameworks and meet emerging international requirements and standards. This includes identifying or developing the core data points required to ensure adequate data transparency and sharing so additional value-add received from verifying sustainability credentials are distributed fairly throughout supply chains (from farm to fork and back to farm again).

Deadlines and Timings

Applications are open and will close on 23 February 2023.

The maximum grant period is up to 2 years. You must complete your grant activity by 30 June 2025. Following the grant period, an evaluation period of 6 months will commence.

Overview and Grant Amount

The objectives of this grant opportunity include to:

• identify and test approaches to address known data gaps across the agriculture sector to support reporting against sustainability frameworks and emerging international requirements and standards
• identify the core cross-commodity data points and indicators required to verify the agriculture sector’s sustainability credentials and quantify the potential economic benefits
• facilitate information sharing and ongoing engagement across supply chains to promote transparency in response to changing consumer and market demand

Grants available range between $50K and $500K, excluding GST. Grant recipients will be required to deliver milestones against all of the grant program outcomes listed below.

• Action plan to uplift sustainability reporting data and improve agricultural traceability
• Collection and analysis of relevant data and information, including findings on appropriate data governance and interoperability
• Feasibility assessment of data to demonstrate against sustainability requirements and actions to further support uptake of consistent sustainability credentials to support market access

Eligibility and Criteria

To be eligible, you must:

• have an Australian Business Number (ABN)
• be registered for the purposes of GST
• be a permanent resident of Australia
• have an account with an Australian financial institution and be one of the following entity types: company, cooperative, corporate commonwealth entity, corporate state or rerritory entity, incorporated association, indigenous corporation, local government entity, non-corporate commonwealth statutory authority, non-corporate state or territory entity, non-corporate state or territory statutory authority, sole trader, statutory entity

Your grant activity must address the program objectives and will be required to deliver milestones against all of the grant program outcomes listed above. You must clearly and explicitly state how your project aligns to these within the application form and associated templates found in the GrantConnect website.

Eligible Projects

You can only spend the grant on eligible expenditure you have incurred on agreed grant activities.

• Eligible expenditure items are reasonable costs associated with the delivery of the activity, for example, salaries and on-costs of those directly involved and domestic travel directly associated with the project.
• We may update the guidelines on eligible and ineligible expenditure from time to time. If your application is successful, the version in place when you submitted your application applies to your grant activity.
• Not all expenditure on your grant activity may be eligible for grant funding. The decision maker (the Minister or their delegate) makes the final decision on what is eligible expenditure.
• You must incur the expenditure on your grant activities between the start date and end or completion date for your grant activity for it to be eligible.

You cannot use the grant for the following activities:

• purchase of land
• major capital expenditure
• the covering of retrospective costs
• costs incurred in the preparation of a grant application or related documentation
• subsidy of general ongoing administration of an organisation such as electricity, phone and rent
• major construction/capital works
• core business expenses not directly related to carrying out the project, including administrative, overhead and infrastructure costs, staff salaries and relocation costs, international travel, or living expenses
• protecting or patenting intellectual property
• establishing new commercial ventures (that is, the set-up costs associated with a new commercial venture)
• overseas travel
• activities for which other Commonwealth, state, territory, or local government bodies have primary responsibility

For more information, interested parties are encouraged to read the program guidelines and FAQ set by the funding grant. Submissions may be lodged through their online portal.

Expert Assistance

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Get in touch with us and let’s discuss this more in detail.

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