Description: The following notions have led the consortium to develop RURAGRI:
Research on agriculture and rural development is mostly carried out at a national and regional level. There is limited coordination and integration between national and trans-national research programs and agendas. Such fragmentation of research implies duplication of work, insufficient economies of scale and difficulties to achieve comparisons across countries. However, challenges and issues facing European agriculture have a lot in common, among others due to the European nature of farm support programs for agriculture and rural development - There is a considerable scope to increase coordinative actions across Member States and Associated Countries in the area of agriculture and sustainable development in a rural development context. National research activities would benefit from a stronger international focus. Such coordinated activities initiated by Member States and associated countries will improve the knowledge base supporting European decision making in the field of agriculture and rural development.
RURAGRI is designed to address the above challenges for research; it is targeted to foster European research on agriculture and rural development, and the critical mass has been created to achieve such ambitions.
Research objectives: The ERA-Net, RURAGRI, will bring together research funding bodies in the field of agriculture and sustainable development in a rural development context. The implementation of joint activities in this field of research will improve policy making, both at EU, national and regional levels; the project specifically focuses on meeting this challenge. The project relies on the following features:
- Strengthening the coordination between existing research programs dealing with the new relationships between rural areas and agriculture in Europe and the challenge to improve contributions to sustainable development - Implementing joint research activities, enhancing the progress of knowledge and technology. - Developing a lasting focused network of national research funding organisms in Member and Associated States of the EU that will work towards a common research agenda and mutual research funding to address the common European challenges with regard to this issue.
Results and products: RURAGRI is designed to address the above challenges for research; it is targeted to foster European research on agriculture and rural development, and the critical mass has been created to achieve such ambitions:
a) Research funding bodies from 19 European Member States and Associated Countries committed themselves to join the ERA-Net project. b) A consortium is established gathering 4 countries from Northern Europe, 6 countries from Central and Eastern European countries, 4 countries from Western Europe and 5 Mediterranean countries. Partners involved represent main geographical, cultural and economic diversity in Europe.
The project will provide the first step in establishing trans-national activities on EU-wide networking or coordination between national agricultural and rural development research programs. It will establish lasting cooperation between ministries and other research funding agencies responsible for conducting national research programs. Through this enhanced coordination the consortium aims to improve the observation, understanding and characterization of the new relationships between rural areas and agriculture in Europe and to set out how agriculture can contribute to sustainable development, at local, regional and European scales. This interplay between agriculture, sustainability and rural development differs from the more general approaches to these three issues. |