FACILITATING INNOVATION IN AGRICULTURE: LESSONS FROM A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

The necessity of achieving ‘sustainable intensification’ of agricultural production is now widely accepted and the topic of this paper is how innovation in agriculture can be better facilitated in order to achieve this. The paper brings together several interrelated strands of thinking on approaches to stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship in rural areas, in particular amongst the farming community. Recent developments in the concept of agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS) are described and the need to better understand knowledge flows within the AKIS is stressed. The paper proposes the driving force, pressure, state, impact and response (DPSIR) model as a possible framework for policy intervention in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, and discusses the importance of improving the ‘enabling environment’ for innovators. The ADER project from the UK is presented as a case study of good practice, while the paper concludes that there is an urgent need to develop further models for encouraging agricultural innovation in other farming situations, such as those in eastern central Europe.