Supporting Innovation in Organic Agriculture: A European Perspective?.

The European Union has launched a European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability in response to future challenges for agriculture, such as food security, climate change and the conservation of natural resources. Organic farming can itself be seen as an innovation that has been adopted by more than 250 000 farmers in Europe. The farmers show some similar characteristics to innovators and early adopters as described in the adoption/diffusion model. However, there is also a need to consider the process of innovation within organic agriculture and how this can be supported. Many agriculture experts will think mainly of technical innovation, but social and societal innovation can be particularly important for achieving societal and political goals. And there is need to focus not only on the innovation itself, but on the whole process of embedding the idea in a relevant sector, from invention to prototyping to wider diffusion with a large number of actors potentially involved. In supporting this process for organic farming knowledge exchange has to be seen as particularly important because the systems has been characterised as replacing inputs with knowledge. This paper uses the systems perspective of innovation to describe how innovation in the organic sector in Europe has been supported, illustrated with examples from stakeholder led innovation in the EU funded SOLID project[1] and the work of the European technology platform ‘TP organics’ that lobbies for organic research and innovation in the EU[2].

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[1] Sustainable organic and low-input dairy systems (EU-P7:266367) http://www.solidairy.eu.

[2] Technology Platform TP organics, http://tporganics.eu

See more from this Division: Innovations in Organic Food Systems for Sustainable Production and Enhanced Ecosystem Services
See more from this Session: Innovations in Organic Food Systems: Research and Innovation Challenges in Organic Production for Sustainable Development and Ecosystem Services

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