Jusqu'au 14/11/2018
Specific Challenge:
Agricultural research and innovation supports the sector in coping with a complex mix of challenges it is facing, including for example the pressures on natural resources and farm revenues. Knowledge creation and accessible information systems and tools to monitor, gather, transform and above all share vital information between key stakeholders can help the sector to become more sustainable. However, as well as the potential for new knowledge, a substantial part of the existing knowledge and its underpinning information flows, has yet to be exploited to its full potential. The resulting performance gap has strong social, ecological and economic implications. An improved functioning of the agricultural knowledge and innovation systems is needed, for timely innovation and to speed up the rate of knowledge creation. One of the most important constraints concerns the limited interoperability and lack of openness of different technical systems, thus limiting the choices farmers can make between suppliers of new technologies. An enhanced interoperability would allow for increased data sharing and the resulting knowledge generation. Another main constraint is the lack of information on the effectiveness of new technologies which slows down their take up.