The ideas of organic issues have been involved systematically into the EU research policy framework during early 1990s. Up to the 1980s, research activities on organic farming had been performed predominantly by private research institutes, with the first EU projects on organic farming funded in the 1990s. After that the EU budget for organic research has risen from EUR 767 000 in 1993 to more than EUR 6 million in 2013. In such way, EU became an important investor in organic research, as well as in the development of the sector. Thus, it is decisive to realize the different EU policy tools for research and innovation, and how they can be affected.
The EU’s most important funding instrument for research for the period 2014-2020 is the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, with a total budget of almost EUR 80 billion. As outlined above, the support for agricultural innovation implemented under the EIP-AGRI comes from both Horizon 2020 and the new RDPs. Horizon 2020 addresses three key areas: scientific excellence, industrial leadership and societal challenges. The last of these is particularly important for the agricultural sector (especially the issue of food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bio-economy). With at least 5 % of the total Horizon 2020 budget (EUR 4 billion) allocated to address societal challenges for the next seven years, the budget for these research areas has almost doubled compared to the previous programming period.
New instruments under Horizon 2020 include multi-actor projects and thematic networks. They will be used to fund specific projects contributing to the EIP-AGRI.
The EU’s big investments in research are still managed by Member States. Research funds of relevance to organic farming and sustainable food and agriculture include CORE Organic, ERA-Net SUSFOOD and the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI). The EU supports these examples of Member States pooling national research funding. The aim is to establish greater coherence between EU and the national research policies.
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsi-ble for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
