Why does research and innovation on public goods from agriculture and forestry matter?
Agriculture and forestry are unique sectors delivering, alongside commercial products, societal public goods such as biodiversity, water regulation, landscape, erosion control, resilience to floods and climate change mitigation.
The increasing value assigned by society to the environment, culture and heritage of rural areas can be a driver of their sustainable growth.
This has materialised to a certain extent for public goods related to culture and heritage, e.g. tourism based on traditional landscapes or traditional food. However, the situation is less favourable for most environmental public goods.
Farmers and foresters are managing most of the EU land and, depending on practices used, can be sources of a wealth of environmental public goods for the benefit of rural areas and society.
Research activities can help improve the understanding of the complex interactions between primary production systems and ecosystems services. They should support the provision of these public goods and services through the delivery of management solutions, decision-support and monitoring tools and the assessment of their market and non-market value.
Funding opportunities
Calls for proposals and funding information related to agriculture, forestry and rural areas
The rural development policy supports innovation through a range of interventions, including the European innovation partnership for agriculture (EIP-AGRI)
Some public goods from agrciculture and forestry related calls may be found in this programme
Projects and results
This factsheet collects most of the research and innovation related to public goods under Horizon 2020 societal challenge 2
The one-stop shop to EU-funded agricultural innovation projects
The Commission's primary portal for results of EU-funded research projects
Stories of particularly successful EU-funded research projects
Collaboration and jobs
The EIP-AGRI fosters innovation in agriculture and forestry connecting knowledge and practice
Search and view profiles of all organisations that have received funding via the funding and tenders portal
Researcher jobs in related fields
Scientific publications, tools and databases
Scientific publications produced by the European Commission (JRC)
The Commission's Joint Research Centre compiles databases and develops software and modelling tools
Single point of access to open data produced by the EU institutions. All data is free to use for commercial and non-commercial purposes
You can access all scientific publications from Horizon 2020 via OpenAIRE
Access to agriculture data from the Copernicus programme