AKIS country reports

One cross-cutting and prominent dimension in the next CAP (period 2021-2027) is the objective of fostering knowledge exchange, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas. Here, advisory services play an important role, and Member States have been called to strategically address the functioning of Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) in order to provide the actors in the sector with the information and support services needed.

Related to these recent policy developments is the i2connect project’s task of updating the AKIS inventory which was first elaborated within the PRO AKIS project (www.proakis.eu) in 2015 for the EU member states. This time, the inventory includes four new countries, namely Croatia, Switzerland, Montenegro and Serbia (while UK dropped out). In addition, the forestry sector was addressed in some countries, although not as comprehensively as the agricultural advisory service.

The here presented reports provide a comprehensive overview of the AKIS infrastructures and of the predominant agricultural and forestry advisory services on national and – if applicable – on regional levels for the year 2020. The intention is that through these reports, essential features of the institutional and infrastructural environment in which advisors in the green sector operate are revealed. This information will then serve as a basis for targeted interventions to support different types of cooperation between AKIS actors in solving problems. Ultimately, the reports will provide up-to-date information for policy and practice in the respective countries.