Study on the cooperation in research - development – innovation activities in Romanian agriculture

Abstract

The societal challenges in 2020 horizon are represented by food security, sustainable agriculture and bioeconomy. Romania, as member of European Union, has as objective the competitiveness development in agriculture area, through integration of innovation in business environment. Many research studies proved that the performance of innovation process is directly influenced by the cooperation between business environment, research organizations and other catalytic entities. The paper scope is to highlight the cooperation capacity in the innovation process in Romanian agriculture. The analysis carried out is based on finding answers to the following questions: Which is the level of research - development – innovation (RDI) cooperation in Romanian agriculture? Which are the opportunities for financing the cooperation projects in the 2014 – 2020 period? What is the interest of agricultural entrepreneurs to collaborate with research organizations? The research methodology was based on: documentary analysis, socio – economic investigation and multiple correspondence analysis. The results revealed the existence of a poorly developed network of cooperation between research envirnment and business in Romanian agriculture. The advantages of firms involved in these partnerships consist in access to high quality RDI services (eg. elaboration of soil studies with the latest equipment, by the partner research institutes), transfer of scientific information from the research environment, access to input suppliers networks and customers networks etc. Farmers specialized in different branches of agriculture have common interests in the production area, market and innovation. For example, their interest is to get the higher production in terms of quantity and quality, to charge a price increasingly better and to perform minimal consumption on inputs, with maximum effect in outputs. Cooperation between business and research organisations from agriculture has a very important place at the level of programs and funding measures which are promoted by the European Union. Thus, they stimulate by European funds the partnerships between various categories of economic actors in agriculture and related fields. In the future we believe that there is a high potential for cooperation in this economic field.