Commission’s agriculture strategy floated

Social sciences and genomics should feature more prominently in a strategy for agricultural research that is being drawn by the European Commission, researchers in those disciplines say.

The Commission released a paper outlining the main areas of this strategy at a workshop held on 19 June as part of the 2015 Milan Universal Exposition, and attended by 90 scientists. The paper is the first draft of a strategy aiming to better articulate the EU agricultural research efforts under Horizon 2020, with the goal of giving researchers a higher level of stability regarding priorities and topics.

For the first time in the EU Framework programmes, the task of drawing this strategy fully involves the Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture, which under Horizon 2020 has been given co-responsibility in the management of the €3.8 billion allocated for agricultural research under the Societal Challenges pillar.