A European survey of grassland innovations captured by practice and science meetings
Résumé
Within the Horizon 2020 thematic network Inno4Grass (www.inno4grass.eu) grassland innovations were analysed in practice and science meetings that are participatory, multi-stakeholder discussion groups. Their outcome was summarised in 115 practice abstracts (PAs) from eight countries. PAs are short summaries for practitioners containing the most important results of the activity and the main practical recommendations. In order to investigate which are the most relevant common traits characterising the innovation process in the European agricultural practice, twenty-seven descriptors of the topics addressed in the PAs were scored for presence/absence. The results were analysed by means of a Principal Component Analysis, resulting in a fairly low proportion (31.5%) of the total variation explained by the first two components. Aspects related to regional marketing are quite closely related to Component 1. The factors ‘organic farming’ and ‘animal welfare’, as well as ‘conventional farming’ and ‘machinery and tools’, were strongly related to each other. There was no obvious pattern of the data due to the agroclimatic areas but decreases in management intensity seemed to be related to the adoption of regional marketing strategies. A certain bias might be present due to partners intentionally focusing only on a specific topic.