Assessing of the Projects Promoting Innovations in Rural Areas in the Czech Republic

Marie Pechrova and Alena Kolarova

No 135774, 131st Seminar, September 18-19, 2012, Prague, Czech Republic from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Innovative approach is essential for a growth, but the understanding of the content of it is not unified. The term innovation itself is broad and can cover wide range of activities. The article deals with the projects promoting innovations in the rural areas of the Czech Republic (CR) financed from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). Strategy Plans LEADER (SPL) submitted by Local Actions Groups (LAGs) which are operating under the LEADER1 scheme are analysed and their approach towards innovation is evaluated. The importance of the innovations in the projects is evaluated on the basis of established preferential criteria for selection of the projects and finances devoted to the measure Fiche2 which includes innovative projects. On the basis of case studies of the projects aimed on education I am coming to the conclusion that various types of projects are understood as innovative, but sometimes the term is misinterpreted. Preferential criteria for selecting projects defined by LAGs should be more precious and concrete. Despite the fact that innovations are one of the obligatory criteria for selecting projects which will be financed, its inclusion is mostly formal. Its relative weight in comparison with other criteria is quite low. Besides, the importance of innovative projects is not sufficiently underlined by finances. I argue that there is not adequate attention paid to the real contribution of the projects to innovations. I recommend the revision of the term innovation and its stronger inclusion into the preferential criteria for selection of the project in order to ensure that selected projects clearly correspond with the innovative approach.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Food Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12
Date: 2012-09-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ino, nep-knm and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/135774/files/Pechrova.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaa131:135774

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.135774

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 131st Seminar, September 18-19, 2012, Prague, Czech Republic from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().