Agricultural networks across EU: What are the key features to enhance farmers' ability to learn and to innovate in cooperation with other actors?

Multi-actors networks are increasingly used by farmers to link between them and to be interactively connected with other partners, such as advisory organizations, local governments, universities, and non-farm organizations. Given the importance assigned to the agricultural innovation by EU resorting to the networking between the research chain actors and the farmers, a strong focus on enhancing the creation of learning and innovation networks is expected. In this context is relevant to have information about the features of such networks enhance farmers’ ability to learn and to innovate in cooperation with other actors. This paper was presented at the the 12th European IFSA Symposium (Workshop: "Generating spaces for innovation in agricultural and rural development") in 2016  and its aim is to contribute to the understanding of which are the features of agricultural or rural networks showing determinant to enhance the farmers' ability to learn and to innovate in cooperation with other actors, namely by identifying the influencing factors encouraging the farmers’ enrolment and the influence of network stability. The additional goal of the paper is to provide insights on the way these networks link to R&D infrastructures and advisory services. Five case studies were conducted in Italy, Germany, Portugal, and UK comprising heterogeneous networks.