New Challenges for Agricultural Research: climate change, food security, rural development, agricultural knowledge systems – 2nd SCAR Foresight report

In the framework of a wide Foresight process, launched by the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) and aiming to identify possible scenarios for European agriculture in a 20-year perspective, DG RTD/E of the European Commission established a high-level Consultancy Expert Group (CEG) that analysed and synthesised foresight information in order to provide research policy orientations, tacking stock of the report from the first Foresight Expert Group (FEG) published in February 2007. This second exercise resulted in a report that has been based on a scanning of foresight studies and reviews of challenges to European agriculture in a global context as well as an analysis of priority research areas. The CEG report should feed into the SCAR Foresight Monitoring and Signalling Mechanism, which aims at providing, at regular intervals, early signals and warnings about emerging and new problems that we may face in the years to come, and to suggest ways of tackling them. This approach was strongly encouraged by the Commission’s Communication “Towards a coherent strategy for a European Agricultural Research Agenda”.