The role of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information in the Czech Agricultural Knowledge Information System

Recent calls of society to farmers are more and more focused on the protection of nature and providing public goods. At the same time, the development of climatic change emphasizes a need for environmentally friendly farming. These requirements are reflecting in the numbers of new regulations and other restrictive and motivating measures. The farmers should be prepared to react to these challenges by acquiring an appropriate skill set and seeking for innovation. In order to support them, there is a need to provide a system where the farmer could get such skills and cooperate with research. This system has existed for years, and the EU started to call it the Agricultural Knowledge Information System. The quality of the services provided by the system depends on the innovation potential of each actor in this system. The Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information (IAEI) is one of the actors, and it is interesting for us to know: What is the innovation potential of the IAEI?. In this paper, we are mapping the current position and innovation potential of the IAEI by using desk research and semi-structured interviews. According to the desk research, the IAEI plays a significant role in the process of AKIS in the Czech Republic. It represents a position of a mediator and a coordinator in the whole range of activities. According to the semi-structured questionnaires, the description of the innovation potential of the IAEI is meaningful when it is divided into several categories. In general, the ability to react to actual challenges depends on the research interest of a few individual researchers. The Institute supports this ability by providing access to several information channels. The ability to use modern technologies is improving thanks to new young employees. The recently established set of changes is the encouraging shift towards higher flexibility. Unfortunately, the administrative burden is still the primary barrier to innovation potential of the IAEI

An innovative method for the evaluation of LAGs and rural development: “A mirror for LAGs”

The Leader initiative delivers a variety of innovative activities. It is a tool for rural development that is used to bring people, communities, and regions together. Experience in the European countries, including the Czech Republic, has shown that the Leader initiative has delivered visible enhancements to rural areas. This paper is based on an internal project of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information (IAEI) elaborated in the period from 2014 to 2016. The internal project dealt with the creation of a methodology with a special focus on the self-evaluation of the Local Action Groups (LAG), titled “A Mirror for LAGs”. The aim was to develop and validate a self-evaluation tool for LAGs. Cooperation with fourteen LAGs was used as the methodology of creation. The proposed procedure was tested on two LAGs. The method has two parts; an evaluation of the LAG’s strategy is undertaken as Part A, and an evaluation of the Leader principles as Part B. The evaluation of strategy (Part A) is based on the analysis of LAG activities concerning strategy. In Part A, the following elements are analysed: the basic characteristics of the LAG, the financial budget, and the way the strategy’s objectives were met. Part A is mostly based on a quantitative approach. The evaluation of the principles (Part B) is mainly based on a qualitative analysis. Part B assesses the most individual way that evaluators (LAG) conduct their work and requires a significant amount of subjective assessment. For example, very often questionnaire surveys, interviews and focus groups are needed to generate data. The evaluation of the Leader principles depends on the evaluator’s skills too