Rural entrepreneurship - new models for agriculture and rural areas

On 12-13 December 2016, the Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics – National Research Institute hosted a meeting with representatives of several European research institutions on contemporary changes of rural economy and entrepreneurship.

The objective of the seminar was to exchange ideas and to discuss current processes of rural change and differentiation that support neo-endogenous development of rural entrepreneurship. Participants of the seminar stressed a need for better understanding of the importance of local and wider networking by rural SMEs, that is crucial for more effective public policy, especially in context of successful implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy.

Speakers of the seminar were: professor Dimitris Skuras and Kostas Vergos (University of Patras, Greece), dr Katalin Kovacs (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute for Regional Studies), Goran Soster (PREPARE, Slovenian Rural Development Network), dr Annette Piorr (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research), dr Jukka Teräs, Anna Berlina (Nordregio - Nordic Centre for Spatial Development, Stockholm). The seminar was moderated by dr Paweł Chmieliński (IAFE-NRI) and dr Andrew Copus (Nordregio and The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK).