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SCAR

In 1974 the Council of the EU established SCAR with the mandate to advise the Commission and the Member States on the coordination of agricultural research in Europe. In 2005, SCAR was given a renewed mandate from the Council to give inputs to all research areas of the KBBE and to set up a coherent European research agenda for agriculture.

SCAR is made up of the 27 EU MS, with delegates from Candidate and Associated Countries as observers. The delegates are in charge of national public agricultural research programmes and the group is chaired by the Director « Biotechnologies, Agriculture and Food » of the European Commission DG Research.

The SCAR mandate covers a wide spectrum of disciplines and scientific domains pertaining to all challenges confronting food systems. It works to a wider and more up-to-date definition of the term ‘agricultural research’, looking beyond the aspects of research relating to production and encompassing the so called ‘fork-to-farm’ concept, emphasising research for sustainable agriculture, and including non-food uses, biodiversity, forestry and rural development. It also has a remit in formulating recommendations on the organisation of the whole agriculture knowledge system in Europe (including innovation and education).

The renewed mandate of SCAR is a response to the fact that European research efforts are fragmented, poorly coordinated, underinvested, and have a lack critical mass. In many situations no one single MS has the full resources or capacity to carry out the necessary research and policy developments alone.

Actions and tools

To help overcome barriers to coordination and collaboration, SCAR has embarked on several strategic initiatives comprising a comprehensive mapping of European research capacities, the establishment of coordination networks on strategic themes, and a foresight monitoring and alert mechanism. The efforts to date place SCAR in a unique position to inform the GPC on priority themes Joint Programming in the broad agriculture/bio-economy area.

Mapping and strengthening EU research capacities

One major contribution of SCAR is the mapping of agricultural research systems in Europe through the European Commission funded “EU-AGRI-MAPPING” project, which has collected and analysed data on European agricultural research capacity (institutions, scientists, projects, activities) and identified trends and needs in this field.

SCAR has also highlighted the high demand for harmonisation and sharing of support services to the delivery of research throughout Europe. A European network on “Shared European infrastructures for agricultural research” was created with the objective to analyse the potential for sharing infrastructures either in relation to the ESFRI roadmap or otherwise. In the long term, the objective is to contribute to the development of a European policy for agricultural research infrastructures in line with research priorities.

Finally, a dedicated website provides a complete and regularly updated picture of the national agricultural research systems in all SCAR countries.

The development of foresight monitoring and alert mechanism

The wide range of global, complex and interlinked challenges for European agriculture, such as globalisation, tightening of energy supplies, climate change, unsustainable consumption of natural resources, and the recent instability of food prices, require the detailed examination of potential future scenarios ensuring that the right research questions are addressed. In uncertain times, a close monitoring of changes is of crucial importance to enable a swift development of strategies.

Therefore, SCAR has established a foresight monitoring and alert mechanism to provide, at regular intervals, early signals and warnings about emerging problems and potential threats, and develop a common understanding of the challenges and options ahead (the vision). Such a shared vision is essential for agreeing on joint programming in fields considered of high priority by the MS (the strategic research agenda building).
Bearing in mind the big societal challenges, the joining of forces is a must to achieve a critical mass of scientific talent and a coherent approach to make agricultural research in its broadest sense beneficial to society and the bioeconomy.

Networking of research programme funders and managers

SCAR adopted a structured approach for prioritisation of research topics for further collaboration, through the establishment of a number of Member/Associated State Collaborative Working Groups (CWGs).

The establishment of CWGs is an alternative, more flexible and less formal, mechanism to the ERA-NET scheme, but with the same objective to stimulate and ultimately increase research collaboration between funders and programme managers on key-research areas.

Since 2005, fourteen CWGs have been set up by European countries engaging voluntarily and on a variable geometry basis in the definition, development and implementation of common research agendas based on a common vision of how to address major challenges in the field of agricultural research.

CWGs are working in a similar way to ERA-NETs, following the same step-by-step approach - focussing on information exchange during the early stages, identifying gaps in research and priority areas for collaboration and, where applicable, launching joint activities and/or common research calls. SCAR supports the CWGs in their effort to become self-sustaining and to interact with other research coordination bodies such as ERA-NETs and European Technology Platforms.

The outcome of the various initiatives undertaken by SCAR led to the adoption by the Commission on 15 December 2008 of the Communication "Towards a coherent strategy for a European Agricultural Research Agenda" COM(2008)862 and the accompanying Commission Staff Working Document SEC(2008)3041.