The Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System in Italy: dynamics, incentives, monitoring and evaluation experiences

The new challenges facing the European agricultural and rural sectors call for a review of the links between knowledge production and its use to foster innovation, and for a deeper analysis of the potential of the current Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) to react to the evolving context. This paper highlights how the Italian AKIS places itself in the new emerging framework, with a particular emphasis on the incentives guiding the system and the experiences of monitoring and evaluating the national AKIS policy. It shows that important changes are needed to approach the new efforts Europe is adopting to match innovation demand and supply.