Analysis of innovation brokering systems related to grasslands across Europe

Innovation brokering system is an organisational structure of persons or institutions that, from a relatively impartial third-party position, purposefully catalyse innovation through bringing together actors and facilitating their interaction on international, national or regional levels. The aim of this paper is to analyse innovation brokering systems (IBS) across Europe that are, or have the potential to be, used in grassland farming. Eight European countries within the Horizon2020 project Inno4Grass were involved in the analysis: Belgium (BE), France (FR), Germany (DE), Ireland (IE), Italy (IT), Poland (PL), Sweden(SE) and the Netherlands (NL). To collect information about IBS related to grasslands in these countries, a questionnaire was developed on characteristics of the different brokering systems and their barriers and benefits. The collected data allowed for an inventory and evaluation of existing structures fostering IBS using descriptive analysis of quantitative data. We concluded that IBS should be an important part of building a European innovation space for grassland-based farming.