German Research Foundation (DFG)
The German Research Foundation (DFG) is the largest non-governmental research funding
organisation in Germany with a focus on knowledge-oriented research. In terms of DFG
funding the field of ‘Veterinary medicine, agriculture and forestry’ is a relatively small field
with a slightly increasing amount of funding by DFG in absolute numbers .
Relatively, the funding volume decreases however:
-Higher education institutes and non-university research institutes in the field
received altogether € 91.1m in 2002-2004, which is 2.5% of the total DFG fund.
In the period 2005-2007 the number increased to € 115.8m, which equals 2.1%.
Between 2008 and 2010 the institutes received a total of € 115.5m, 1.7% of the
total DFG funding budget.
-DFG funding plays an important role for higher education institutes. In the respective field
of research in the period of 2005-2007 higher education institutes acquired € 98.6 million
third party funds from DFG. In the period 2008-2010 DFG funding was still important for
higher education institutes (€ 95.1million). Overall, third-party funding gains weight for
higher education institutes in this field of research: in the period of 2005-2007they
acquired in total € 108 million third-party funds, and €145.6 million the period 2008-2010.
The same applies to non-university research institutes active in the field: Especially direct
R&D funding by the federal government as well as EU’s Seventh Framework Programme
play a far more prominent role which is even increasing in the last years (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft 2012).
-Interview results support the described development. In the last 6 years the federal
Thünen-Institute for example is increasing in terms of personnel and research funds,
though the federal basic funding has stayed at € 70 million. Currently, additional € 14
million are third-party funded and more than half of the 500 employees are third-party
funded (interview, TI).
EU Forecast
euf:ba18h:41/nws-01