Public research system
The governance, funding and implementation of public agricultural research is split
between the federal and the state (Länder) level.
Leading actor is the Federal Ministry for
Food and Agriculture (BMEL) being responsible for federal (departmental) research
institutions and funding of particular research programmes such as the ‘Federal Framework
Programme Ecologic Farming and other Forms of Sustainable Agriculture’ (BÖLN). The
2013 budget for research of the BMEL was € 178.8m. The second important federal level
actor funding agricultural research is the Federal Ministry for Education and Research
(BMBF) with a 2013 budget for ‘bioeconomy’ of € 139.4m (BMF).
A third actor, the German Research Foundation (DFG) is the self-governing organization of
science and research in Germany, financed by federal level and states. It therefore ‘funds
knowledge-oriented research without stipulation of topics and utilises competition to select
the best projects in terms of scientific quality’. It had a 2013 budget of € 41.4 million for
agriculture, forestry, horticulture and veterinary medicine out of its’ total € 2 billion annual
research funding (DFG 2014).
EU Forecast
euf:ba18h:18/nws-01