Innovation processes in rural areas

Livia Madureira This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - CETRAD, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro.

André Torre This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - INRA, University Paris Saclay.

Call for papers for a special issue of Regional Science Policy and Practice until December 15, 2017

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1757-7802

One often consider that rural territories are not innovative. Innovation would be mainly reserved for urban spaces and in particular for big cities, as revealed by the concentration of high tech firms and clusters in an urban environment. However, this preconceived idea meets two important limits. The first one is the existence of a very successful and very innovative farming sector, to the point that agriculture only employs nowadays an increasingly small number of workers, due to technical progress, in particular in Europe and in the USA, as well as in BRICs like Brazil for example. Agriculture and forestry are also the stage for intensive agro-ecological knowledge creation towards more sustainable farming processes and practices, involving both scientists and farmers. The second is that numerous innovations are emerging in rural areas highlighting non-technological types of innovation, like organizational innovations (new forms of networks between actors, direct marketing and local markets…), social innovations (cooperatives, services to the population…) and institutional innovations (Leader Programs, local charters…) along with product (superfoods, healthcare services and renewable energy) and technological innovations (the methanation for example).

This special issue aims to make the state of the art about innovations in rural areas, by describing various experiences, and by giving solid references onto the level of rural innovation and the characteristics of the latter, which bring new knowledge about innovation and support to policies to enhance it on rural territories.