A large percentage of Europe’s territory consists of rural areas that contain more than half of its population. Many problems of European societies such as an ageing population, high unemployment rates, social disparities and the lack of adaptive potential to the global market are more pronounced in rural areas than elsewhere. To overcome these problems, it is essential to link public, private and inter-sectoral initiatives to foster innovation. Rainer Müssner presented the EU-funded project RAPIDO, that has been established to analyse current best practices concerning the development of innovation in agriculture, forestry, the food sector and the wider rural areas, as well as to analyse methods to transfer knowledge to different target groups.

The presentation [pdf, 564 KB, English] of Rainer Müssner is available for download.

The presentation was held in the session "Innovative rural development from mountains to the coast" of the conference "Sustainable Neighbourhood - from Lissbon to leipzig through research", that was hosted on 8-10 May 2007 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The conference has been visited by more than 600 guests.