The European Union is banking on a combined €409 billion ($461 billion) in innovation funding — a proposed €234 billion ($264 billion) European Competitiveness Fund plus a proposed €175 billion ($197 billion) Horizon Europe program — to push agricultural research out of laboratories and onto farms, even as the Common Agricultural Policy budget for 2028-2034 remains stuck in negotiations.

Scientists, policy experts, NGOs and farmers gathered in Brussels Thursday and Friday to test that proposition at the EU AgRI 2040 conference, hosted by the European Commission. The meeting sought input on a strategic framework adopted September 8 for "future-proofing" agriculture, forestry and rural areas, designed to complement a separate but "interlinked" roadmap called Food 2040 covering food processing, aquaculture and healthy diets.

"We're as good at innovation as any other continent in the world, but then it doesn't actually find its way to deployment," said Elisabeth Werner, the EC's director-general for agriculture and rural development.

AgRI 2040 addresses eight "action areas" ranging from soil health and animal welfare to rural demographics and AI. The Commission calls these starting points that can shift based on stakeholder input about where research and innovation can deliver the biggest impact.

The funding backdrop is tight. Policymakers face "a lot of pressure on the farming budget," said Christophe Hansen, the European commissioner for agriculture and food. He urged stakeholders to "strengthen the link" between Horizon Europe and the CAP budget, whose next multi-year dimensions are now being haggled over by MEPs.

Whatever the final funding mix, commercialization requires not just "moving faster from lab to farm," said Ekaterina Zaharieva, the European commissioner for startups, research and innovation, but "better focusing our efforts" amid limited resources.

Speed and red tape dominated the debate

Europe "must fast-track promising innovation with commercial potential," Zaharieva said. Werner was blunter: "There's a global race going on. If you want to have an idea about speed, look to China. We have to step up."

Bureaucracy drew repeated fire. One attendee joked that Horizon program surveys run 45 questions, while farmers bail after the third with the line, "I have to go, my cow is calling." A Finnish farmer described an EU certification process requiring interactions with three or four entities, versus one in the U.S. — where his only obstacle was a government shutdown.

Hansen said entrepreneurs have told him: "We did the research here, but now we are going to move to the United States," since reaching market there takes a year or two, while in Europe "it takes around 10 years and we are bankrupt by the time we get there."

Farmers described the cost of delay in operational terms. "Everything that comes to our farm is just coming too late and too expensive," said Iulia Blagu, who manages a 920-hectare family farm in Romania and leads ANFA, which represents women in the country's agricultural sector. "I don't even know how we survived," she said of prolonged droughts. "There are solutions out there…in the past six years that were not accessible to my farm, and that is very frustrating."

Partnerships and public procurement as leverage

Tight public financing raises the stakes for partnerships and investability. When a moderator asked a packed plenary whether big businesses are risk-averse, at least half the room raised hands.

Zaharieva said the public sector should "lead by example" through procurement. "European governments and public institutions should procure more from our innovators," she argued, giving startups a first contract that could de-risk corporate investment.

"We have to have an appetite for risk because not everything will succeed," said Bill Callanan, chief inspector at Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. He urged policymakers to examine "the nonfinancial elements" keeping industry on the sidelines and pointed to demonstration facilities as an area where government can help companies validate processes and surface production issues.

Demand generation and delivery

Richard Zaltzman, CEO of EIT Food, flagged the system's complexity: "You need to have concurrent innovation through the value chain" for adoption to occur, though he sees room to shift attention from projects to end products.

Regulation, despite its drubbing, can also create demand. "If you're a startup, you need money and you need to know that there's a demand. The two things are linked," said James Morrison, who leads the "Healthy Planet" Directorate in the EC's directorate-general for R&I. "Regulation creates markets…as much as being a menace." He backed expanded regulatory sandboxes and said the Competitiveness Fund, as a "twin" of Horizon, could carry more startups past the "second valley of death" to scale.

On communication, Callanan said publication volume "isn't the right metric" for researchers. "Effort and impact are not the same thing. Who's listening?" Concrete ideas were scarce, beyond approving remarks about farmers using WhatsApp and AI for timely advice.

Blagu set the benchmark for the next phase: "If something works in your labs but fails in 10 farms, then we have the answer. As a farmer, we are failing 10,000 times a year. Every year, it's a battle for the right decision…You don't know, but you try your best."

The Commission says it will adapt AgRI 2040's action areas as stakeholder input arrives, with the framework's success likely to hinge on how much of the €409 billion proposed innovation pot survives the 2028-2034 budget negotiations.