Research-based policy support - is it relevant to me?

Aarhus University has a contract with the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries of Denmark (FVM) to provide research-based policy support. In the DCA area, the agreement with FVM includes three performance agreements (plant production, livestock production, and food) with an accompanying description of focus areas. There is already a draft for the performance agreement for 2022-2025, and it will be followed up in the autumn by a work program, from which the specific tasks and projects will appear. It can be anything from completely fixed tasks, for example setting fertilizer standards, large projects with measurement programs, or specific questions with short deadlines. And in extreme cases acute tasks, for example if the Minister needs input before a consultation.

If you are not involved in government work, you are probably thinking: Is it relevant to me? The answer is clearly yes - for several reasons:

The agreement with FVM (and similar tasks for other ministries) is an economic foundation for AGRO, which everyone benefits from, as it also includes the underlying research. The policy support money is 'geared' to a significant extent each year via co-financing for external projects. Many - perhaps all - thus contribute to policy support without necessarily even being aware of it! It could for example be via results in PhD studies or post doc projects. Or experimental work in the field and analyses in the laboratory.

Often the policy support involves collaboration across different AU departments, and participation in policy support tasks can be useful in relation to an overall orientation and perspective of own research. In addition, the performance agreements are important readings in relation to administrative and political wishes for our research. To be very concrete, they express expectations for the university's societal benefit. Read more here.

In AGRO, the section leaders coordinate policy support tasks and are responsible for ensuring that the system for quality management is followed from the task is delivered and the team is set up until a review has been made of the answer. If you are interested in the policy support work, the section leader is therefore the right person to ask.

AU has courses in research-based policy support in both Danish and English (read more here), and there are plans for a 1-day introduction to the subject for PhDs and post docs.