High education levels and significant investments in R&D are important to create high level human capital in agriculture and in the food industry able to boost innovation and competitiveness on international markets. High labour productivity can only be reached when relevant resources are allocated to the creation of competent farmers and food industry managers.
Only practical experience certainly is not sufficient to sustain innovative development pathways and create the ability to operate on extremely difficult export markets. North-Brabant and Central Denmark are outstanding examples of highly competitive regions where the high-level innovation ecosystem explains their productive and export performances. Alsace and Emilia-Romagna are following these two leading regions in a secondary position, which is largely explained by a lower level of education and minor investments in R&D. Castilla y Leòn has moderate performances in productivity and exploitation of export potentials. Finally, among the two Eastern European regions the Northern Plain in Hungary shows decisively lower levels of economic development, but discrete levels of tertiary education. The Central Region of Romania lags behind because of low levels of investments in R&D, and low agricultural training level of farmers and tertiary education.
