Welcome on the homepage of the Social Sciences Unit of the Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research (ILVO). The Social Sciences Unit arose from the scientific part of the former Centre for Agricultural Economics (CAE) and is since January 1st, 2007 reinforced by the resources of the Flemish Policy Research Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (Stedula is the Dutch acronym). The mission of our unit is
to present and clarify, on a scientific basis, the social choices concerning
a sustainable and competitive Flemish agriculture and fisheries.
We start from the idea that the Flemish agricultural and horticultural sector can permanently contribute to the Flemish economy and well-being, but needs to develop under pressure of social, ecological and economic boundary conditions towards a sustainable and competitive system. Our activities are to support policy makers, research of other ILVO-units and the agricultural sector in general.
The unit is managed by the scientific director prof. dr. ir. Ludwig Lauwers.
The research activities of the Social Sciences Unit are clustered around the following research domains:
Services provided by the Social Sciences Unit include:
- Coordination of the Network Organic Farming and Food Research
- Provision of agri-environmental indicators
- Advice on the implementation of MOTIFS, the Monitoring Tool for Integrated Farm Sustainability
- Advice for policymakers
- Organisation of activities to stimulate knowledge exchange
Additional information about our activities can be found in the sections research and services on this site and in our publications. The coordinates of our staff members and the driving instructions to find our location can be found in the section contact.