Over CZK 3 billion for agricultural research: the Ministry is unaware of benefits of the funded projects
PRESS RELEASE ON AUDIT NO 25/18 – 21 September 2026
Between the years 2017 and 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) allocated a total of CZK 3.29 billion to support applied research in agriculture. However, it is unable to assess whether, and to what extent, the funded projects have a real effect in practice. The Supreme Audit Office (SAO) therefore recommends substantial changes to the system of support for applied research so that the results of projects demonstrably benefit agricultural practice.
The EARTH* programme (ZEMĚ in Czech) was aimed at supporting applied research projects in agriculture, food industry, water management and forestry. The programme envisaged results with high innovation potential, which were intended to lead to the development of modern agriculture and strengthen the competitiveness of the Czech agricultural sector.
However, the MoA formulated the objectives of the EARTH programme too broadly, making it impossible to determine to what extent the supported projects contributed to their fulfilment. Furthermore, the Ministry did not assess whether the results of the projects were actually being utilised – it considered projects successful primarily based on the achievement of their planned outputs, such as the publication of specialist articles. According to the auditors, however, the key factor in applied research is whether the results are put to practical use.
The unrealistic or unverifiable projected benefits of some of the projects were also problematic. In one case, for example, the beneficiary had projected that new wheat varieties would be cultivated across 20,000 hectares of agricultural land, whereas in reality one variety was grown on just 20 hectares and the other was not used commercially at all. The actual uptake thus amounted to just 0.1 per cent of the originally projected figure.
Furthermore, the auditors have identified shortcomings in the Research, Development and Innovation Information System (abbreviated as IS VaVaI in Czech). The MoA failed to adequately verify the accuracy and completeness of the reported data. There were cases of results that were recorded more than once, or results that were unrelated to projects were assigned to them. The SAO removed the duplicates from the database and found that 13% of the results had been incorrectly reported in the system.
Additionally, in four of the 14 projects audited, the SAO identified evidence suggesting breaches of budgetary discipline. For example, beneficiaries included ineligible expenditure in their project accounts. In one case, this involved expenditure on marketing and proofreading of a book; in another project, the beneficiary purchased kitchen equipment less than a month before the project ended, and only after its results had been published.
The SAO therefore concluded that the problem with the system of support for applied research in agriculture was not merely the use of funds itself, but above all the inadequate monitoring of whether public funds were actually delivering the expected results and whether the research findings were being put into practice. The SAO thus recommends fundamentally reforming the support system so that the actual use of project results and their benefits can be verifiably monitored.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office
* “The Ministry of Agriculture’s Applied Research Programme for the period 2017–2025, EARTH”.