Bioeconomy stands for the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, feed, bioproducts, and bioenergy. It includes agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food, pulp and paper, chemical, and energy industries. These industries have a strong innovation potential because they cover a broad spectrum of sciences, enveloped in Life Sciences.
European Union has published a strategic policy document dealing with bioeconomy entitled Innovating for sustainable growth: a bioeconomy for Europe. The document aims at resolving multiple challenges we are facing today, such as food security, sustainable resource management, decreasing the dependency on non-renewable resources, mitigating and adapting to climate change, job creation and enabling competitiveness of Europe. In the year 2018, the strategy was revised in a document entitled A sustainable bioeconomy for Europe: strengthening the connection between economy, society and the environment.
Forests are a crucial part of the Czech bioeconomy. They cover about 2.6 million hectares of land (ČSÚ, 2019a), and forestry constitutes 0.7% of the country's GDP while employing 13,500 people. All industries that use forest-based resources form a forest bioeconomy, on which the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences of CZU Prague focuses through its Team for Forest Bioeconomy. The wood processing industry is the most notable downstream industry using forest-based resources, which employs 80,000 people in Czechia (ČSÚ, 2019b). Many more employees are needed to utilize the Czech wood processing industry's capacities fully. While the lack of employees presents a challenge for increasing the outputs of wood processing in Czechia, it also serves as a driver of Innovation and automation.