Agricultural research needs stronger roots in producer feedback
Agreement was universal at the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association’s virtual annual general meeting that a Team Canada approach is needed to help recover from the federal government’s closure of various satellite research farms and centres in January.
Industry says resources will need to be pooled instead of fragmented as agricultural research goes in a new direction.
“In the longer term, looking at the forge sector, which has struggled to maintain pace with some of the other industries in terms of research funding, it is concerning,” CFGA executive director Cedric Macleod said in his opening remarks at the conference.
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“A lot of the sites or the locations that are scheduled for closure do have a significant impact in the forage and grassland sector.”
Why it Matters: As institutions try to pivot from announced national agricultural research cuts, the grassroots farmer’s voice is more important than ever in guiding study in the future.
Mark Redmond, chief executive officer of Results Driven Agriculture Research in Alberta, said Canada does not have an innovation problem. Instead, it has an adoption and scaling problem.
He said much of the agricultural research conducted in Canada needs to get into the hands of producers, but it’s been a challenging process.
“We shouldn’t be led by academics. I can pick a number of projects, a number of researchers who want to just pursue what interests them. We have to have the researchers pursuing what’s important for the producers,” he said.
“There’s plenty of funding for people who want to do the basic research. Our funding has to be driving the profitability and productivity of farmers and ranchers and processors, and that will be what impresses the prime minister. It has to be about execution of what we have got.”
Pointing to the inefficiencies at Agriculture Canada that were used to justify the cuts, Redmond said numerous pet projects at research centres and universities saw their funding cut.
He said research extension and knowledge translation and transfer have been successful with initiatives such as the On-Farm-Climate Action Fund and living labs, giving producers the confidence that they can do research and adopt change.
“That will be the economic engine for Canada in supplying the world with food. That’s the message we need to get into the bureaucrats and the politicians,” said Redmond.
The CFGA has leaned into that concept with 26 grazing demonstration plots across the country.
Macleod said similar work is possible with stored forage, whether it is perennial or annual.
“Are we bringing that living lab model and bringing the researchers out to the farm to do the producer-driven research? It’s right there for the taking, if we want to see it through.”
Duane Vandenberg, a CFGA board member and agriculture retailer with the Alberta Forage Industry Network, said farms with forages are more profitable.
“Those are fairly large scale research things I think need to be done, not so much on a research station, but by research organizations working on farms with farmers. I think those are things there that need to get proven,” said Vandenberg.
“Producer organizations need to be more involved in research decisions, that’s something we’ve been hearing. Organizations like CFGA, I think we need to get more of that producer voice into our organization to ask for feedback from producers on what they want us to campaign for.”
Source: producer.com