What drives you in your work and what are the key areas of research at the Ontario Agricultural College at the moment?
Our students, their enthusiasm and their different worldview and perspective on the future drives everyone in OAC. They envisage the future in a truly novel way. In terms of our key areas of research, our researchers are focused on real world impact. Through our partnership via the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, we have access to an extensive network of world-class research centers, which in turn provides innovative contributions in plant agriculture and animal biosciences but also environmental aspects of agriculture as well as agricultural economics and policy, a holistic view of rural development and planning, and food science. A prime example is our work in food science on developing more capacity in precision fermentation, a way to produce ingredients more efficiently. Our food science department also houses our Guelph Food Innovation Centre, an applied research center for food research and development, that facilitates knowledge transfer from academia to industry to transform challenges into practical solutions; innovative, consumer-centric solutions in alignment with safety, market, and industry standards.
We have a large animal biosciences department that works diligently on efficiency in animal agriculture, while focusing on animal care and welfare. We also have a large plant agriculture department, which includes our Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre, our Plants with Novel Trait Confinement Facility as well as the Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation. Another research cluster sits in the Centre for the Genetic Improvement of Livestock, which conducts world-leading research and training in quantitative genetics, animal breeding, and genomics for numerous animal species. Lastly, the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility is making essential contributions to the future of Agriculture and vertical farming, notably through the Space and Advanced Life Support Agriculture program in collaboration with various engineers and computer scientists from NASA.
Generally, we believe in an ‘and’ approach, rather than an ‘or’ one. The expectations in the market accumulate, there are no trade-offs: we should speak of organic and conventional, GMO and non-GMO, vertical farming and field crops production, etc. This is both an opportunity and a challenge, since it means we must focus on a multitude of topics.
Attracting young people in the sector is often singled out as an obstacle in the sector. How would you assess the present situation of attracting students and matching supply and demand of labor in agriculture?
Decidedly, one of the greatest challenges for the sector is finding enough highly qualified people. Naturally, therefore, we have a demand for our graduates that far exceeds our supply and we are not alone in that. Every Dean of Agriculture I have talked to faces the same issue. This is great news for our students, but it is a problem for the industry. One of the reasons for this mismatch is that we need to recruit far beyond our traditional pool of people who, like me, grew up on a farm; that pool is dwindling, and the general public has a notion about agriculture that typically does not go beyond farming. That is not the case of course, since agriculture today is a massive and critical sector that mostly exists outside the farmgate. Here in Canada, for example, the ag and food sector employs about 2.2 million people, with fewer than 200,000 of them being farmers. Prospective students often do not want to be farmers per se, but there is in fact a far greater array of opportunities in this sector. For example, one could become a plant scientist, an animal scientist, a plant breeder, a developer of technologies for vertical farming, an artificial intelligence scientist that uses big data in genetics, a food scientist working on food security, a climate scientist, an insurance policy analyst, to name but a few.
To give more concrete figures, a study from six years ago found that the demand for our graduates in Ontario’s ag and food sector exceeded supply by four times. I am sure that if that study was run again today, the gap would be even larger. One should know that agriculture is an inelastic sector - it only grows, as it did not experience a downturn even during the 2008 crisis.
To what extent do you partner with the private sector for R&D and what would you like to see more of from your partners?
We work with a myriad of different entities. Our research is all about applications in the agricultural and food sector, sought after by private companies. We also work with farmer and commodity organizations. Our partners’ interests are typically centered on gaining more efficiency, achieving sustainability goals, building soil health, new product development, etc. Many are interested in the research we do, and we have a wide range of industry sponsored research. Many of our partners are also keenly interested in our graduates who have been trained by our world class faculty, of course, since they want exposure to them to eventually hire them. Last, but not least, we have individuals or organizations that provide philanthropic gifts for us to, for instance, create of a new research facility or launch a professorship. That allows us to accelerate hiring in key new areas and to provide cutting edge research.
Given the many different fronts you are working on, what are your priorities over the next few years?
What I would like us to achieve most is a significant increase in enrollment.
This is fundamental for us, since our most important output is our graduates; they are the key to enabling the research engine to remain strong, the key to meeting the highly skilled labor demands in the modern era of agriculture and the key to continued innovation for the sector.
Beyond that, for us it is critical to continue identifying partners seeking to invest in research and training for the next generation, for the new era of agriculture. Those that are willing to support new positions in cutting edge areas that will ensure the vitality of both our educational programming and our research innovations.
