The large gaps left when governments stopped providing a full range of on-the-ground advisory services to farmers are slowly getting filled with useful and accessible resources, according to industry experts.
“In the 1990s in Ontario, the Ministry of Agriculture cut those services and it meant different sectors reacted differently with no defined process,” says Mike McMorris, CEO of Livestock Research Innovation Corporation (LRIC), adding that many other provinces had the same experience.
In a study published in 2021 by LRIC and the University of Guelph, researchers found that government and public organizations exiting the space also meant a loss of influence and a rise in the number of services delivered by for-profit entities.
Read Also
Body condition, nutrition and vaccination for brood cows
One of the remarkable events of the past century related to ranching has been the genetic evolution of brood cows….
Confusing language
Language is part of the problem in getting farmers to pay attention to research results and innovative practices they could use to their benefit on their farms.
“We started using ‘getting research into practice’ (GRIP) to get away from the confusion of having several different names — KTT (knowledge translation and transfer), extension, ag advisory services, knowledge mobilization — and to talk about outcomes,” he says.
According to McMorris, GRIP has a longer timeline (about five years), is broader in scope, considers the risks to farmers involved in putting research into practice, and includes a wider group of industry, government and academic participants than KTT, which tends to be tied to individual research projects.
His organization has examined the role of GRIP, and its International Research Committee published a report in early 2022 that had it as one of five elements needed in a robust livestock innovation system, the others being funding, research priorities, pro-ject management and commercialization.
Among the committee’s recommendations are a more co-ordinated approach to GRIP, providing GRIP training to researchers and providing incentives for researchers to adopt GRIP, in the form of bursaries or awards of excellence. It also advised replicating the Dairy at Guelph model, which emphasizes greater communications among researchers and outreach with industry, producers and government, in the beef, pork, poultry and small ruminants sectors.
[RELATED] Knowledge and Technology Transfer more useful, more relevant
Interest in filling the gap between research and on-the-ground progress is also catching on internationally. McMorris points to the recent formation of the North American Agriculture Advisory Network, which is expanding opportunities for agricultural extension workers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to learn from one another.
The North American Agriculture Advisory Network is also an affiliate of the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services.
Addressing the problem
As part of its efforts to provide greater outreach, LRIC developed 10 podcasts that explore the concept of GRIP by interviewing academic and industry researchers about their innovations, and how they have been applied in real life. They explore how they succeeded as well as the barriers that persist in getting research into practice.
LRIC is also developing 24 videos in which producers provide information and advice about how and where they get their ideas for innovation.
Nationally, the Beef Cattle Research Council (BCRC) recently completed an evaluation of its extension efforts, which have been in place since 2011, when council staff recognized that the results of good research work were not getting as much traction as they could in the farm community.
“We talked about extension, and how the federal and provincial governments had pretty much walked away from it,” says Andrea Brocklebank, BCRC’s executive director. “As a producer-paid, not-for-profit organization, we felt we had a role in extension, so, although we were a small organization, we worked out a strategy.”
The core of the strategy was the website beefresearch.ca, which was recently revamped because of the review. Now, it is organized by audience — producers, veterinarians and researchers — with another section on practical, interactive tools and calculators to help producers improve their businesses. It’s also been made mobile-friendly, and some of the content has been repackaged into shorter, sharper formats.
Practical tools
“I’m an economist, so I looked at the fact that we do all this great research, but producers were going to ask about costs — so helping them through that process in a step-by-step way was important,” she says. The online resources cover several topics, including the economics of water systems, tools for evaluating feed test results and the cost-benefit of feeding calves vaccinated for bovine respiratory disease.
Brocklebank says that keeping a close eye on website analytics and timing the release of extension products with the seasonality of the industry ensures the information they’re providing is going to the right people at the right times.
While the review revealed that BCRC’s extension efforts are generally well used and appreciated, the organization is currently improving services because of the review’s recommendations.
“The council has slowly increased our investment in this area — mainly in staff support,” she says. BCRC is also widening its focus from the traditionally larger centre of beef production in the West to Eastern Canada.
While BCRC remains a fairly small organization, it’s ramping up its network with other organizations and people such as vets and nutritionists to empower them with content and tools developed by BCRC.
BCRC also provides other organizations with funding to provide extension work. Applications are received from a wide variety of vet groups, forage associations, producer organizations and university researchers.
“We have amazing partners in the industry and universities and we continue to rely on these — a lot of these people do extension work on their own time,” she says.
A BCRC survey revealed that producers rely heavily on veterinarians as a trusted source for providing sound guidance for their herds.
“We’ve been working directly with veterinarians and it’s really paid off,” Brocklebank says, adding that they distribute envelope stuffers containing useful production information and advice to vets who then send them to their clients.
“The win for us is that producers come to our website, and the win for veterinarians is that they’re improving animal health outcomes and supporting their clients,” she says.
Mentoring
BCRC also provides opportunities for four to five researchers a year to work with a producer and a veterinarian or processor on their specialties.
“The program has been around for a while, and we’re seeing that researchers are more willing to reach out to producers to get advice on how things work,” Brocklebank says. An added benefit is that research proposals submitted to the council are of better quality.
“Whereas in the past, we would just decline whole proposals because they wouldn’t work in the Canadian context, we’re now just asking for tweaks,” she says.
Both McMorris and Brocklebank hope that, as their organizations and others continue increasing their reach and networks, more communications gaps between researchers and producers will be filled, and the industry can make real progress.
