Livestock meeting focuses on getting research from the lab to the farm

Improving how the livestock sector can get research into practice brought approximately 60 people together for a daylong event hosted by Livestock Research Innovation Corporation (LRIC) in Elora. 

The mixed format featured presentations by LRIC CEO Mike McMorris, Dr. Steven Roche from Acer Consulting, pork producer Tara Terpstra, and noted U.S. extension specialist Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam from the University of California Davis. This was followed by an interactive workshop by the Alan Alda Centre for Communicating Science. 

“Most Ontario livestock producers, through their service fees or checkoffs, support research in their respective sectors – but we recognize that more needs to be done to get those research outcomes into use on-farm,” says LRIC CEO Mike McMorris. “Working on how to do that collaboratively has been a priority over the last two years and it was great to see so many people from across the livestock industry participate in this event.”

McMorris provided an overview of how extension – also known as technology transfer, getting research into practice (GRIP), knowledge mobilization or knowledge translation and transfer (KTT) – has evolved in Ontario since the 1990s, when the provincial government dramatically reduced its funding for these types of activities. 

In the livestock industry, the gaps were filled by a variety of businesses and organizations, including veterinarians, nutrition companies and commodity groups, leading to discrepancy of service levels between sectors. Overall, although a lot of people are involved in GRIP, there is a lack of coordinated planning and execution, and there is consensus that industry, government and academia need to collaborate on both research priorities and sharing research outcomes. 

Dr. Steven Roche of Acer Consulting has done considerable research into what motivates change and how researchers can do a better job at engaging with farmers and making research outcomes applicable on farms. Ultimately, he notes, it comes down to people, relationships, and understanding the needs and mindsets of livestock farmers and their supply chain.  

Pork producer Tara Terpstra is Vice Chair of Ontario Pork and Chair of the Ontario Pork Research Committee, as well as serving on the boards of LRIC, Swine Innovation Porc and the Prairie Swine Centre. She shared her perspectives on finding and implementing research on her family’s hog farm in Huron County. 

According to Terpstra, clear, easy to understand communication is key, and she focuses on implementing research results one change at a time as it is important to evaluate the impact of that change on the overall business and whether the benefits outweigh any increased costs. 

Prof. Alison Van Eenennaam is a professor of cooperative extension at University California Davis and has become an expert at melding her research program with extension work over her more than 20-year career. Knowing her audience and what resonates with them has been key to her success, as has recognizing that her research needed to be applicable to farmers. 

“Sometimes the incentives we have as researchers don’t reflect the translational impact on industry of what we are doing,” she said in highlighting a genomics project she worked on with a large U.S. beef producer that has had a dramatic impact on the livestock industry, but very little scientific outcome in terms of published papers for the research team. “For me as a scientist, the best project has industry relevance but is also intellectually intriguing. I have to get a (publishable) paper out of it, but it needs to have a business interest to the company involved.” 

Together with Prof. Jennifer Ellis from the University of Guelph and Poultry Industry Council, LRIC has developed a new library of podcasts, videos and webinars designed to help the livestock industry get research and innovation information directly to the farm.

These resources, as well as LRIC’s Horizon Series of webinars and white papers focused on the big issues affecting livestock agriculture, are available on this website.

This article was published in the May 2, 2023 issue of Ontario Farmer.