What’s your opinion on Canada’s agriculture research direction? If you’re like most, you probably have an opinion on the importance of research, what needs more attention, or how priorities need to shift, but imagine if you had to sit down and actually create the roadmap forward of achieving those goals.
It’s quite the challenge, but a recent conference in Ottawa, hosted by the Agricultural Institute of Canada (AIC), set out to create a “modern agricultural research policy for the 21st century.” The national policy conference was a success, and out of the meeting came a summary, currently being circulated ahead of creating a set policy direction.
RealAgriculture’s Lyndsey Smith spoke with Serge Buy, CEO of Agricultural Institute of Canada, to talk about the direction of the conference, one some of the summary highlights are, and what the action items are to get this policy in motion.
Read more: Download the PDF of the Full AIC 2015 Conference Report.
A few highlights:
- Attendees focused on the need for a national research agenda established with trust, transparency and accountability to “help redress the balance between short-term fast-to-market and long- term basic research priorities.”
- Interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral partnerships with stable, predictable funding are essential
- Participants called for enhanced stakeholder engagement, communication and research dissemination strategies; flexibility in research, administrative and financial design; and, a reduction of administrative red tape discouraging collaboration.
- Also discussed was the rise of public-private partnerships (P3s) and public-private-producer partnerships (P4s), which leverage funds and resources to encourage research collaboration.
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