WINNIPEG (Staff) – Black soil research, which has until now been scattered across the Prairies like the soil itself, will soon be concentrated at the Brandon research centre.
Al Robertson, director of the centre, said 19 researchers will be transferred to Brandon in the next two years. “It means that we should be able to develop an excellent program to serve the black soil area,” Robertson said.
But Jim Elliot, dean of the agriculture faculty at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, is not impressed. He said black soil is the university’s turf.
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Elliot said the departments of plant science and soil science have built their expertise in the area to avoid duplicating other research on the Prairies and “because that was a niche that we could see, that there was a void in.”
Elliot said he’s fed up with the federal department of agriculture. “These are the guys that babble all the time about partnerships and working together and consultation before you do anything,” he said.
“I guess (the Brandon centre) will probably swamp our efforts, which is fair game if that’s what they want to do. But you’d think they’d come and have a little consultation and say, ‘How’s that going to affect you?’ when we’ve spent years building that program.”
