Alberta’s Results Driven Agricultural Research has set up a digital management system to track the projects it is funding
There is a new way of providing agricultural research in Alberta with creation of the province’s Results Driven Agricultural Research organization, which has been tasked with providing targeted funding to priorities identified by producers.
Formed as a non-profit in 2020, RDAR held its first general meeting in mid-January with its chief executive officer, Mark Redmond, outlining the organization’s approach as being founded on leveraging the best research from a collaboration of producers along with the public and private sectors.
Redmond called the approach “the most reliable way of getting research from the laboratory and test plots into the producers’ fields.”
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In a little more than a year, RDAR has invested more than $40 million in 139 projects that have come out of four funding calls.
“That means we have committed 92 percent of the funding that we have available to us to power research-driven outcomes,” said Redmond, highlighting those public funds have been also used to leverage private sector dollars to contribute to research initiatives.
“The $41 million that we have invested to date will mean an approximate $100 million in research invested,” he said.
Those projects range from clubroot management, identification and prevention of bovine respiratory disease to wetland best practices along with controlling foot rot in sheep and goat herds.
And RDAR has set up a digital management system to track the 400 grants to those projects to avoid duplication in efforts.
That system has reviewed more than 500 projects with most of those approved going toward accelerated innovation programs followed by those targeting soil health and water preservation.
As well, Redmond says RDAR is continuing to support provincial agricultural research associations.
Funding is balanced between livestock and crops with development of genetics programs being a major feature of both, he said.
“It’s been recognized that one thing RDAR brings to the Alberta research landscape is our network and our ability to connect,” said Redmond. “We make projects even better by linkages with groups such as Livestock Gentec, Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and Genome Alberta.”
Environmental impacts on agriculture are also a focus of the organization, whether it’s drainage of excessive moisture in the northwestern corner of the province or bone dry conditions in the south.
Redmond said the networks created by RDAR will avoid retreading research that has already been done on provincial, national and international levels.
“We stretch our initiatives across the country and across nations to make sure we are not duplicating work with delivering advantages as quickly as possible to Alberta producers,” he said.
