Staying competitive | Long-term government funding needed, says Guelph professor
Canada’s public investment in long-term agricultural research has been inadequate for years and the result is declining competitiveness, says a University of Guelph professor.
John Cranfield told an April 5 Ottawa conference that government focus has shifted away from research investment in recent decades in favour of farm income stabilization policy.
“This is the canary in the proverbial coal mine,” he told the conference sponsored by the University of Guelph. “We are falling behind other countries.”
Cranfield said private sector research investment has not typically filled in the gap and when it does, the goal is usually short-term product-focused research aimed at commercializing a result within years.
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Continuing investment in long-term “what if” research suffers.
He said that while some farmers do contribute to research through checkoffs on their production, only one national research and promotion check-off agency (beef) has been set up under the authority of the Farm Products Council of Canada in the past two decades.
As well, farmer support for the levy drops off when check-off directors propose higher rates to fund the work.
“As the levy goes up, support goes down.”
In an interview, Cranfield argued that long-term research funding by government has declined because it does not produce fast results that governments need.
“Arguing that this investment is important but results might not happen for 20 years is a tough sell for a government and politicians with a four-year lifespan and the need to show value for investment,” he said.
“There is a disconnect between the search for scientific knowledge and the objective of job creation and measurable results.”
However, he argued that many other countries are making those long-term investments.
“The question that I think is important from a competitiveness point of view is whether we are doing enough to maintain a relative position in the international market,” he said.
“If other countries are outspending us, we end up suffering down the road when we have 1970s technologies and everyone else has 21st century technologies and some of the international comparisons are starting to bear this out. We are sliding in terms of investment in long-term research.”
Part of the national debate is a farmer lobby, led by Grain Growers of Canada, that calls on Agriculture Canada to double its research investment over a decade. It says only then will research investment be restored in relative terms to levels that existed in 1994 before the massive budget reductions in the 1995 deficit-cutting budget.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz insists that the farm lobby has it wrong.
“There’s concern that we’re not spending as much. We certainly are,” he said during a March 30 post-budget news conference.
“We’re outspending 1994 levels, even with inflation figured in. We’ll continue to do that.”
Ritz cited the Agri-Innovation Fund as an example of recent government efforts that have restored research and innovation funding.
Cranfield said it is impossible to resolve the debate by the numbers because 2012 budget calculations are different from 1994.
“It is frustrating when you look at expenditures on science, research and development and it is difficult to compare,” he said.
“There is no data to support the argument (that research spending has not recovered), but certainly the stories we hear from people in the know suggest that it hasn’t returned to where it once was and that doesn’t take into account the effects of inflation. It means we are falling back.”
