The Rural Voice, 1987-11, Page 30AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Incomprehensible
Agricultural research has a critical — and often overlooked — impact on practical
farming. In a series of articles designed to bring the mysterious world of research into
the light of daily life, writer Ian Wylie-Toal will be examining how scientists set their
priorities, why they make mistakes, where they get their money, why they run into
problems, how they work, and what they hope to accomplish. He'll also be offering
some guidance about how farmers can use agricultural research to their advantage.
PART ONE:
Agricultural research matters.
A quick glance around any farm is
enough to confirm this: the soil,
crops, livestock, machinery, sprays,
fertilizers, and feed have all been
affected by research. Deciding on the
crop to plant in the spring, when to
plant it and how, when to harvest it
and how to store it — there is proba-
bly nothing on the farm that has not
been researched at some level.
In spite of its importance to the life
of the farmer, agricultural research has
a low profile. Like most people, far-
mers know research exists, but are
only aware of it through its results:
the factsheets, the news releases, the
latest bits of information.
The motivation for research, the
people who do it, why and how they
research, why their results can matter
or why they don't, the complex and
the simple factors that can affect the
day to day workings of research are
largely foreign to the non-scientific
population. There are half -formed
images of people in white coats work-
ing fanatically behind thick walls and
closed doors, popping out every now
and then to make pronouncements or
sending emissaries out to snip off bits
of plants for incomprehensible analy-
sis, but this is fiction, pure Hollywood,
and does not convey any sense of the
reality of scientific inquiry.
This low -profile, stereotypic view
of science would be all right — all
groups are misunderstood and stereo-
typed to some degree — if it weren't
for the importance of science. If the
public is scientifically ignorant, the
findings of science, which radically
affect the world and how we live, re-
main immune from criticism. For how
can a scientific result be questioned if
the process that generated the result is
not understood? How can a farmer
know what to expect from research if
he or she does not understand how
research regulates and directs itself?
These esoteric questions gain
practical importance when a pesticide
or antibiotic is declared unsafe by
scientists and is banned, or all the
pests on a crop become resistant to all
registered insecticides (as happened to
Texas cotton producers in the mid-
1970s). A knowledge of research
allows a farmer to examine a pesticide
toxicity study critically and assess the
soundness of the research. The cotton
grower who understands research will
have some idea of how science will be
able to solve the predicament, if at all.
Without an ability to assess sci-
ence and its impact on farm life, far-
mers must either rely on the opinions
of others or remain passive in the face
of the changes science initiates.
This article and those that will
appear in subsequent issues of The
Rural Voice are intended to bring to
light some of the realities of agricul-
tural research. The purpose is not to
praise or discredit the field, but to
point out its strengths and weaknesses
in the hope that science, and all it
entails, will become a little more real
and understandable.
The way to start such a discussion
is to point out that there is no such
thing as agricultural research per se:
there is simply science applied to
agriculture, usually with the aim of
increasing efficiency of production.
The application may be obvious, as in
the study of recombinant DNA, which
can be used directly to alter the gen-
etic makeup of plants and animals.
But sometimes the applications are not
so obvious. Laser research, for exam-
ple, doesn't have much impact on
farm life until someone comes up with
a way to use lasers to level uneven
fields. Building products, oils, metals,
and plastics are all used on the farm,
and have all been modified by
research for agricultural use, yet none
of these areas would spring to mind as
"agricultural" research.
What does come easily to mind is
the core group of subjects that form
the obvious agricultural sciences:
crop science, soil science, animal
science, entomology, veterinary
medicine, agricultural engineering,
food science, and economics. These
represent the most important areas of
concern for farmers all over the world,
but these sciences are only speciali-
zations within "purer" sciences — a
crop scientist is a botanist who con-
centrates on agricultural plants rather
than moss or marsh marigolds.
The details of these agricultural
sciences are taught to students at the
universities across Canada that have a
faculty of agriculture. Universities
also conduct a great deal of research.
The teachers or professors are full
scientists, and part of their job is to
conduct a research program.
Much of the funding for university
research ultimately comes from the
provincial and federal governments,
which also operate their own research
establishments within their respective
ministries of agriculture. The Agri-
culture Canada research branch, which
celebrated its centenary in 1986, has
research stations that stretch across
Canada. Each station has a mandate
to research certain crops or aspects of
agriculture of concern to its region.
So, for example, Beaverlodge, in
northern Alberta, considers a cold
climate in all its research, while the
Delhi station in southern Ontario
focuses on tobacco cultivation.
Provincial research follows a
28 THE RURAL VOICE