Features
‘What Did You Have to Eat Today?’
Renewed partnership brings together U of G, province in research, testing and training
BY ANDREW VOWLES
It supports research in food, health, the environment and the bioeconomy. It helps ensure the safety of Ontario’s food, livestock and water through lab testing. And it supports training and teaching in those areas and more. “It” is U of G’s multi-million-dollar enhanced partnership with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA).
Renewed last year, the partnership touches Ontarians in a number of ways. Ask Prof. Rich Moccia, interim associate vice-president (research) agri-food and partnerships, to explain the arrangement in simple terms, and he responds with a question of his own: “What did you have to eat today? Virtually every food product has been touched in some way by the University of Guelph and the OMAFRA partnership.”
Broaden the mandate beyond food to related fields — environment, health, the rural economy, testing and training — and you’re talking about an “industry” bigger than Ontario’s automobile sector.
“People have to eat,” says Moccia, “but they can go an extra year without buying a new car.”
It’s a rare kind of marriage linking a university with a government ministry, he says. “It’s one of the things that make us truly unique as a university in North America and certainly in Canada.”
The new agreement was signed in April 2008 and provides more than $350 million over five years (the full agreement extends to 2018).
This year, the ministry will provide just over $76 million to the University, including $59.1 million in direct contributions and additional one-time funding. In addition, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities will give $4.5 million this year to support diploma education.
A study completed in 2007 found that the partnership returns $3 for every $1 received in direct and indirect impacts. Its annual economic impact exceeds $1.15 billion.
The initial partnership began with a formal 10-year agreement beginning in 1997. That partnership built on decades’ worth of co-operation in research and extension education involving the University and its predecessor colleges and Queen’s Park.
The partnership involves the main Guelph campus and the University’s regional campuses (Alfred, Kemptville and Ridgetown) and its research stations, centres and two major laboratory complexes. Funding pays for three main programs: research, testing services (Lab Services, Animal Health Lab) and veterinary clinician training programs.
The largest area is research and development under seven themes (up from five under the previous agreement): agricultural and rural policy, bioeconomy, emergency management, environmental sustainability, food for health, product development and enhancement, and production systems.
Prof. Alejandro Marangoni, Food Science, heads the research theme on product development and enhancement through value chains, one of two expanded themes under the renewed partnership.
Here, food is still central, but the goal is to support research from farm to fork, looking for ways to add value along the production chain.
So a researcher might work with a processing company to develop a way to reduce fats in foods or ingredients. Or maybe a faculty member has ideas to help a food or beverage maker market its products.
“We’ve been doing value-added research anyway,” says Marangoni. The new theme will “focus attention on the importance of that value chain. Many researchers don’t work on this.”
Partly, it’s about bringing together scientists and potential partners as a kind of matchmaking service, he says.
“I’ve been doing fundamental research, but I believe in the application of research. I find it exciting to see science and technology being used to create wealth and prosperity for everybody.”
Building healthier Ontarians — and reducing health-care costs — is the purpose of the food-for-health theme headed by Prof. Gopi Paliyath, Plant Agriculture. That might involve exploring uses of foods and ingredients for disease prevention.
“It’s not food just as food,” says Paliyath, who forecasts a multi-billion-dollar market for components such as functional foods and nutraceuticals.
That will include foods for human consumption and enhanced animal feed, and will involve researchers from various parts of campus, including the Ontario Veterinary College, the Ontario Agricultural College and the College of Biological Science.
Beyond foods, those kinds of partnerships are also important for the bioeconomy theme headed by plant agriculture professor Gary Ablett at Ridgetown Campus.
How to help shift Ontario’s economy away from petroleum-based products and fuels and toward renewable resources, including farm-based crops? Ablett says more researchers aim to study ways to convert existing or new crops into biofuels, biochemicals and bio-products and to extract valuable compounds from those crops.
He says developing a bioeconomy builds on U of G’s agri-food history, culture and strengths.
“Guelph is in a key leadership position to use agriculture as the focal point for the bioeconomy.”
Going a step beyond, Moccia says the University brings numerous disciplines to bear on issues and ideas. Ticking them off on his fingers — veterinary medicine, agriculture, engineering, food, social and cultural, economics, biology, human health — he says: “Where else can you find a university that has all the bits and pieces in one place? It’s a rich environment.”
He’s now focusing on sharing those messages more widely, both at and outside U of G. That involves connecting researchers (knowledge generators) with partners (knowledge users) more efficiently.
And it means raising Guelph’s research profile and explaining the University’s roles in Ontario agri-food, says Moccia. Bringing that idea home again, he says: “I want my mom, who’s 85, to be able to say: ‘Gosh, I’ve seen a lot of great things happening in food systems at the University of Guelph.’”