Impact Stories

Dairy calves are an integral part of Ontario’s $2.2-billion dairy industry. Access to a world-class research and innovation system — including the Ontario Dairy Research Centre and six Alliance-funded projects over 18 years — resulted in better on-farm pain management practices during disbudding (the process of removing the horn bud in young calves for the safety of other cows and farm staff) and the licensing of a new pain management drug in Europe and Canada. Long-term Alliance investment helped identify and promote the new pain management  protocol.

The Laboratory Services Division is accredited by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) and the Canadian Association of Laboratory Accreditation to the International Organization of Standardization standard 17025 (ISO/IEC 17025:2017).

The Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance creates impact by directing the efforts of our people, places and programs toward six key outcomes that support the agri-food and rural sectors—at home and around the world.

The Alliance’s annual report, Growing Ontario Solutions, highlights the stories behind the numbers, including how Alliance-funded programs and research have:

Plant agriculture professor Jayasankar Subramanian and his team are developing new technologies to decrease fruit spoilage, part of Ontario’s annual food waste that costs a total of $12 billion per year.

Beans and other legumes are vital, affordable, nutrient-dense keys to reducing risk of disease, such as obesity and diabetes. That’s especially true for Ontario’s aging population—in Canada, a quarter of all citizens are 65 years or older and naturally prone to health challenges.

To effectively promote the benefits of beans, researchers set out to benchmark and encourage bean consumption in older adults.

Prof. Keith Warriner is a food scientist, but when he heard about the shortage of N95 masks for front-line health-care workers battling COVID-19, he saw an opportunity to contribute.

Treating sick cows is never fun, for either the animal or the farmer. Just ask dairy producer Brad Hulshof. While he’s in the barn tending an animal, everything else he has to do around the farm takes a back seat. Plus, it’s costly—producers like Hulshof invest about $1,800 in life’s usual necessities (particularly feed) from the time a calf is born, up until the animal calves in turn and starts producing milk. Add the cost of extraordinary veterinary treatment to the mix, and that number can climb appreciably.

Hidden in plain sight—if that’s even possible, with Ontario’s bustling Highway 400 cutting through it—is one of North America’s most influential vegetable field research facilities, the Government of Ontario’s Bradford Muck Crops Research Station.

As field research stations go, it’s hidden because it’s relatively small. At just four acres, it’s about the size of four football fields.

Being a carbon footprint-conscious dairy farmer improves the planet and farm profitability, say University of Guelph researchers. They’ve determined that environmental best practices, such as manure management, also improve producer profit margins.

Research associate Susantha Jayasundara and Prof. Claudia Wagner-Riddle, School of Environmental Sciences, collected production data from dairy farms across Ontario and classified them as having a high or low carbon footprint.