Dr Doug Edmeades: Mandate

I found myself in a threesome recently. We were al fresco, enjoying a mid morning coffee in the autumnal sun. I was sitting with a farmer and a chap, who was similar to me in some aspects: he has a bone fide PhD and he offers fertiliser advice to farmers. I happened to know that he was also the purveyor of fertiliser products of dubious parentage.

We got talking about fertilisers and the farmer posed an interesting question: Looking at both of us he asked: who do I believe - you both have PhDs, you both use the language of science and yet the advice you offer is chalk and cheese - diametrically opposed? Doug, you rubbish the products he sells and he thinks you have the science all wrong. Who do I believe?

To elicit an answer I asked my supposed 'comrade in scientific arms': does your income depend on the sale of the fertiliser products you recommend - in other words - are you clipping the ticket. Yes he confirmed, delighting me with his alacrity.

I then turned to my 'farmer friend'. There you have it. His livelihood depends on the sale of scientifically dubious products, for which he has to create a 'credible story' to sell to unsuspecting farmers. Using his science vocabulary and his honorific, he readily creates a deception. What he says about his products sounds like science to the layman when in fact it has no evidential basis. This is called pseudo science, the test for which is not the number degrees and qualifications a person may have, but the more brutal question: is there any evidence to support their statements and claims?

The underlying problem is widespread - I hear its echo every day - and it is particularly rife in several sectors: fertilisers and cultivars. Who do farmers turn to these days to get objective, independent scientific-based information about products and services, which is not confounded by the sale of a product?

In bygone times farmers had the Research, and the Farm Advisory, Divisions of the Department of Agriculture. It evolved over time as these things do, and when last seen in the late 1980s, was called the MAF Tech Division of Ministry of Agriculture of Fisheries. At its peak it was world class. And it was held in high esteem by farmers as the arbiter in matters to do with assessing and testing which products and services work on the farm.

Who now has the mandate to undertake research to assess and test new products and services offered to farmers? It seems to me that in this respect we are now headless and leaderless.

MAF's successor, the Ministry of Primary Industry (MPI) is much diminished. It does not set the agricultural research agenda or fund research except for the small contribution via the Sustainable Farming Fund (SFF) and it no longer has an extension service. In any case its political mantra is 'let the buyer beware'.

These days the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) dish out the bulk of the government's agricultural research funding. Are they likely to front with R & D dollars to test the products and services offered to the agricultural sector? I can hear their arguments from here; 'let the buyer beware' and, 'we encourage all industries to be self-regulating.'

What about agResearch? Regretfully it appears to have lost its mojo with farmers, although, like an enthusiastic teenager, it earnestly wants to be seen as the farmer's friend. Its latest strapline focuses on "impact" - as in, we want "impact" scientists and "impact" science, sure evidence that they have no institutional memory of their successful past.

agResearch has a deeper problem. Given current science policy agResearch is required to attract commercial funding to stay financially viable. As a consequence agResearch's focus is no longer the farmer - they have no money. Their eyes are firmly on the big companies servicing agriculture with fertilisers and seeds. Under this setting can you see agResearch criticizing any product or service offered by their stakeholders to the farmer?

What about the Federated Farmers - what are they doing in this space? They operate FertMark, the fertiliser quality assurance scheme. It is weak in that its focus is solely on 'truth of labeling' - it is not concerned with the agronomic effectiveness of products. Furthermore they do not have resources to undertake product-testing.

That leaves the two levy funded bodies DairyNZ and Beef & Lamb. DairyNZ has introduced the Forage Index system for ranking ryegrasses but this does not yet include clovers, and they have dabbled in some one-off trial work looking at fertiliser products. I know that this issue is of concern to them but it is not their core business. So to Beef & Lamb. Looking at the list of completed projects in their 'Farmer Initiated Technology Transfer' (FITT) scheme they also have dabbled in testing forages and fertiliser, but their emphasis is not so much hard science but technology transfer.

So there you have it Mr Farmer. Piecemeal, Incomplete "cloudy with scattered showers." It appears that today no one holds the mandate that MAF once held.