Dr. Doug Edmeades' Opinion: Bummer

Dr. Doug Edmeades Photo / Christine Cornege

There is only one consolation to be gained as a consequence of being kicked in the bum ..... at least you are in front! Ben Dalton (NZFarmer June 2016) has castigated me for saying that MPI does not fund research. He has a point - sort of.

First the context is important. I was making the point in a recent column, and I think this remains unchallenged, that these days no one entity has the mandate to speak for farmers like the old MAF Tech which was a combination of MAF Research and MAF Extension division. Okay so far?

Now these are my actual words. "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."

Mr Dalton reminded us that the MPI through the PGP program spends $345m. This of course is spread over the life of the projects. My quick research and maths gets me to $41 m annual spend over 13 current, agriculturally-related projects, meaning about $3.1m per year per project.

To put that into some sort of perspective, when I was one of the National Science Leaders in agResearch our annual budget for research on soil fertility, pasture nutrition and fertiliser was about $5.0m.

The PGP website explains that the PGP fund is intended to "develop new products and services" and "transferring information, knowledge and technology." This sounds to me like technology development, not science. And if it were science why not spend it on science in science organisations. God knows agResearch needs all the help it can get at present!

I appreciate that scientists are brought into some of these PGP projects but I do wonder how much of the PGR dollars ends up actually 'doing' science. I am involved at the bottom end of two PGP projects. They wanted my input to bring some scientific rigor into their deliberations. I was delighted initially to help but then the dollars ran out and I am left continuing my input pro bono. I have also seen some of the new products and services coming out from another PGP project, which I would class, as science-lite.

Mr Dalton notes that MPI also contributes to technology transfer to farmers via its Sustainable Farming Fund. (SFF) - he says $125m into 990 projects and he may well be right. But some perspective is useful. From the website I can deduce: Total funding 2016/17 of $6.9m of which about half ($3.4m) is allocated to agriculturally related projects or about $260k per project.

So where does all this leave us. In total via PGP and SFF total annual funding into agriculture by MPI is about $3.4m + $41m = $44.4m much, can I say most, of which is not for science but technology development. To use Mr Daltons words: "Extension is a key part of the PGP programmes and many SFF projects as a number are focused on enabling practice."

He invites readers to a booklet published by MPI called "Over the Fence: Designing extension programs to bring about change." I wished I had ignored the invitation. It seems to assume that farmers are dummies and do not know a useful piece of science or technology if they tripped over it. It is full of all that social 'science' babble which would likely offend most self-respecting farmers.

Do not get me wrong. I have not doubt that the people involved in managing these funds and those involved in undertaking the projects are well meaning, committed, honest, reliable people. And no doubt there will be some useful technology developed and transferred. But however you look at it MPI does not fund much research defined a discovering new knowledge that may or may not become new technology given time.

I accept that my wording was careless: I should have said; relative to the $130m odd spent annually on R&D in agriculture prior to the reforms in 1992, the amount being spent by MPI today is small. Lets be generous: an unknown, but small fraction of $44m.

And I do hope that my analytical approach does not offend. I am trying, on behalf of the farmer, to disassemble MPI information in a form that both he and she can readily comprehend and understand. It is technology transfer in action.

Dr Doug Edmeades, MscHons, ONZM (Services to Agriculture), is an independent soil scientist and MD of agKnowledge Ltd. All of Doug's columns can be found here, and he welcomes feedback here.