Professor Marian Dawkins, Department of Zoology, Oxford University

Much scientific research, even that done with an applied agricultural aim in mind - never gets used by the farming industry.

This is partly because farmers never get to hear about the research in the first place but it is also because the research itself may not be easily applicable to real farms and may seem to have little relevance to a farmer trying to make a living in a harsh commercial world.

The result is that the partnership between the research community and the farming community is not nearly as fruitful as it might be and many valuable opportunities for improving the way / agriculture is run are being lost.

The Food Animal Initiative directly addresses this issue by providing a new approach to every stage of the research process - from the very first moment when a research idea is formulated right through to the dissemination and use of the findings that result.

This new 'model' for the way research is conducted has three important components:-

1. Choice of the right question or questions to be asked in the first place
2. Answers with research and development that are immediately relevant to the farming and food industries
3. 'Spreading the word' of what can be achieved through demonstration, farmer participation and education at all levels.

1. Choice of the right question

FAI has a unique set of contacts and working relationships, not only within the farming community but also within the food retailing industry.

They also have links with the academic research world, primarily through the University of Oxford but also with the Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Warwick amongst others and with animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, the Humane Society of the United States and WSPA and with environmental organisations such as the Soil Association and the RSPB.

This network of contacts allows them to set up a dialogue as to the most fruitful and useful lines of research might be and what the problems and aspirations of each part of the food industry are, a dialogue that can achieve what no single participant could achieve on their own.

Academic research workers often have a poor idea of what the real problems facing the industry are and unrealistic ideas of how to rectify them.

The food retail sector often makes demands for food quality or animal welfare that are seen as commercially inviable by the producers.

Farmers in turn may have little idea of what the market wants or is likely to want in the future. And animal welfare organisations may either make unrealistic demands on producers or criticise the industry without offering constructive alternatives.

By bringing everyone together and enabling them to learn from each other, there is a real chance that the research that is really needed will be done.

UK agriculture is at a critical point in its history and the way forward will need innovation in all sorts of ways.

The move towards more extensive systems of keeping livestock, for example, brings with it a need to develop breeds of animals that can cope with outdoor conditions as well as to address problems such as injurious pecking and greater contact with disease organisms that free-range involves.

We cannot simply open the barn doors and expect all the problems of farming to be solved simply by expressing more concern about the environment and animal welfare.

The problems are not insoluble but they do need addressing and they do need help from the research community.

In identifying these research priorities, academic researchers need to be kept in touch with the changing state of the industry at all levels - not just management but the stockmen and farm managers on the ground, who will often have a great knowledge of and concern for their animals.

Some of their views may be very insightful and could lead to real improvements in farming practices whereas others will be superstitions that turn out on further investigation to be wrong.

The point is that by consulting at all levels - what the management want, what the stockman sees as a problem, what the supermarkets would ideally like to be able to tell their customers, what consumers are prepared to pay for - the list of candidate topics that might justify a full-blown research programme is enormously increased.

The relevance of each suggestion can be assessed by the whole industry and, even more importantly, possible solutions and their feasibility can be discussed at an early stage.

For example, an academic researcher might suggest something that a stockman could easily recognize as impractical but suggest a simple alternative that the academic might recognize as having similarities to an important bit of 'pure' research that had never before been used in this context.

Or a retailer might stress the importance of the taste of a product that might need only a minor modification of farming practice - but farmers had not realised before that there was such a market for a product with that taste or provenance.

Instead of going down the road of carrying out an expensive piece of research and then transferring it to commercial agriculture only to find that what worked on a small scale hits a major snag when translated to a large scale, the whole process is streamlined and made both more economical and more genuinely useful by the active participation of all interested parties right from the very beginning.

2. Answers with research and development that are immediately relevant to the farming and food industries

Once the research topics and priorities have been identified, FAI offers further unique opportunities for actually carrying out research in ways that make it directly relevant to the needs of the industry in four main ways:

a) contacts with industry (poultry, pigs, cattle and sheep) enabling the setting up of on-farm trials on other commercial farms. This is particularly valuable for studies of systems that are not represented at FAI's base at Wytham, Oxford.
b) a network of associate farms allowing between farm replication and testing of systems developed at Wytham
c) full-scale scientific trials at Wytham. This involves grant-funded research and development in a truly commercial setting. The PINE (Poultry in Natural Environment) free-range broiler project is a good example of this.
d) pilot or pre-trial studies to test the feasibility of proposed ideas before full-scale scientific trials are run.

3. 'Spreading the word': using the results of research

The final stage of a research project is the dissemination of the results and their take up by industry.

Traditionally, this is done through 'technology transfer', which implies a research worker telling the industry what to do, rather as a missionary might go out and try and convert people.

But it will be clear by now that the FAI model makes this traditional route unnecessary.

There is no need to transfer the results of research because these will already be in the commercial domain, already economically validated and it will already be clear how they can be implemented on other farms.

The research projects will have built into them the production of a manual documenting how to put it into practice written in a way that anyone can follow.

The project itself will be open to demonstration and for anyone to come and have a look.

There will be publicity in the farming press and on the website.

In addition, FAI have training courses at all levels - for the food retailers, stockmen, schoolteachers and students.

Part of the training and education will be showing people what is going on and explaining the welfare and conservation consequences.

Farmers are much more likely to change what they do if they see other farmers - successfully - doing something than if they encounter an interesting but remote-seeming piece of academic research.

By being commercial farmers having to make their business pay but at the same time being able to demonstrate the results of research in practice, FAI are uniquely placed to communicate with the farming community and have a real impact on the future of British agriculture.

Few places in the world offer such a powerful meeting place for the research, farming, environmental, retail and consumer worlds to come together and produce high quality commercially relevant research.

April 2006