Friday, March 29, 2024

Future lies in selling know-how

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It was a chance meeting on one of his last days at an agricultural college in Australia that led to Robert Anderson attending Massey University. After 44 years and two days on staff, the retiring College of Sciences head talked to Bryan Gibson about his time there. Professor Robert Anderson’s links to agriculture are lifelong. After growing up on various farms in Victoria, Australia, he studied it at high school then at an agricultural college. “On one of the last days I was at the place one of the masters came by and said ‘there’s a scholarship going for an agricultural science degree at Massey University in New Zealand’.”
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He took it and so began an almost 50-year association with the university.

After completing a Bachelor of Agricultural Science he enrolled in a master’s in animal genetics. He was offered his first academic appointment – junior lecturer in sheep husbandry – in 1971.

Apart from three years leave of absence to do his PhD at Cornell, Anderson has been there ever since.

He helped lead Massey through a period of major change. In 1997, its five science faculties were merged into one college, which he was made head of.

It provided the framework for the type of research that has been and will continue to be crucial to NZ agriculture’s success, Anderson said.

“In the knowledge sector you need to build large interdisciplinary teams, a strong critical mass focused on the big issues facing the globe. They are not going to be solved by one-man bands.”

Researchers at Massey and groups in other research organisations were now actively looking for collaborative partnerships. 

Anderson said funding, while always a challenge in the tertiary sector, was available to those looking to engage in partnership and collaboration.

As a small nation with only limited export capability, Anderson sees knowledge and technology as having major export potential.

“Some people get anxious about NZ knowledge being exported and being utilised in other countries,” he said. 

“But the issue for us is that we have so much technology and support systems. Think about the ICT systems that are now routine in the agricultural sector. 

“There is rich opportunity for that to be exported – the servicing side of agriculture you might say. And the reality is that we have to make sure that we continue to invest in new technologies, it’s an unstoppable cycle.”

NZ was really capable of feeding only 44 million people, which was a drop in the bucket in the global scene. 

“Take the NZ effort in the area of food safety,” Anderson said. 

“Take the One Health programme for disease management and eradication. The opportunities are just tremendous and I’m pleased to say that Massey is well placed on a number of those fronts. The key to it all is we have be thinking globally – we cannot think locally alone.”

Of course, as well as doing research, Massey was a teaching institution. Last year’s sector workforce report from the Government stated NZ would require about 50,000 new entrants into the agricultural workforce.

Anderson said it would be a major stretch but the report helped sell the sector as a career.

“That commitment to environmental sustainability is ingrained but is not as evident as it should be. I’ve never met a farmer who says I’m going to mine out this place as best I can and who cares what its state is at the end.”

“It has helped us convey a message we’ve been trying to get across for about the last 30 years and that is that when most people approach the word agriculture they instinctively think farming and fail to realise that while farming is the core component of agriculture, you have the full value chain including processing, product development, logistics and supply chain development, refrigeration and so on. 

“It’s important to push this message.”

The Institute of Agriculture and Environment, at Massey’s College of Sciences, was home to both freshwater ecologists and agricultural production researchers, among others.

It was a reflection of the growing importance put on sustainability in agriculture. 

On the subject of farming’s perception, Anderson thought NZ farmers were a little hard done by.

“The representation of the attitude of that sector, to issues of environmental sustainability and so on, is being unreasonably maligned,” he said.

“There’s always been a strong culture in the farming sector – farmers are keen for someone in the family to succeed them, there’s a strong culture of leaving a farm in a better state than when it was inherited. 

“That commitment to environmental sustainability is ingrained but is not as evident as it should be. I’ve never met a farmer who says I’m going to mine out this place as best I can and who cares what its state is at the end.”

As well as his commitments at Massey, Anderson has also had a vast array of external appointments. 

His work on dairy herd improvement began with an appointment to the NZ Herd Improvement Council in 1979. He was a consultant to the NZ Dairy Board regarding applications for licences in 1991 and was a member of the herd testing review committee that same year.

In 2002 he was a ministerial appointee to the national dairy herd improvement core database committee and has chaired it since 2013.

But after 44 years and two days his time at Massey is up. He’s leaving the university but not the city and he’s happy.

“This place has been really good to me.”

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