Vineland was created through a gift by Moses F. Rittenhouse in 1906. This has since contributed to the emergence of a competitive tender fruit industry, and more recently, wine and greenhouse industries.
We were given an insight into breeding techniques and the process unfolds well before any plants come into commercial production, including a lab where taste testing of pip fruit is performed!
Vineland is a non profit organisation and most of the funding comes from government channels. A common theme with the research being undertaken was around breeding cold climate varieties, in particular we saw a rose breeding program.
In the afternoon we hear from Andrew Novakovic, on the US Agricultural Policy and the Current “Farm Bill” Debate.
Farming accounts for 1% of workforce in the US and less than 1% of GDP.The entire food and fiber system in the US accounts for 17% of workforce and 13% of GDP.
Most of the U.S. is Farm or Forest with about 50% in cropland and pasture with 30% in forest, the remaining being urban.
The farm bill was established in 1933 to help smooth out volatility in prices received by farmers where small variances in yield across the country could result in big variances in the price. This then gave farmers some security in dealing with an issue that was otherwise out of their control.
Initially these issues revolved around the Dustbowl and The Great Depression, but latterly has focused on such things as opportunities around nutrition, trade, conservation and energy.
Much of the Farm Bill is not about agriculture but rather things like Bio Fuels, Nutrition, Land Use, Conservation,Forestry, and Food Security.
Every five years the Farm Bill is renewed, although it is more about amendments rather than renewal. Without this process, many of the mandates would by default leave producers and consumers vulnerable to an unregulated environment..... sound familiar...
Another aspect of the Farm Bill is to provide crop insurance, where the farmers pay a levy into the program.This year up to $50 Billion will be paid out due to drought. The government knows it cannot continue to fund these initiatives but the farmers have a very strong voice, and so there is much interest around the next round of negotiations.
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Jay Nutting, an Eisenhower Fellow - which is similar to Nuffield, gave a presentation on The Role Of Lobby and making our industry heard.This starts at a local level and we as Nuffield Scholars can be the 'go to' people who can then try to have influence over our policy makers.I particularly like one of Jay's slides, it is a quote from Dwight Eisenhower;
'Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you are a thousand miles from the corn field.'
Something that some of the decision makers could think about a bit more perhaps....
Saturday - Putting It all Together
The last day.
We are split into 6 groups and each asked to consider a particular aspect of the broader topic; Telling The Story Of Agriculture. Our group focused on the role of Nuffield and how it could be involved in telling that story.
With more than a thousand Scholars around the world, it would seem that Nuffield is well placed to tell that story, and I guess that is happening now but we do need to be aware that often we are 'preaching to the choir' as it were. The Global Focus Program which involves New Zealand and Australian Scholars, has an immense network of contacts throughout the world and is well placed to both bring more areas of the world into the Nuffield arena and tell the agricultural story.
I suppose this ties in with what we heard a lot about in the last week, and that is Social Media.It's a very strong tool in our kit and using it correctly, has the ability to spread the agricultural story far and wide. There is less than 2% of of the population directly involved in agriculture. However there is 100% of the population who eat food each day! Too many of those people don't understand agriculture.
Likewise Social Media can also be used as a weapon, and there are many urban based lobby groups who do this very well....
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| Team NZ; Sophie Stanley, Natasha King, Lisa Harper, Julian Raine, Tafi Manjala(front), Steve Wilkins Looking on; Jay Nutting US. and Jodie Redcliffe AUS |
A great presentation, interestingly, one of his slides looked as though it was going to give some new groundbreaking statistics around yield building a barley crop. It turned out to be a graph plotting the average daily weight gain of the delegates on his Global Focus Program ! It has to be said, the results were exceptional !
Thanks Steve, and thanks everyone for a great week, especially Karen Daynard for putting it together!
This week in Ontario has been all I was expecting and much more.
Meeting the 2013 Nuffield Scholars, each of them leaders in their own field has been inspirational.
The debate, probing questions and the friendship is stimulating and infectious. I have made 80 plus friends and I know each of us can, and will, call upon each other for advice, opinion or a bed at some stage !
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| View from the Skylon Tower overlooking Niagara Falls Ontario. |
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