Science helping local livestock industry
During an international conference in Northern Ireland’s capital Belfast, agriculture minister Michelle McIlveen told delegates that science is key to giving the agri-food industry a competitive edge.
Opening the 67th Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP), McIlveen told the 1,400 delegates about her “ambitious” hopes for the local livestock sector and how she is looking to science to help support policy and innovation.
The minister considered Northern Ireland fortunate to have highly skilled and internationally renowned researchers at the Agri-food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), Queens University Belfast, the University of Ulster, and dedicated educational and advisory services at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE).
McIlveen said: “In areas where scientists, advisors and local industry partners work together, we create an uninterrupted flow of knowledge and innovation from the research laboratory to the farmyard. That gives us a strong edge in competitive global markets.”
McIlveen also discussed the vital role science plays in seeding new innovations for the agri-food sector, in particular the new and exciting possibilities arising from big data, which allows large amounts of information to be analysed, to underpin new livestock genetic evaluations.
Also addressing the opening ceremony, European Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan said the agricultural sector needed to become smarter, leaner and cleaner.
Hogan recognised that research was vital to the industry and deemed that agricultural science had taken a backseat in Europe for a long time.
Hogan said: “These days we expect farmers to do much more than produce food.
“We expect them to generate jobs and economic growth and contribute to environmental targets. Innovation within the sector is key to helping balance these different priorities.
“We doubled our investment in the field under Horizon 2020 [the EU programme for Research and Innovation] and we have made research and innovation a central plank of the rural development programme.”
