By Bruce Cochrane.
The Chair of Swine Innovation Porc says improving the global competitiveness of the Canadian pork industry while ensuring continued environmental sustainability is a top priority of Canada's Swine Cluster Research Program.
Swine Innovation Porc is in the process of outlining its research priorities for the next Agricultural Policy Framework, anticipated to begin April 1, 2018.
Stewart Cressman, the Chair of Swine Innovation Porc, says, in light of the continued expansion of pork production world wide, the real question is who is going to consume all of the pork that's produced?
Stewart Cressman-Swine Innovation Porc:
As a country that exports anywhere between 65 and 70 percent of the pork we produce, it's very important that we can produce a product competitively and that has quality attributes that are demanded by various countries where the product is moving into.
I think what we have to really look at is competitiveness, the ability to do it in a sustainable fashion.
Sustainability is something we've taken for granted.
That's something that we've zeroed in on as well in looking at what we can do from a science perspective that will provide answers or validate results or assumptions that we've had.
What can we do in terms of looking at greenhouse gas emissions, is there a way of reducing our footprint?
I think a big concern as well is water usage.
We don't want to be using the next generation's water resource by just drilling wells deeper and not taking a close view of is there ways we can use water more efficiently.
Cressman says there's an opportunity to work collaboratively to move research and development forward.
He notes it's also important to ensure the knowledge generated through research into the hands of industry so that it can be made use of.
Source: Farmscape