Thank you.
There has been a tradition in the agricultural schools across the country of faculty and staff being engaged in what we used to call extension. There was a formal mandate in OAC for that. That formal mandate really falls under the provincial ministry now, but despite that, most of the faculty remain dedicated to that sort of role. One thing that has also happened at this university is that some of the OMAFRA extension staff are also co-located within some of our departments. That creates a camaraderie and a knowledge transfer right there, sometimes in the coffee room, for example. It also creates partnerships, where there are combined efforts in terms of extension.
One example that we're involved in is something called FarmSmart, an annual conference here in Guelph in January, which is a collaboration between the university and OMAFRA. Another one is the Southwest Agricultural Conference at our Ridgetown Campus. The SWAC conference attracts something like 2,500 farmers and farm industry personnel over two days, and it's a collaboration, I would say, between provincial, federal, and university researchers and industry personnel, for them to share information and technology and what's new and is happening. I think many of these traditional means, as some might consider them to be, are still highly effective and create a community of knowledge that we are still very happy to participate in.
One other innovation that I've noticed at Vineland is that they have what I would call a technology officer. His name escapes me at the moment. I apologize. His role at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre is to scout technologies around the world that may not necessarily require research but might require regional or local development work. He brings those to the attention of Vineland and others, and that's a way of accelerating technology that may be researched elsewhere and can be developed here or adapted here. That's just an example of another model.
I hope that answers some of your question.