Agriculture committee  We're going to be announcing a $3 million project shortly in livestock and forage research. I can tell you that one of the ways that we have been starting to cope with it is by bringing in research coordinators. These are people who can help at the front end to bring the teams together to discuss what might be a good research program and strategy.

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure I caught the full focus of what you said. Are you looking for an example of a university, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and industry collaboration?

Agriculture committee  We have some other models within the functional food and nutraceutical area. Both the Richardson Centre, which has Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists and technical staff working within the centre, and the Canadian Centre for Agri-food Research in Health and Medicine, CCARM, where we have professors and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists working together, have been developing new products.

Agriculture committee  On the commercialization side, I'll give you an example of where I think commercialization has happened but may not have been recognized. We have a bioethanol processing plant in the province. It became very well recognized for the quality of dried distillers grains it was producing as a result of collaboration with animal nutritionists at the University of Manitoba showing them how processing practices in the plant could influence the quality of the dried distillers grains and the variation from run to run of dried distillers grains.

Agriculture committee  Here at the University of Manitoba one of the pillars of our future development is related to the education and dialogue with our remote and aboriginal communities. We know that nutritional security is an issue. We know that our communities of the north are not in control or they have limited knowledge of the food value chain upon which they rely.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. There are two points I would like to make. The first is when I was referring to strategies that allow the various entities to work together through a continuum. The opportunity this presents is that the people at the front end doing the research have more opportunity to identify or to find out what the identified needs are at the working end of the producer, the processor, or the other industry members.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. At the University of Manitoba we have strategically invested in six key areas of research and development. And I think there is an opportunity for alignment of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada activities in Manitoba on several fronts, to be able to develop national leadership in student training, research, technology transfer, commercialization, and outreach.

Agriculture committee  Just very briefly, certainly the type of person who can address complex issues is a person who's few and far between to find. They're more likely to be associated with large organizations such as the Canadian Wheat Board or the Richardson Centre. In one case, that's public information; in the other case, it's not.

Agriculture committee  Basically, if we're talking about short-term, discipline-oriented research, we can find dollars. In our faculty, we pull in a little over $10 million a year in research money, the majority of it from out of province—or maybe not; about 50% is from out of province. That would be good for the person doing nutrition research or reproduction research, if it's animal science or, it might be, plant breeding.

Agriculture committee  The only other comment I want to make is about our move to bring in someone to help these people, who have training in other countries, become accredited so they can be considered full-fledged agrologists, or certified in whichever field they're in. This is a new program. I'm not aware that any other university is doing this.

Agriculture committee  Let me respond to your first question, which was on the reasons students are not selecting agriculture as a choice of study. If you have, as I do, a son or daughter in grade 12, and they say they're going to go into agriculture at the University of Manitoba or Saskatoon, it's not sexy.

Agriculture committee  The focus of my presentation was enrolment in a faculty of agriculture as compared to total university enrolment.

Agriculture committee  Although universities can go up and down in terms of enrolment, depending on what our youth plan to do--they may want to go to a college or go right into a career after high school--we're seeing that the percentage of students enrolled in agriculture faculties across Canada, relative to total university enrolment, is declining.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  And I appreciate that it has probably been a long day already.