Making it easier to get research results into practice

Dairy at Guelph leads the way in information sharing

By Lilian Schaer for Livestock Research Innovation Corporation

Research plays a key role in the growth and development of the livestock industry. Most livestock producers, through their service fees or checkoffs, support research in their respective sectors – but there is general agreement that more needs to be done to ensure the outcomes of that research are ultimately used on the farm. 

That’s the outcome of a survey into the effectiveness of Getting Research Into Practice (GRIP) activities, where 64% of faculty respondents and 80% of producer representatives indicated there is significant room for improvement. 

The survey is part of a project led by Jennifer Ellis, assistant professor in Animal Systems Modelling in the University of Guelph’s Department of Animal Bioscience, that is looking at how to improve getting results to producers and how to encourage more adoption of those outcomes.  The results were also used as input for LRIC’s International Research Advisory Committee in their review of Ontario livestock’s innovation system.

“In order for the Ontario livestock sector to be competitive and sustainable, farmers need a system that makes research results accessible in a way that encourages them to make effective decisions for their businesses,” says Mike McMorris, CEO of Livestock Research Innovation Corporation (LRIC). 

Most researchers believe GRIP - also known as extension or Knowledge Translation and Transfer (KTT) – to be part of their role, but most don’t dedicate much of their time to determining the best ways to do that. 

“Right now, GRIP is at the discretion of the researchers, but they need support in order to do this,” explains Ellis’ graduate student Kendra Hall. “There’s a need to create resources and information on how to do this, especially for early career researchers.”

Better information transfer is one of the biggest pieces of the mission of Dairy at Guelph, a network of more than 60 faculty across the University of Guelph who do work related to dairy, according to Dairy at Guelph Director, Prof. Stephen LeBlanc. 

“What is genuinely important at the end of the day for researchers is getting research successfully applied, but how we do this effectively is a big challenge,” he says. “Most researchers at Guelph are not trained in communications, but 88% think it is part of their job, so the motivation is there and it’s a trainable, learnable skill just like everything else we learn along the way.”

Going from awareness to implementation often relies on a trusted advisor putting something in front of someone, he adds, which can be a tall order as producers can have very different needs. 

That’s why Dairy at Guelph is tackling the GRIP issue in varying ways, including in-person events for faculty, funders, students, and other interested parties, participating in industry events and producer meetings, writing news articles for agricultural media, and generating content like plain language summaries, infographics, webinars and podcasts. 

Figuring out which tactics work best takes time and money, but Dairy at Guelph has a self-funding model where an internal project levy is helping fund some of that work. Equally important, says LeBlanc, is raising awareness among funding agencies like the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council or the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance that GRIP is important enough for project funds to be allocated to those types of activities. 

Beef at Guelph was launched earlier this year and a similar type of initiative called Soils at Guelph is
also starting to develop. 
In a 10-episode podcast series available on the LRIC website, Ellis and Hall explored barriers to research implementation and ways to bridge this gap. They also spoke with producers from a wide range of livestock sectors.

Based on that work, researchers should: 

• Talk to the people who will be adopting the research and ask them what they really need – and make sure this is done before developing a research project and not when it’s finished. 
• Take into account the practical realities of farming. A project must solve a problem on the farm, so it’s important to test and validate in real-life farm environments and situations. 
• Make their communications more effective throughout the project and consider timelines that meet both their needs and the needs of farmers.
• Do more to understand the end user and their needs for innovation. This includes farmers, industry and government.

“For producers, the barriers to adoption are time, money and energy. They don’t want to waste their time, money and energy on something that doesn’t work,” adds Hall. “It doesn’t have to just make them more money, it also has to save them time and if it’s not faster, it likely won’t be better for them.” 

The GRIP podcast series is available here. More information about both projects is available from LRIC at info@livestockresearch.ca or by contacting Mike (519-766-5464) or Jean (519-767-8583).

This article is provided by Livestock Research Innovation Corporation as part of LRIC’s ongoing efforts to report on research developments and outcomes, and issues affecting the Canadian livestock industry.  It was first published in the July 2022 edition of Ontario Dairy Farmer.