Funds from former centre fuel new agriculture and food policy research scholarships

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

The former George Morris Centre has given the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College $450,000 for new agriculture and food policy research scholarships.

Centre managing director John F. T. Scott says the $450,000 amount was the remainder of the $3 million legacy fund George Morris supplied in 1989 for the centre’s creation. “As we closed the centre, that’s what was left over.”

The centre, in operation since 1990, ceased operating at the end of last year. Giving the remaining money to the agricultural college “was in accordance with the will of George Morris,” Scott says, noting Morris specified if the centre couldn’t continue operating that any leftover funds had to go back to the university for agri-food policy research.

The George Morris Centre was created in partnership with the University of Guelph to contribute to agri-food research and policy discussions. From 1990 to 1998 it operated as a department of the university, while in 1998 it was registered as a non-profit charitable corporation and became its own entity.

In a May 19 press release, university spokesmen say the money will be used for a new research grant to support a visiting researcher spending one or two weeks in the food, agricultural and resource economics department working on projects relevant to Ontario or Canadian agricultural policy. A scholarship for graduate students is also being set up. The annual scholarship of $10,000 is for PhD or masters of science students in the food, agricultural and resource economics department working on policy-related research.

Bob Funk, centre board chair, says in the release the board is “gratified with the respectful response of the university to the concepts we presented for use of the funds.” Centre board members are “now considering ways in which the fund may be augmented.”

Scott says all of the operations of the George Morris Centre have now been wound down, including the final audits and the application to revoke the centre’s charitable status charter.

But the centre’s research, policy documents and opinion pieces are being kept alive through the George Morris Centre website. Scott says the documents are free of charge to download and will be up on the website for five years because scholars from around the world have been calling and asking for them. BF