Ridgetown campus launches fundraising drive

Sunday, February 8, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

The University of Guelph’s Ridgetown Campus Agri-Food Foundation is embarking on a campaign to raise millions of dollars for research infrastructure upgrades and a new facility at the campus.

Ridgetown campus director Ken McEwan says the money being raised for a sustainable crop research and innovation centre and other upgrades is part of a province-wide renewal of crop research infrastructure across Ontario.

Facilities need to be renewed so the industry can remain globally competitive and to ensure the “longevity for our many agricultural stakeholders,” he says.

McEwan says the foundation is working with the university to raise $3 to $4 million in private donations for the work. It’s hoped the private sector donations will be matched by funding from federal, provincial and municipal governments. “We’re trying to draw awareness to this,” he says.

The funds will be used to pay for new lab space, analytical lab space, plant growth chambers, seed preparation and plant breeding equipment and cold storage space. McEwan says the money will go toward “quite a variety of things that would be of value to our campus.”

So far the foundation has raised $1.2 million, says its chair, Dave Baute. The foundation is described on the campus’ website as an organization with alumni and community representatives.

Baute says the money they’re raising is going towards “must haves in order to carry out some of the basic research that’s being done today.”

McEwan says the Ridgetown Campus currently has research facilities “but they’re dated back to the 1940s and 1950s.”

The sustainable crop research centre “will provide the infrastructure that’s needed to support leading-edge research,” he says.

There are no timelines in place for when the foundation has to raise the money or when the centre will be up and running.

Rob Gordon, dean of the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph, says
upgrading research infrastructure at Ridgetown “is part of a larger focus that the university, industry and the (Ontario agriculture) ministry are putting towards how we make the investments in research much more effective and productive in the future.”

He adds that “with all of the emerging issues regarding how we better manage the production of grains and oilseeds, there is a need for us to have state-of-the art infrastructure.”

The University of Guelph has more than 15 stations across Ontario where it does crop and livestock research. The stations are operated and managed by the university as part of the university/Ontario agriculture ministry partnership. But the stations are owned by the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario.

The broader infrastructure renewal effort is focused “on what we’re doing to continue to improve our ability for field crops work,” he says.

The field crop research infrastructure needs to be renewed because “there are a lot emerging issues and technologies that require us to maybe think about our crop production systems in a slightly different way,” he says, adding, for example, there’s more emphasis being placed on how researchers manage nutrients in field crop studies.

“The sophistication of Ontario’s crop production capacity” makes it critical for the province to have research infrastructure that enables scientists to answer questions really effectively, Gordon explains. “This is about having the capacity to do state-of-the art research. It’s about making our land bases more adaptive to a wider range of opportunities for research.”

The university, agricultural industry and ministry are still working out how much it will cost to renew the research infrastructure, Gordon says. BF