Looking for a career path? Think agriculture!

Any well-motivated student with a good attitude can have a career in agriculture if they want it. So why do so many positions go unfilled?

“Mostly because there’s a disconnect,” says Frank Robinson, Professor of Poultry Production and Physiology at UAlberta. “Most animal science and animal health students are urban. Most of them don’t have a way to start getting experience with large animals so they can go on to get more experience. We have to break this cycle!”

So that’s exactly what he’s doing.

3-Day Animal Science Mini Internship Program

As of spring 2020, 364 students have participated in a three-day mini internship on poultry, dairy, pork, beef, equine and other farms during the fall and spring reading weeks. (The unusual notion was that “reading” week should actually have an academic component, not just be about skiing or beaches.) The last cohort comprised 118 students. Pretty good for a program that started only four years ago with 16 students.

And it’s low input, too. Students in the faculty of ALES can apply for $50, a statement of interest and an intake interview. Robinson trawls his network of producers, companies and sector associations. The faculty provides a travel/lodging allowance, if appropriate, and boots and coveralls that the students return at the end of their internship. (Robinson says his office smells like Canadian Tire.) And the hosts set up hands-on training that can range from calving, vaccinating chickens and often, plenty of mucking out (poop!).

 

The feedback is pretty positive. An overwhelming majority of the students report that they clarified and tested their career interests and felt more confident about their job prospects thanks to their new connections, and they learned how to apply their training/education in the real world. In fact, two students have done five (!!) internships, and over half the applicants are on their second one or more. The hosts also report enjoying the experience, wishing they had had similar support early in their careers.

Hosts also reported feeling more connected to the students. This is important since Robinson says that the most noticeable skill industry wants in a new recruit is communications: someone who can hold a conversation, not zone out on their phone the moment they have a second of down-time; someone who can be sociable, take direction, be part of a team and have fun doing it. So not necessarily the person who can pull a calf most efficiently, but the one who sees something that needs doing—and does it without being asked.

“Some farmers have hired students for the summer based on their experience with the program,” says Robinson. “That means success.”

Understanding that its recruits are mostly urban, the Faculty of ALES offers other opportunities for students to get their feet wet (literally).

AN SC101 – Principles of Animal Agriculture

Robinson has been teaching or co-teaching this course for over 40 terms. It’s an introduction to the structure of the livestock, poultry, and game ranching industries that covers the principles of animal management, breeding, feeding and current issues in animal agriculture.

“It’s the first farm-animal class, so we try to get their hands and feet dirty,” he says.

The students tour beef, poultry and dairy operations. They also do a project that involves farmers/farming, which could be as creative as building their own virtual farm with a $10 million start-up budget. At the end of the course, they pitch their farm, 3D models and budgets at a big evening event in an auditorium in front of a panel of judges. In a previous event, a real auctioneer sold the farms at the end of the evening, one of which went for $40 million. A tidy profit.

Back in 2018, Gentec CEO Graham Plastow volunteered as a panel member. “The enthusiasm of the students is infectious, and the judges have been known to get quite competitive about bidding for their favourites. That spilled over to the real fundraising auction where I bid on one of the Heritage chickens, which turned out be be money well spent as my hen was a very good layer.” (Sponsors can pick up eggs on a regular basis but they’re not necessarily from the spondored hen.)

Canadian Council on Animal CARE (CCAC) modules

While the 101 course and the internship give students a pretty good view of the producers’ perspective, if they’re going to study farm animals in a research environment, they need a different approach. UAlberta follows CCAC guidelines to deliver a three-hour session covering dairy cattle, swine and poultry (one session per species), taught by Robinson and other faculty and staff. On completion, the students are certified in handling that species, and can work with it in research. In the last two years, 240 students have been certified.

“City kids who haven’t been on a farm aren’t ‘fluent’ in agriculture or its techniques,” says Robinson. “Unless you grew up with mud on your boots, you don’t know how to halter a calf, move a pig or pick up a chicken. Students need these practical skills to get hired.”

Genomics: On the farm and off it

Tom Lynch-Staunton has a great job. He’s Regional VP for Alberta for the Nature Conservancy of Canada. He just started in August 2020. He manages the Alberta region conservation efforts, liaises with government, donors and landowners—and makes a point of getting out into the field. In fact, while he spoke to Gentec, he was driving to Bunchberry Meadows to meet a Natural Area Manager to learn about how the property has become a great resource for Edmontonians to experience a beautiful natural habitat.

But a career is (usually) a series of incremental steps. Tom’s started as a rancher on the family-owned Antelope Butte Ranch, where he became acquainted with genetic improvement from the producer’s perspective.

Our family was already using genetic improvement and crossbreeding to exploit hybrid vigour because we knew we could improve productivity, fertility, production efficiency, hardiness, survivability and overall health of the cattle,” he explains. “When genomics came along, it became much easier to select the best animals we wanted, and the best suited to our environment on the ranch. As the accuracy increases, we’ll be able to fit the right animals to plants, climate, soil and the landscape to increase profitability while maintaining or improving the health of the natural ecosystem. We’re still at the tip of the iceberg.”

Once at Gentec as Director of Industry Relations, Tom discovered the science behind what he was applying on the ranch; notably, the research process and the collaborations needed to move innovation into the industry.

Gentec is working on the issues that will be valuable to producers in the future—like reducing greenhouse gas emissions per animal, understanding the genomics of what makes a soil healthy, or ways to improve soil using that technology, improving livestock health, and using genomics at a landscape level to determine the best forages for each ranch. These issues are where Tom sees the biggest gains. Not to be forgotten are the background IT-type issues on how, for example to capture and interpret data quickly and easily to make decisions. And the data-sharing issues at an industry scale, which require becoming more integrated (like pork and dairy) so all parts of the value chain can share in the benefits.

“My time with Gentec was pivotal in my career,” he says. “It gave me a new perspective on how fortunate we are an industry to have such good livestock and plant research taking place in Canadian universities.” (See the YouTube video of “Rancher Tom” made while he was at Gentec.)

One of the things he particularly appreciated was a very effective spirit of collaboration. Tom has carried this model of “team successes” to every other job.

After Gentec, Tom held a dual rule with Canadian Cattlemen’s Association as Public and Stakeholder Engagement Manager and Alberta Beef Producers as Government Relations and Policy Manager. One of his responsibilities was collaborating with NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund, Ducks Unlimited and the Nature Conservancy of Canada to help conserve Alberta’s endangered native grasslands through cattle ranching.

“When an NGO talks positively about how ranchers can benefit conservation and stewardship, this helps change some of the negative perceptions of the beef industry,” he says, noting that the family ranch business has shares in the Waldron Grazing Co-op that partnered with the Nature Conservancy in one of the largest grassland conservation agreements in Canada.

During that time, Tom was a member of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, which recognizes the symbiotic relationships required for taking care of the environment and the economic viability of ranching. Then the opportunity arose at the Nature Conservancy, which strongly aligned with his view of the future.

As he points out, “It all started on the ranch, helped by Graham Plastow (Gentec CEO) and Gentec. My career path really highlights that if you know agriculture, you can also work in conservation and plenty of other fields.”

Gene Editing: A glimpse into the future of agriculture

“It’s an absolute revolution!” insists Bruce Whitelaw, Professor of Animal Biotechnology at The Roslin Institute, Scotland, of gene editing. “Scientifically, the potential is huge. It allows us to increase the genetic variations from which producers can select animals with traits they want to promote.”

Whitelaw and his team recently announced the potential to insert a variant of the RELA gene from warthogs and bush pigs into domestic pigs, which could make the latter resistant to African swine fever, a nasty and often deadly disease. Genus/PIC (at the behest of Graham Plastow, now Gentec CEO) funded the preliminary work to find the genetic variation many years ago but the project stalled for lack of technology to develop it. It has only now borne fruit because gene editing came along as the enabler. Other recent gene edits in pigs include the generation of GDF8 (myostatin) mutants to increase muscle, and resilience to diseases such as PRRS and foot and mouth disease.

This is gene editing as Whitelaw intended—with major application in resilience to disease, which is a major burden in livestock. Other applications he foresees include reproductive efficiency (increasing the number of females who bear multiple offspring, for example, rather than increasing the number of offspring per gestation) and gender selection, which is particularly important in the dairy industry where male offspring have little value, and which has been difficult to achieve beyond the sexing of semen. Farther down the line, it may be possible to introduce heat or drought tolerance from indigenous animals into mainstream animals, therefore expanding the footprint of livestock around the world. Used in this way, gene editing will help satiate the growing human population’s desire for animal protein.

But will producers want to use it?

“Producers are chasing it!” says Whitelaw. “What industry partners have to do is demonstrate applicability. The University of Missouri showed that you could edit variation into gene CD163 and create PRRS resistance in pigs. (Ed: Gentec reported this in our December newsletter. See source article here). Now, the task is to take that project, make sure the trait has no deleterious effects on other traits and show its true utility.”

And the Number One question since, if consumers don’t buy the product, it’s all moot—will they understand the difference between gene editing and genetic modification? The latter has had a rough ride over the years. Introducing transgenics didn’t go down well. Special-interest groups focused on nebulous health and environmental effects.

Gene editing, on the other hand, produces simple base variations that can happen naturally. Using Whitelaw’s RELA project as an example, the variation of that gene in warthogs and bush pigs may well appear in domestic pigs naturally—but evolution moves at glacial speed. Given the increasing global population, humans can’t wait that long. One person in seven is malnourished today. By the time we reach 9 billion, that figure is expected be one in three if we don’t increase production of agricultural protein. Genome editing can slash the standard 20+ generations of breeding required to introgress a gene allele back to just one; and eliminate evolution’s lop-sided variety in favour of specific alleles that increase food value.

For consumers to buy in to gene editing, two things have to happen in parallel: a full discussion with regulatory authorities to put in place an appropriate regulatory pathway to take the technology to market; and another full discussion—this time with the public—to convey that this is a good, safe technology.

“Gene editing does exactly what it says on the can,” says Whitelaw. “Every offspring carries mutations that neither the dam nor the sire has. Some are good, others not. Evolution selects the good ones. We’re doing exactly the same thing, except that we know the change is beneficial. Individual animals will be more robust, less sick and therefore have a better quality of life. That has to be a good thing at every level.”