You may or may not have heard of The Simpson Centre for Food and Agricultural Policy before today. Either way, hopefully after you finish reading this article, you will understand how it fits with the great work being done at Livestock Gentec.
At The Simpson Centre, we often refer to ourselves as “knowledge brokers”. This isn’t because we want to create another buzzword, but because the Centre began with the ambition to connect a fragmented industry, agriculture, with a fragmented audience, policymakers. We aim to connect agri-food research, producer knowledge, and industry expertise to translate it into robust, evidence-based insights that will inform smarter agri-food policy. We believe this work is needed because too often, agri-food issues reach policymakers one by one, and without context.
As a portfolio, agriculture is vast. It intersects with critical issues like infrastructure, water, trade, and national security, and spans jurisdictions. The conversation and policy advice around it should reflect that. With the vision to be the trusted source to bridge that gap, our institute was established, housed in the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, with the foundational principle to strengthen representation of agriculture in federal, provincial, and territorial economic and strategic policy decisions.
Our priority domains focus on areas where science and provincial and federal policy converge like biosecurity, infrastructure, labour, resource resilience, and innovation.
We do not run our own labs, take institutional positions, or advocate for particular policy outcomes. Instead, we collect research from across the entire agri-food system, at local, regional, and national levels, conduct analysis, and put it in front of the audiences who can act on it. That translational work is the core of what we do.
A strong paper or dataset often needs to be reframed for a policy audience. This requires connecting it to the consultation or decision point and delivering it through a channel that officials pay attention to. For a livestock genetics researcher that can take a few forms. For example, The Simpson Centre can help translate findings into a policy brief or plain-language summary aimed at a government or industry readership that needs to act on the science. As we continue to build up our research translation portfolio, we also implement policy and translational co-creation work into how we operate day-to-day, bringing researchers into policy conversations earlier rather than reframing their findings after the fact. In addition to this translational work, we also organize and participate in policy-related events. For instance, we are co-convening a roundtable on October 27 with the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre (AG-ACt), called Closing the Loop: From Ag Research to Policy that Works. This event will bring together researchers, producers, policymakers, and industry to work through how agricultural genomics and related innovation can inform resilient production systems, from producer adoption to the evidence gaps still standing in the way of better policy. The discussion outputs feed directly into the federal consultation for the Next Policy Framework (2028–2033). It will be a direct route from research in the room to sharing priorities for the next five years of national agricultural policy. More on the roundtable, including how to register, here.
Beyond the roundtable, our Controversies in Agriculture work promotes agricultural literacy among consumers, the media, and public employees by mapping issues like the regulation of gene-edited pigs. We reach a wider network through The Connector, our monthly newsletter, as part of a strategic plan built to foster external research collaboration and to expand our national network of policy and industry stakeholders.
We are a small team, so a lot of our depth comes from partnership, and we see our next phase building out that convening role, so agricultural research has a stronger and steadier seat at provincial and federal policy tables. If you are doing genetics or genomics research with a policy, adoption, or public perception angle and think there is a fit with what we do, reach out.