Heather Latter
The Emo Agricultural Research Station is building partnerships and has proven its worth to keep the doors open for at least another year.
The station’s future had been on shaky ground for some time over fears the University of Guelph would cut its funding as a cost-saving measure.
“At the beginning of the year, it was a lot more doom and gloom,” noted research technician Kim Jo Bliss.
“Since then, the university has made some huge cuts in certain areas . . . that has sort of freed up some of the tension that was on us.
“They now feel that they would really like to keep all the agronomy research across the province,” said Bliss, adding she believes some of the partnerships that have been developed certainly helped.
For instance, the station has been doing some work with New Gold on which plant species will thrive when it comes time to close and rehabilitate the company’s impending gold mine site in Richardson Township north of Barwick.
“While it hasn’t been a financial gain, it’s been a very good partnership for both parties,” Bliss remarked, saying they’ve been looking at traditional plants such as sweetgrass, wild tobacco, and white sage.
EARS also has developed partnerships with the Canada Malting Company in Thunder Bay and Alltech in Winnipeg.
It is working with local First Nations’ people, as well.
“They are obviously one of the bigger land owners in the district and they don’t want to just be land owners—they want the land to be productive,” Bliss explained.
“So we’ve set them up with one property where they did a bunch of soil sampling.
“We’re hoping that land will be tile drained, and be rented out to someone and farmed,” she added.
“So things are a lot more positive,” Bliss said. “In some ways, it makes you see that good things can come out of bad things.
“Even though we thought that maybe we were close to being done, right now everything is good for next year,” she noted, although admitting the station still needs to continue to find partnerships and funding to help out.
“[The University of Guelph] is not looking for us to pay our way totally,” Bliss stressed. “But if we bring in some money, it helps towards bringing in a summer student, which is one of our bigger expenses.”
Another partnership that’s in the works is with the University of Minnesota researching canola.
“They don’t have the canola growers,” Bliss noted. “The researcher we are working with said she is driving six hours to some of her plots in Minnesota and she can almost get here quicker.”
They do have to work out some of the cross-border issues with that, but both universities really like the international partnership.
“All the partnerships are different and bring different things to the table,” Bliss reasoned.
So despite what Bliss calls a “miserable” year weather-wise, with all the cold temperatures and flooding this summer, there still are promising things going on at EARS.
“It’s time-consuming,” she admitted. “Setting up meetings and trying to strike deals is time-consuming and consumes a good chunk of time in the winter, too.
“But if that’s what we’ve got to do, that’s what we’ve got to do.
“I feel we do have some neat things that are happening,” Bliss added. “It’s all coming together again.
“Maybe it’s what we needed to get us moving in a better direction.”
Bliss currently is reporting to the Kemptville campus of the University of Guelph, but it is set to be closed this spring.
“So there still are some uncertainties there because of who we would report to, and still having a researcher attached to the station [remains] an issue,” she noted.
“But we still are managing to plug away.
“All through this year there has been ups and downs, but it seems we have moved in a more positive way,” Bliss reiterated.
“We’ve been on the chopping block before so hopefully we will continue on,” she remarked.
“Not just for me but for the whole district.”
Bliss noted grain numbers are on the rise again within the district.
“So there is a lot of excitement in that industry again,” she stressed.
“It would be very untimely to not have the station so I’m hoping someone else can see that, too.”
