Crosby Devitt's Nuffield Journey An account of my 2012 Nuffield Scholarship

I’ve had this Led Zeppelin song stuck in my head for 2 days, and I’ve got an ‘aching in my heart’ – for home!  We arrived in Sacramento, California on March 13th after the better part of a week in Western Canada.  Brock Taylor, an agronomist from California specializing in irrigated cropping is our guide and chief source of knowledge for our 5 days in California.  It was raining and 15C in Sacramento upon our arrival – it’s been really dry so local farmers are happy to see this rain.

Our first day included a visit Superior Farms, the largest lamb company in the US.  A unique aspect of this company is that it is employee owned.  All employees earn shares and as a result, the company has a more engaged workforce, lower employee turnover, and higher quality work.  We saw the plant from start to finish, and it is a really efficient, clean outfit.  I used to do beef meat quality research, and it was nice to get back into a processing plant! I’ve included a before and after photo.

I am particularly keen on research to move farming forward, and it was great to meet with researchers at the University of California – Davis to discuss the state of agricultural research in California.  UC Davis is a key agricultural research institution in California, with a 5300 acre campus and 31,000 students across all fields.  Their annual research budget is $678 million.  Despite the large overall budget, agricultural education, research, and extension is under financial pressure.  This is a common theme among Universities in the developed world.  I believe we are in an era where investment in agriculture and food research should be increasing, not decreasing.  I think the general public would agree.

I am learning that irrigation water is key to agriculture around the world.  In California, almost 10 million acres are under irrigation. California is has the biggest agricultural farm gate value of any US state with a value of over $40 billion per year.  Without irrigation water, it would be a fraction of that.  In Ontario, we are sheltered from the global reliance on irrigation water because we are surrounded by the Great Lakes – the largest group of freshwater lakes on earth, with 21% of the world’s fresh surface water.