Bruce Cochrane
20 Apr 2023
Daniel Ramage, Swine Innovation Porc, highlighted the impacts of investments in the pork advancement at the Manitoba Pork AGM.
An independent economic analysis of the return on investments by the pork sector into research credits that research for a three and a half percent increase in the sector's productivity.
An independent economic assessment, conducted on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc and first published in December, looked at the impact of swine cluster research as a driver for growth in the Canadian pork sector and in the overall economy.
Daniel Ramage, the General Manager of Swine Innovation Porc, told those on hand last week in Winnipeg for Manitoba Pork's 2023 Annual General Meeting, the return-on-investment study was done to get an understanding of what are the impacts of investing in research?
Clip-Daniel Ramage-Swine Innovation Porc:
It's something that we can use to communicate and understand the value of investing in research and it was something that was required under our cluster program funding to make sure that we have an understanding of what are the impacts, what are the benefits of investing?
We hired a third-party consultant, economist to do a review of our past clusters, of research that had been completed between 2010 and 2018, and the economic impact study gave us an understanding of, how much knowledge has been generated through research investments and then how does that knowledge translate into higher productivity for the pork sector.
We've seen some really interesting outcomes from that study.
For example, the estimate in terms of the productivity impact of 30 million dollars invested into research over that time frame, is over three and a half percent increase in productivity for the pork sector.
That speaks to the value of investing in research because greater productivity has a positive impact for the bottom line of producers, it's what makes us more efficient and more competitive.
Ramage says the value of investing in research speaks for itself and the return-on-investment study demonstrates that.
He says we know investing in research in the pork sector is going to pay strong dividends.