Collaboration, such as that modelled by A Lighter Touch, is a key ingredient to fast and effective development of new biological crop protection solutions, and the industry has no time to waste.
That’s the view of Dr Alison Stewart, out-going Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) chief executive. Alison has been the FAR representative on A Lighter Touch’s Industry Stakeholder Advisory Group (ISAG) since the programme began in 2020, and was also a member of the programme’s governance group from inception until she stepped down last year.
Earlier this month, she became Dame Alison, being awarded a Damehood in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to plant science and the arable sector. The Honours’ citation included acknowledgement of her work in pioneering the implementation of sustainable farming practices that can improve crop yields and quality while minimising environmental impacts.
The citation also noted Alison has always been a great proponent of cross-sector engagement, and fostering collaboration. This is an attribute she has demonstrated during her tenure with A Lighter Touch (ALT), providing her expertise and knowledge to projects of other sector groups, even when they did not directly benefit FAR.
“There’s have been a lot of programmes in the past with four or five agencies involved, where they all do their own separate thing and don’t actually meaningfully collaborate.
“I didn’t want A Lighter Touch to be like that. I wanted it to be really open, I wanted knowledge exchange, and I was in a position where I could do that and set an example.”
Alison acknowledges there are dissenters to collaboration and knowledge sharing – researchers who’ve had a negative experience where they shared ideas and others have not acknowledged their contribution, or levy groups who feel because they have paid for work to be done, it should not be shared beyond their sector.
“But you can’t allow one or two negative situations to influence the benefits you get from being open and sharing knowledge. That sharing can be internally within a research group, within a company, within a country, across countries. I’ve always believed in getting new knowledge out there.”
Alison cites biologicals development as a prime example of increasing collaboration, both within New Zealand and internationally.
“People are willing to share what their research is showing because the reality is we’re all in the same boat. It comes down to how we support plant sectors to be able to continue to be profitable when the chemicals are either too expensive, or they’re not going to be registered, or they’ve got resistance problems.
“It took 60 years to build up the agchem industry in New Zealand. The biological industry doesn’t have 60 years to work things out because the train’s coming along the track, and we need those biologicals. And we need to share our knowledge in order to be able to get them out there.”
At the time of Alison’s appointment as FAR chief executive, the proposal for what was to become the A Lighter Touch programme was being finalised. The FAR board had already signed up as a partner in the programme, given its close alignment with their desire to see the arable sector embrace more sustainable crop protection systems.
ISAG Chair Dr Stuart Davis says Alison’s appointment as CEO at FAR was a fortuitous piece of timing for the fledgling ALT programme.
“It meant that as well as a major funding partner led by someone passionate about the purpose of the programme, we also had a technical expert in crop protection and biological control.”
Keen to take an active role in the new programme, Alison put her hand up to join its Programme Governance Group (PGG). In doing so, PGG Chair Dr David Tanner says the programme gained a governance member with energy, technical expertise and understanding, and extremely sound governance acumen.
“Alison was always level handed, wanting what was right for the programme as a whole,” he says.
From the outset Alison recognised the challenge the programme faced, with the various sectors partnering in ALT all being at different stages in transitioning to lighter touch crop protection, and having differing requirements.
“For some of the larger sectors who were already on this journey, they were having to re-engage in discussions they’d already had in their own sector, which could be frustrating. But that’s the nature of large pan-sector programmes, and eventually you do see the benefits come out if you’re patient.
“We can now see some of the work other sectors are doing will be able to be translated across into arable, just as some of the things we’ve done in arable will have benefit for other sectors.”
The clearly defined contractual requirements, an understandable requirement for government funding, also created its challenges for an applied research programme. “As the programme developed, we recognised some of the things we wanted to do at the start weren’t practical or feasible, or we didn’t have the right resources, or we could get a better return on funds by doing other things.”
This prompted a reset about 18 months into ALT’s seven-year term, an important turning point for the programme and its partners. “In order to use government and industry funds effectively, we still had to keep the basic outcome, but how we achieved it needed to be quite different.”
Education and extension of knowledge from the programme to growers became a strategic focus, something Alison sees as essential to ALT delivering on its vision of supporting growers to transition to more sustainable crop protection practices.
“We’ve had 20 years of people coming up with new ideas and new projects, but the biggest constraint we’ve had is that they weren’t getting any of that out to growers. For me, A Lighter Touch needed to be doing a lot more education, extension and raising grower awareness, holding field events and demos, because otherwise we’d spend $27 million doing a lot of research, but we wouldn’t have moved the dial as far as the growers and the industries were concerned.”
Alison says undertaking a programme of ALT’s nature, involving identifying new biological solutions and driving their adoption on farm, orchard and vineyard, was always going to be a big ask, especially in the time frame.
“You’re dealing with a biological system. In any one year the disease or pest might not appear, the weather might ruin a crop. You need three or four years to be able to gather enough data to make an informed decision about whether a project will or won’t add benefit.
“It would have been great to have had 10 years worth of funding since a decade is probably the period of time you need to be able to drive adoption and uptake of new management practices or new products.”
The current fiscal environment is another hurdle in terms of grower practice change. “If you’re under the pump and your farm profitability is struggling, you’re not going to take risks trying new things because the potential consequences are too great. After a couple of good years, you’re more open to trying new things, and accepting if some of them don’t work.
“Unfortunately we’re in a situation where a lot of sectors are struggling because of the market, so driving adoption of new technologies is not easy under that climate.”
With less than two years of ALT’s tenure remaining, Alison hopes the programme will continue in some shape or form.
“There are different models that could be used, that have worked elsewhere. It really comes down to how committed the various agencies are. You need four or five of the bigger sectors who have more resources to commit to being part of the initiative and this will pull in others in the industry, including commercial companies.
“I think it would be a real shame if it was a seven-year programme and that was it. Because it’s been really hard work to get this collaboration up and running, and I would hate it to fall away just as we are gaining momentum.”
Alison says A Lighter Touch has made a real contribution to the collaborative model she believes should be operating in New Zealand. “There are other programmes that do similar things – Better Border Biosecurity is another really good example of a long-term collaborative programme of work where you get a lot of different agencies working together for the greater good. And I think A Lighter Touch is another example.”
Alison says she has thoroughly enjoyed her involvement with ALT and even though she will no longer be directly contributing, she hopes to maintain her connection with it.
