Institutes blanch at conference on more mergers
April 27th, 2009
Nervous Crown Research Institutes are dragging their feet over a FedFarmers initiative to host a pre-budget summit on mergers between CRIs and universities. Using the proposed merger of AgResearch and Lincoln University as a template, the Feds have invited all CRIs, universities and levy bodies like Fonterra to a two-day summit early next month.
Key questions for the summit are: what is the optimum model for research, science and education to ensure maximum benefit to agriculture and the economy, and what would science and research look like in 2020 if CRIs and universities were to merge by 2010. According to the invitation sent to CRI chiefs, FedFarmers “believes the model is potentially a touchstone” for comprehensive reform of NZ’s “under-leveraged but vital research, science and education sector.”
While there’s resistance to the summit, farming groups say they’re ultimately the customers for research and science outputs. As English says, “what is it that gives us our advantage? It’s our ability to capture the water we have, convert it to grass and turn it into protein. We need research so we can do that better.”
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