Gearing up Swedish food production

Margareta Emanuelson Senior Lecturer at the Department of Animal Nutrition and Management and Vice-dean responsible for collaboration within the field of farm animals at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, SLU

I feel honoured but also slightly stressed before my new assignment. There is so much to develop at SLU when it comes to collaboration with the outside world. Our businesses and the industry in general have a lot of knowledge that more people at SLU should be aware of, and the outside world is surprisingly unaware of the competence that can be found at SLU.

Sweden has all the requirements necessary to develop a sustainable food production. We have the best animal welfare and are among those who use the least amount of antibiotics in the world. We also use low amounts of biocides in our feed production and produce effectively in general. But we’re not competitive enough, and Swedish livestock production is being phased out alarmingly quickly. As the phase-out continues, financial resources relating to research and development disappear too. It is also difficult to find farmers who can take on our students, which is problematic. Meanwhile, businesses and industry complain that our students lack practical experience.

The Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation has clearly stated that it wants to improve Swedish food production’s competitiveness. They have also signalled that they expect SLU to help. Obviously, we at SLU want to do everything we can to get Swedish food production on the right track. Through my new assignment, I want to contribute to ensuring that SLU’s competence is utilised in the best way possible. I want to contribute to making sure that VH operations all over the country work more closely together. By collaborating internally, we become stronger and also more interesting to external collaboration partners. We need to gear up the operations within several different fields, and to do that we need external collaboration partners, which we can solve by becoming more visible and by organising meeting places where researchers and teachers meet business and industry.

Our external collaboration specialists play a very important part in this work. We should also use our research facilities more and continue to increase their attractiveness to the outside world. I also want to contribute to ensuring that food production issues are embraced in SLU’s professional programmes, so that the students who go out into society are well-equipped and employable.

In September, a new committee for agricultural food-producing animals is launched, which aims to create internal meeting places as well as to strengthen collaboration with interested parties outside SLU. We have now added a specialist in farm economy from the Swedish Centre for Agricultural Business Management, because it so important to integrate profitability issues in research and education. We are also launching VH’s collaboration committee, which is composed of external collaboration specialists. Coming events include the Elmia fair, which runs from 19–21 October. This year, SLU will be well represented and VH will also take part of several items on the programme. The conference takes place 18–19 October, and is directly attached to the Elmia fair. Find out more here (in Swedish only).

Finally, everyone is talking about it, but no one has seen it – the food strategy, that is. I expect that it will be released soon, and SLU will subsequently receive assignments and then yours truly and many more at SLU will be committed to the work.

Let’s do it!

Regards,
Margareta