Dean letter − Are there real cows at SLU?

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

The Lövsta staff do an amazing job with the cow release event, in collaboration with Arla Foods. It is always much appreciated. This year, we also managed to convince a handful of researchers to come and talk about all the exciting things happening at SLU. It is a perfect time to promote SLU, and to show what modern, Swedish milk production looks like. Several people from Stockholm were there, and one of them asked me what SLU was. They had never heard of it. Next year, we should use this excellent opportunity to promote what SLU stands for and contribute to spreading knowledge of Swedish agriculture even more.

Another successful collaboration activity we recently carried out was an ‘economics day’ for VH’s researchers. We enlisted the Swedish Centre for Agricultural Business Management (KCF) at SLU, together with two advisers, one from Växa Sverige and one from Farm and Animal Health, to provide training in and discuss agricultural economics with researchers and teachers. The seminar was very appreciated and we will follow up with more activities. Please submit feedback on what you would like to see next.

What else has been happening on the collaboration front? The Council for External Collaboration, a faculty-wide group (where I represent VH) is running several projects. There will be an opportunity to help us draft a proposal for a collaboration merit portfolio. Keep an eye out for the call for interest. There will also be some seed money for initiative-rich collaboration activities. The money will be available this autumn.

We are also waiting excitedly on a follow-up on the collaboration specialists. Annika Åhnberg and Klas Malmqvist are almost done, but won’t report their conclusions until the autumn.

Summer is quickly approaching and soon it’s time for Almedalen. VH is participating in two exciting programmes, one on surplus in the food chain and one on antibiotics and “One Health”. Unfortunately, not many at SLU will be able to listen to them, but we promise to promote the university in a good way.

We are currently reaching out to companies that may be interested in extending their collaboration with us. Our hope is that SLU will be able to start a project with externally employed doctoral students within the field of food. We have advocated for this at many levels and hope that it will be a part of the third and final set of measures implemented by the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation within the framework of the National Food Strategy for Sweden. Of course, we cannot be certain that anything will come of this, but we can always hope.

Speaking of hope: I really hope that spring will arrive with heat and much-needed rain so crops can start to grow and produce plenty of feed to store in the barns for our animals.