Evaluación de los prototipos

This Group had a background in MAF Tech before restructuring. During the period of this study the members of the Group were based at the Wool Research

Organisation (WRONZ), across the road from the main AgResearch workplace, the Canterbury Agriculture and Science Centre in Lincoln.45 The Group made the move to WRONZ in order to be closer to those who shared their research interests and with whom they were supposed to co-operate.46

After the internal restructuring in 1999, the W&S Group was placed in the AgSystems Platform when its members actually wished to be in the Animal

45 _{This campus is shared with three other CRIs: Landcare, Crop and Food Research and HortResearch.} 46 _{Because of personal differences between their divisional manager and the CEO of WRONZ it took} about two years for this move to happen. At the time WRONZ did not carry out any on-farm

fieldwork, and so this was an area of research in which this group could collaborate. By the time the group did transfer, WRONZ had established its own fieldwork and the AgResearch team was left in limbo. The group moved back across the road to the AgResearch campus again in late March, 2002.

Genomics Platform. Its leader made many submissions to this effect but did not feel he was listened too. Officially the move was to avoid further dilution of the

molecular genetics capability of the Animal Genomics Platform but it may well have been that they were placed in this Platform to even up the numbers. The AgSystems Platform consists of very diverse groups ranging across farm systems to modelling to social science (see Figure 3.2). Its focus is on work in the food product supply chain, which requires funding from industry sources. The W&S Group, with its focus on non-food by-products, was adversely affected by reductions in Government funding and found it difficult to obtain R&D investment in a ‘sunset industry’.

Members of the W&S Group saw it as ironic, in hindsight, that their research proposals of 1999 were used internally as exemplars of the shift the organisation wished to make to demonstrate its alignment with Government policy via FRST. This was to be done by focusing on quality and adding value, rather than commodity production. Now, however, the requirement is for “new and novel products that will add wealth to the primary sector” (from the abstract for the ‘Low Chemical Systems and Associated Branded Products’ FRST programme 2001).

The W&S Group, is very applied and feels research should fit the interests of the agricultural sector. It is not in science just to add to scientific knowledge. In the course of an interview, Craig, a scientist in the Group, epitomised these attitudes when he said, “I love sheep”.47 Others in the Group also chose their work because of their agricultural interests, as Grant and Brent’s comments indicate:

I always had a fascination with agriculture and particularly when I got on to my teen years. I enjoyed yeah, going on holidays to relation-type farms. And I got a lot of personal satisfaction out of being outside working with animals - stuff like that (Grant).

... everything we did was for the good of the New Zealand farmer (Brent).

At the same time the Group’s members are from a very traditional scientific background and hold strongly to deductive ideals.

The members of this Group actually liked, if not necessarily loved, sheep. They liked working with them and were concerned for their welfare and for the welfare of sheep

47 _{All members of the group were interested in sheep but three in particular could be said to be} particularly fond of them.

farmers. This had strong implications for the orientations of the Group. It wanted to save the sheep industry or, to put it more moderately, to help the sheep industry, and (particularly for Craig) the wool industry, survive. One member of this Group (the youngest48) thinks that it is time science paid more attention to the concerns of some of the more extreme community groups, such as animal rights activists, because they may have a point and may well anticipate future, international and local opinion about animal welfare.49 (Such concerns could impact strongly on New Zealand’s overseas markets.) For example, some practices to reduce the impact of flystrike in the sheep industry add to the costs and work of farmers, involve the use of chemicals, or may involve short but painful procedures to sheep, to prevent the slow death that flystrike can cause. In this context, Craig created the concept of ‘the ethical sheep’, a wool-producing sheep with a bare bottom and head, and bare legs. This was in the process of development through traditional breeding methods. Initially money for this research came out of other budgets and, as Craig popularised the idea, it was first funded through a wool programme and then was funded within a programme on low chemical use. Three years down the track the whole research policy focus of the Foundation changed and this funding was unlikely to be continued (Scobie, 2001).50 The Group’s focus was to apply for Meat and Wool Board funding but at the time of this research these entities were in disarray and the group’s future was uncertain. In its attempts to survive, the Group had also encountered difficulties within the CRI. After trialling titles for the ethical sheep programme proposal incorporating

references to sheep welfare, flystrike and sheep breeding, a suitably nondescript title was accepted at the third attempt and it was fitted into the Low Chemical Systems Programme. (This is a deft reference to ‘organics’ without using the word and all its complicated referents.) The content of the proposal had not changed. In this way the scientists in the group surmised (rather than being told directly) that the AgSystems Platform did not research any issues to do with animal welfare, or animal breeding,

48 _{Kuhn (1970 [1962]) thought that change is initiated by younger members of the scientific} community or by people ‘switching’ from other disciplines/sub-disciplines.

49 _{His change of heart was in the nature of a religious experience. He was so troubled by a reporter} calling him Frankenstein because in one of his experiments he had produced a ‘chimera’ sheep (four parents rather than two), that he reflected on the nature of his work and has changed its focus from being purely science and curiosity driven to solving what he sees as ‘real’ problems (Scobie, 2001). 50 _{Some of the hard won funding of this research group has also been redirected internally, by the} Science Strategic Manager, to the FRST programme ‘Control of Human and Animal Hair Growth and Characteristics’. In other words, it has been redirected to study baldness.

which constricted the possible areas of their research interests. To work in these areas would be seen to step on someone else’s ‘patch’. Another survival tactic was to diversify into research on leather, particularly deer leather. The Group had also looked for work with other fibre and meat-related industries but as these were very small there was little money available for research. One member brought in some alternative income by auditing and registering farmers for two meat companies under contracts to the CRI. Two of the Group members accepted redundancy in the

repositioning operation the organisation carried out in 2000.

This Group had not been quiet about its plight. It was continually presenting ideas to its Science Platform Leader. It worked hard to maintain links with the meat and wool industries. The scientists made presentations on their work to the Board on its annual trips around the different campuses and farms. From its inception, however, the platform structure of the organisation has impacted negatively on the Group, giving it a strong message about how it does not fit.