It gives us a chance to decompress and hang out with the kids and just spend some quality
time together.
Sitting down and eating together as a family is a big thing for us.
It's always important to sit down at the end of the day and have a meal together.
By 2050 there will be 9 billion people in the world to feed and Canada and Ontario has
been called upon to meet that challenge and the only way you can meet that challenge is
continue to drive research and innovation and the University of Guelph will play that
pivotal role.
The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is pleased to continue its
long standing partnership with the University of Guelph.
This partnership ensures Ontario remains a global hub for research and innovation and
a place where the next generation of agri-food leaders can grow and thrive.
The OMAFRA University of Guelph partnership gives us an unprecedented capacity to really
take an interdisciplinary and integrative approach because most of the challenges that
we need to find solutions to are not simple.
The research that we do both basic and applied.
They have wide ranging implications that could benefit the province not only in the short
term, but also in the long term.
The agricultural sector today it's all about innovation and the OMAFRA partnership has
actually allowed us to stimulate those developments and to move us into the farm of tomorrow.
So I think farmers are really benefiting from this research because right now today, consumers
want high quality food.
They want healthy animals and I think everybody wants to know where their food comes from.
Semex is a global genetic solution provider.
Farmers have been looking for another way to improve health of animals.
It started with research at the University.
We could get a sense for the general capability of the animals to fight off diseases.
The research and innovation that is happening here at the University of Guelph, it's a major
economic driver and that partnership with OMAFRA is really at the core of that economic engine.
37 and a half billion dollars to Ontario's GDP. 800 thousand Ontarians are employed in
this sector and the only way we can maintain that leadership is having the University of Guelph
still be at the forefront of research and innovation.
My research not only helps the producer by giving them more bargaining power and more
time, which means a positive economic impact, but also for the consumer where they get fresh,
better quality produce right here, produced in Ontario.
It's a lot of economic activity.
It's definitely a big employer in Ontario.
Ideally what we will see is the same amount of people just continue to grow and create better jobs.
We want to continue to invest to make sure that Ontario is a leader in agricultural research
and veterinarian science.
If our partnership with OMAFRA allows us also to look to the future and prepare for the
future by training the future leaders for Ontario and for Canada in the agri-food sector.
My research is focused on food safety.
Getting a better understanding of how vaccines work against Avian Influenza.
Without the OMAFRA partnership, my research program would not have existed.
This partnership is a tremendous resource for our University.
I think its really neat to be part of research that goes on for that long.
To see the impact that might have twenty years from now
and that other families could benefit from.
For a greenhouse industry there's really a lot of technology involved and so to have
the type of support from those two organizations is fantastic.
The University of Guelph is proud to partner with OMAFRA driving Ontario solutions with
global impact to improve life.