At home on the range

BC’s beef-cattle industry contributes about $2 billion a year to the Canadian economy. This includes everything from the sale of cattle and calves to meat processing and distribution. As with other BC economic sectors, this industry faces significant challenges. These include the rising cost of land, feed and fuel; climate change; the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”); increased environmental and health regulations; and the difficulty of attracting young people to ranching. Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops lies in the heart of BC cattle country. So it’s the appropriate setting for a new BC Regional Innovation Chair in Cattle Industry Sustainability. Dr. John Church is the newly appointed incumbent.

“My great grandfather was a rancher,” explains Dr. Church. “My father was an Alberta veterinarian whose practice took him to ranches and feedlots.  I’m actually the fourth generation in my family to be directly involved in the cattle industry.  After I got my PhD in rangeland and wildlife resources from the University of Alberta, I started a vertically integrated ranching operation for Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts. The company owned a chain of Alberta restaurants. It was my job to provide the meat for those restaurants. Thus, I soon learned the value of producing tender, high quality and value-added meat products. I also learned the value of environmental sustainability.”

A key goal of the Chair is to work with cattlemen to find ways to keep BC’s cattle industry vibrant and sustainable for future generations. “It means developing animal grazing practices that not only strengthen the economic and social viability of cattle operations, but also uphold the ecological integrity of the grasslands being grazed. It means assigning a real value to biodiversity as well as to natural resources, like water. We also need to develop a conceptual framework by which we can evaluate the rate at which food can continue to be produced. It has to incorporate the people employed in agriculture, the social institutions that guide their activities and the tools they work with.”

The challenges facing the industry call for multifaceted research and development. Ranchers, producers and suppliers need new innovations and information to help them adopt new practices and technologies. “Cattle producers will need to learn about alternative management practices that can decrease soil degradation and preserve wildlife habitats. They must also be convinced of the economic advantages of such new approaches.”

It’s tempting to form an image of John Church, his research colleagues and students, riding out in a posse to bring the sustainability message to Cariboo cattle ranchers. It isn’t quite like that. “Rather than ride the range, I usually just visit with the ranchers around their kitchen tables. I get to get to know them personally and the problems they’re facing. The insights gleaned from these informal discussions are guiding some of my research program.”

BC’s vast interior grasslands provide Dr. Church with a living laboratory in which to work. And because Thompson Rivers University offers retail meat and culinary arts training programs, in addition to ecological, economic and environmental-chemistry faculty and facilities, he can do research and initiate knowledge transfer in every aspect of the beef industry. “Examples of the kind of research we’ll undertake include rethinking the use of synthetic hormones so our beef is hormone-free, even organic. We might encourage a shift from grain-based feed to grass to maximize quality. Geographical information systems could improve the efficiency of cattle grazing.”

Marketing, too, falls under his Chair mandate. “BC produces some of the best grain-fed beef in the world,” he says. “Internationally we can compete with anyone. Perhaps, though, we’ve focused too much on the international market at the expense of our best customer, the BC consumer. If we were to focus more on the domestic market, however, we would need to capitalize even more on BC’s natural advantages -- our tremendous rangelands, our forages (cattle food sources) and our excellent livestock genetic base.”

Thompson Rivers University’s BC Regional Innovation Chair in Cattle Industry Sustainability is supported by the provincial Leading Edge Endowment Fund. The $1.25 million provided by the Fund has been matched by the Cattle Industry Development Council, the Real Estate Foundation of BC, and the University.

For further information, visit www.tru.ca/research/innovation_transfer/rc/cis.html