A red meat industry chief has called on a single Research and Development Corporation (RDC) to represent the livestock industry, in an effort to crack down on wasteful financial duplication with research and administration.
In response to the federal government’s review into the RDC structure, Meat and Livestock Australia managing director Richard Norton said attention should shine on a single RDC for livestock to maximize the return on investment of producer paid compulsory levies.
“At present, the entire red meat and livestock industry has three boards, including two management structures with and duplicated producer consultation to address the same issues,” Mr Norton said.
While supportive of a review of the RDC structure, Mr Norton supported a whole of food and agriculture national strategy.
“Look at the number of entities working on food traceability – numerous RDCs, CSIRO, Australian Food Innovation, the Food Agility CRC and private entities,” Mr Norton said.
“If there was one national working plan to focus the R&D of all entities working on food traceability the research would be well funded and not duplicated.
“Surely the recent examples in horticulture demonstrate the need for a national strategy on food traceability.”
Proving an RDC’s return on investment for compulsory industry levies was critical, he said.
“The current structure has been in place for 20 years. There aren’t too many businesses still operating with the same business plan they had 20 years ago,” he said.
“If an RDC has been around for 20 years, surely it should have evolved to be a respected entity that can attract outside research investment for industry.
“Today, successful RDCs also need to attract funding from private entities, both global and domestic, rather than still just relying on levy payer funding.”
He said simple questions, like cost to income ratios and what research has delivered income for the industry or reduced the cost of production, need to be answered.
“Let’s do research for commercial outcomes and not just research for research’s sake,” he said.
“MLA uses Innovation By Design to ensure there is a need to be addressed in the first place. Elsewhere, I see a lot of research completed and then pushed onto industry. This leads to poor adoption and a waste of money.”
Australian Wool Innovation chief executive officer Stuart McCullough did not believe the Ernst & Young brief was not based on restructuring RDCs.
“I see it as a look at the research that is being made through RDCs, investigating if it is being done in a coordinated way and is there real gains being made,” Mr McCullough said.
“EY will be looking at what is going wrong at the end of these research projects, why things weren’t being commercialised at the end.”
Mr McCullough said AWI was proud of its actions and what we have done for the industry over the last nine years.
“If some other power wants to change that then that is out of my control,” he said.