Latest / The Future Herd / 5: Leadership, Knowledge, and the Next Generation

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5: Leadership, Knowledge, and the Next Generation · The Future Herd

0:02
, Hi, my name is Jesse Hirsh and this is The Future Herd, A podcast about collaboration
0:09
and leadership for a changing food system.
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Today's conversation was with Renee Vanacker, president and Vice
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Chancellor of the University of Guelph, an institution that has shaped
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Canadian agriculture for generations.
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What makes this dialogue compelling is not just his position.
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But it's clarity about the responsibilities that universities,
0:33
researchers, and leaders now carry as the sector confronts uncertainty, volatility,
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and rapid technological change.
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We explore how academic cultures are rooted in agriculture and veterinary
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service, are evolving into platforms for cross-sector collaboration, why extension
0:55
and public engagement remain essential, and how students are emerging as one of
1:00
the most powerful engines of innovation.
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Renee speaks candidly about the need to create open space for new futures
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spaces where interdisciplinary, entrepreneurialism and long-term
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thinking can displace the short-termism that dominates our politics and media.
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It's a conversation about institutional leadership, generational momentum,
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and the kind of imagination required to build the food system.
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We actually need.
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I'm having everyone start by just stating your name, uh, organizational affiliation,
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and why you think the future is important.
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My name is Renny Van Acker, and I'm President and Vice Chancellor
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of the University of Guelph.
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Yeah.
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And the future is important because we all depend upon it.
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Now, one of the big buzzwords or themes of the Agri 2050 event was collaboration.
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And it strikes me that both when we talk about collaborative futures,
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but also when we talk about a long-term foresight process.
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Collaboration is kind of the prerequisite, it's the through line.
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What does collaboration look like for you?
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Wh what, what role do you think the academy or researchers
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play in facilitating, , that kind of collaboration?
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Yeah, it's absolutely important.
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And, when I think about, uh, let's say faculty here at the University of Guelph
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we have a, we have a. Culture here in terms of, uh, our approach to academia,
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which is really born out of our, our heritage, which is as an agricultural
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school, as a veterinary college.
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And there's a practicality and a pragmatism to it.
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Uh, there's also a desire amongst our faculty, by and large to want
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to see, uh, knowledge in action.
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And so, in that vein, they typically are, um, looking at, at interacting
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with either industry or community organizations, NGOs so that, that they
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can be doing work in the real world or for, with real world problems.
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And so that is.
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Um, of its very nature, a, a collaboration.
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In addition, uh, you know, our faculty are always keen to have student training
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somehow embedded in everything they do.
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And so, especially with say, thesis based graduate students,
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that is also a collaboration.
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And so I, I think it's a natural for us.
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Um, but I, you know, that's, that's some of how I reflect on, on that question.
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Well, and, and let me double down on that.
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'cause I think one of the assets or one of the advantages that researchers
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can bring to practitioners and industry is a long-term perspective.
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That I think there is a tendency, you know, farmers do tend to be the
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exception to this rule in terms of my joke of farmers being futurists.
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But industry generally tends to be pragmatic, tends to be practical,
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tends to focus on fast returns.
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What role.
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Can researchers and academics play in, in fostering a sense of the
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future, a concern for the future and, and an eye on the long term?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, and, and that is a, that is a luxury of their position, but
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positions, but also a, a responsibility they have because they have the
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luxury of that in their positions.
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And, and you're right.
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You know, the, the ideal faculty member for us is, is someone who is, is
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deeply rooted in their discipline has a deep academic interest, uh, and wants
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to do practical work, work with the community organizations or, or industry.
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But on the, on the former, they they have that privilege and responsibility to be
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able to think longer into the future, to consider longer term implications.
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In agriculture, for example, we have many faculty who are very interested
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in and working on soil health.
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And, you know, soil health, uh, can be a very long term effort.
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And if you are, uh.
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Let's say you're renting farmland.
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Soil health may not be your first priority, especially if,
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if it's a, an ephemeral rent.
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And, uh, but faculty members can, for example, think about that as, as a very
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long-term need and, um, and, and bring their, their capacity to bear on it.
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Right on.
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And, and speaking of capacity, how, how do, what are the kind of social
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or provincial factors that could make, uh, research more accessible, that,
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that could enable the, the capacity and capabilities that the University of
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Guelph, that researchers and faculty offer so that industry and farmers, you know,
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not even know it's there, but are able to leverage it at, at a scale that we
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aspire to, but perhaps are not there yet?
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We're very lucky, uh, here at the University of Guelph that we have
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a longstanding, uh, partnership with the Ontario Ministry of
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Agriculture, food and Agri Business.
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And, um, and we have this alliance agreement, which is a
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in part of funding agreement.
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And that, um, that supports for us a, a broader range of expertise
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than we would have if we were.
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Running our, uh, agriculture and veterinary colleges only
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on a university model, which is a, an education revenue model.
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And so, so that's good in terms of having a, a capacity across
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the range in agriculture.
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And, uh, our faculty are very interested, as I said, in
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getting research into practice.
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And so, many of our faculty are still engaged in what I would call
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extension, sometimes called knowledge translation, transfer, knowledge
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mobilization, but let's call it extension.
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And that's really important, uh, one for engagement, uh, community building for
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mutual understanding, but also to, uh, to bring awareness of, of new knowledge uh,
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understanding of, of issues et cetera.
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New practices, whatnot directly to, to farmers, uh, to
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industry folks, to community.
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People to NGOs.
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Uh, so that's a really important activity.
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Um, we, uh, we acknowledge it and, uh, and encourage it, uh, amongst our faculty.
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And that's not necessarily typical.
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Uh.
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It is a challenge because, you know, the bulk of the university's budget
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is an education revenue model.
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And so there isn't necessarily funding for extension, uh, like there is in the
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US with the land grant universities.
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But, uh, nonetheless, uh, culturally it's part of who we are and what we do and our
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faculty find it a very important activity.
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Not only do they find it important, they feel that it's, it's a responsibility.
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It's something so many of them enjoy doing.
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And it also enhances then their their world, their understanding of what they
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do contextualizes the work they do.
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And it often leads them to to understand new problems that
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they need to be working on.
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Well, and, and certainly in my lifetime I think extension within the university
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has gone from something that was kind of neglected to something that's being
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now championed as one of the kind of pillars of, of post-secondary education.
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But with that said, what are some of the remaining obstacles?
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You sort of alluded to funding as being one of them, but what, what
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are the obstacles to extension?
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What are the things that we should be looking at that we should be removing
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or rethinking to enable even greater extension across all the society?
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Yeah, that's, that's a good question.
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I mean, certainly, certainly for us, funding is a concern 'cause
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we wanna maintain that capacity.
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Because the capacity is then the possibility of, of extension.
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But yeah.
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What are, what are other obstacles?
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Uh, you know, I, I think I feel very optimistic and I, you know,
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I, I tremendously enjoyed your presentation at the Adaptation Council.
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Uh, your keynote.
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It was inspiring and it was a reminder to all of us in the room that, um.
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Technology has always been there, there's always been new technology and and.
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So it's so key how you view it, uh, how you, how you take it on
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board and whether you, you have a positive view or a negative view.
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But taking a positive view, uh, is possibilities.
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And, and with extension, for example, uh, you know, all of the advances in
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in data technology media technology.
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Our opportunities for for break making breakthroughs in terms of
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extension podcasts or, or things like this, uh, using social media.
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And, and we see that many in the agricultural sector are doing that right?
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They're creating their own avenues and platforms for conversation
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and for ex for extension and, um.
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And so, that's, you know, that starts to remove barriers.
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Um, right off the top of this, you talked about bandwidth
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and, uh, certainly bandwidth.
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Uh, an ability for everybody to, to have the technical capacity, uh, which,
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primarily is driven by bandwidth is, is also really, really important.
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So much of.
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Agriculture is always gonna continue to be so much of it happening outside and in
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so many places and, um, often in places where there's not a lot of population.
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And so having really reliable and quality, uh, wifi is something
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that is is so necessary.
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Uh, if we're all gonna be able to.
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Take advantage of, of technology.
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Well, and relatedly, let me ask you a question, both in terms
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of your hat as president, but also your hat as a researcher.
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You know, one of the things I was really impressed with the folks
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from the University of Guelph who were at the event was how
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interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary.
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A lot of the research is, can you talk about it, not just in the context
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of research, but in the context of cross-sectoral collaboration, how
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important is it that we foster the kind of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary
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communication, collaboration exchange?
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And I bring this up 'cause it strikes me, that's part of the extension piece, right?
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Is getting people outta silos and getting people cross-pollinating
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as it were to milk the metaphor.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I mean, and it's one of the reasons I, you know, I'm a proponent of and I'm pushing
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for more entrepreneurialism in agriculture and food and, and one of the reasons
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I'm, I'm interested in that is that it.
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It bring, it has a, a possibility of bringing new communities, new
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perspectives into agriculture and food.
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And that includes, uh, new technologies which are then driven by different or
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new disciplines, you know, disciplines that may not be traditional disciplines
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in the agriculture and food space.
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And then that in turn leads to interdisciplinarity.
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Collaboration back to the, the first theme.
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So yeah, I, I'm, I'm really keen on that.
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And, and that's a, this and that approach.
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So it's the, this being maybe a much more traditional innovation approach in
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agriculture, which is a kind of a, for the commons approach, driven by public
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institutions, may be collaboration with multinationals, but in more traditional.
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Discipline areas as opposed to, or, in addition entrepreneurship approach,
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which tends to be, uh, very much bubbling up from the grassroots and,
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uh, widely distributed and, uh, an opportunity to bring in unexpected
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or non-traditional technologies and perspectives on those technologies.
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That's that, I mean, that's an exciting.
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Frontier.
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Super exciting.
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I, I agree wholeheartedly.
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And, and one of the, the words that for me is often adjacent to
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entrepreneurialism is leadership.
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And, you know, that was, I think another kind of a theme of the event.
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Where do you see that leadership coming from?
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And what role do you think that academics, uh, have to play or could
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play in facilitating that excitement in, in facilitating these kinds of
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uh, collaborations across sectors?
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But to your point, also across cultures.
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'cause asking academics to be entrepreneurs is asking them to,
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uh, essentially embrace a new culture, which I agree is exciting.
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But where's the leadership piece in all that?
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Because it, these are kind of new trails that we're asking people to blaze
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it.
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It's, it's a great question and, and you're right.
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You know, especially when you know, we're, we're not hiring necessarily for faculty
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members who have an entrepreneurial bend.
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Uh, that's, that's not, uh, our typical hiring process.
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Although we, you know, we should be thinking about that.
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When I think of entrepreneurialism I do, I have to admit, tend to think
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more about students and, um, and there there's a greater possibility just,
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uh, numbers wise because, uh, it's a much bigger pool and it's also a, a
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constantly renewing pool of people.
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So it's a tremendous opportunity for any and all universities in that regard.
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But in terms of leadership myself for example, um.
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Part of my responsibility is to listen to people like you and to get excited
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and to, uh, maybe expand my thinking.
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And then in turn translate that into what should I be doing as a leader for the
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University of Guelph, for example, to, um.
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To listen and hear what you're saying and think about what that means
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for us as an institution and our responsibility to create the future.
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How how do we do that?
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It's exceedingly, exceedingly difficult to do.
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And, and I I said it at the conference where, you know, we, the default for most
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people is we take our past and we chuck it in front of us, and that's our future.
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So there is no new future really.
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And.
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And we have a responsibility to try to create open space in front of us.
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Listening to somebody like you for me creates open space.
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I'm like, oh yeah, I've never thought about that.
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And that's a completely, and then when somebody like you presents it
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with such tremendous enthusiasm, you know, it, it, you know, you,
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you had an analogy of, of preaching.
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Being like a sermon and yes, a hundred percent and like a sermon, it's
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meant to be inspirational, right?
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It's it, and so I wa I wanna thank you for that.
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But in turn then, uh, you know, in, in my own role, and, and some, all
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the people in that room hopefully they, they are also taking that on
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board in terms of their responsible responsibility as, as leadership.
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So then translate that, and then to think, okay, what does that
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mean for action in my institution?
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So that I am taking steps to as a leader to make sure that we are doing things
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to help create, truly a, a new future.
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So entrepreneurialism, for example, is, is one of those things.
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And, and we really pushed, uh, here at the University of Guelph to be part of,
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um, a lab to market program, which the federal government stood up last year.
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And thankfully we have some leaders here like Evan Fraser, who, uh,
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scrambled and put together, uh, that application and with folks from across
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the country to create a. A national innovation platform that's really focused
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on early stage entrepreneurialism, specifically to agriculture and food.
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So that's taking uh, visions of the future and then translating it into
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action for an institution and the sector.
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You know, that's how I see my leadership role and, uh, yeah.
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Right on.
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And, and I appreciated your points about kind of creating spaces in which our,
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our minds can expand, or our perceptions of the future can be shaken up.
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And I, I mean, to be fully disclosive, my, my source of inspiration in
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many of those situations are young people that the, the benefit of the.
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Technology and media world we live in now is, it makes it really easy for me to
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connect and learn from some of the young entrepreneurs who are changing our world.
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I'm curious to bring it back to students, you know, how are you seeing
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their attention span for lack of a better, contentious phrase, and their
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perception of their role in society?
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Because I agree.
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The entrepreneurial piece is where a lot of students, uh, really find their
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purpose or find their opportunity.
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But what more can we be doing to foster leadership amongst young people,
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to foster confidence amongst young people and give them a sense, not
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only that there's a place for them in our society, but to your point.
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That there's an open place that they can change our perceptions of the
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future, and we want them to change our perceptions of the future.
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Yeah, cer certainly, um, a, a university has a deep responsibility in that respect.
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I have to say, I feel, you know, when people ask me about the next generations,
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um, I feel perennially optimistic.
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And, and I've had the pleasure of teaching you know, my whole career and, um.
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And I find that inspirational.
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And the reason I find it inspirational is that despite everything that's
18:29
going on and you know, we, there is a lot of popular fretting
18:33
about the next generations and, and are they inspired and.
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And or they just playing video games or whatever it might be.
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Um, I don't see that, I don't see that I see young people who
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are excited about the future.
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I see young people who are passionate about issues.
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I see young people who embrace technology and live and breathe
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it, and then see possibilities in it that I could never see.
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Because I, I don't live in their world.
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That's inspiring.
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That's absolutely inspiring.
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So, uh, one of our responsibilities is to continue to be, uh, a place
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where students can come to, you know, we, we, we are on a growth
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trajectory right now as a university.
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And, and part of the reason for that is that we have a demand for students
19:22
to come to the University of Guelph that's above the sector average.
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And so we feel a responsibility to.
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To open our doors to bring in as many as possible.
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Is it kind of, are we a little bit bursting at the seams?
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Yes, we kind of are.
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Um, am I happy about that?
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Yeah, I am kind of happy about that and, and I have to say we were a little bit
19:42
worried about what our staff and faculty would think about that and actually.
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We're not hearing complaints.
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I, I mean, our staff and faculty seem to be embracing it and,
19:52
which I'm super thankful for.
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Um, but it's exciting.
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You know, we, we, uh, we feel that excitement and, and we feel we feel.
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Possibilities for the future in that way.
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So I am optimistic, uh, in the interactions I have with our students
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and they have so many advantages over us.
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One is, you know, as opposed to somebody like, like me and my age, they don't have
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so much future to chuck in front of them.
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And so they do have more open space in front of them and many of them take
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advantage of that which is great to see.
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Thank so thankful for that.
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Well, and, and I agree wholeheartedly.
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I, I, I feel that there is a tremendous amount of excitement and optimism to be
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found when looking at younger generations.
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And in particular, I, I think what you articulated their demand
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for knowledge is unsatiable.
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And that is something that, that we can, uh, be leveraging and facilitating.
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So I agree with you better to deal with overcrowding than to
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deal with, uh, uh, the opposite.
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But the one thing, and, and here I'm leading up, this is kind of a final
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question, and, and this is the real.
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A hardball pitch.
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One of the things that young people, I think do have unfortunately is a
21:06
lot of anxiety around climate change.
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And one of the things I was kind of disappointed at the event
21:13
was we didn't talk enough about the future and climate change.
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And just this week the president of the United States at the United Nations
21:21
General Assembly employed countries around the world to see climate change as a hope.
21:27
That it's a trap that they're losers to believe in it.
21:31
So with that very contentious intro aside, what role do you think
21:37
climate change plays in our future?
21:39
Uh, both when it comes to encouraging collaboration.
21:43
But also when it comes to intergenerational collaboration,
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'cause this does seem to be something that young people are very passionate
21:51
about and want to do something about, given that they're the ones most
21:55
likely to face the consequences.
21:57
So I'm, I'm curious, what role do you think that climate change as a theme
22:02
kind of plays in us, uh, wrapping our heads around Ontario's food future?
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Yeah, it, it's, it's a great question and, and, and you're.
22:10
You're right, Jesse.
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It, it didn't feature a as an issue at the adaptation council conference.
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And I think that conference needed to be multiple days, but agreed, agreed.
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And, and there, there are next steps.
22:22
You know, our, our students and our faculty faculty have not
22:27
forgotten about climate change.
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And, uh, I can tell you that it, it does feature in conversations, it does
22:33
feature in classrooms, it does feature in, uh, research projects and maybe
22:37
in particular in agriculture and food.
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I think if President Trump asked the Farmers of America about climate
22:45
change, he might be surprised at the answer he gets because, we know, uh,
22:51
that farmers across around the world regardless of political stripe are very
22:57
worried about climate change because the vast majority of agriculture happens
23:01
outside and is subject to weather.
23:05
And farmers understand, especially older farmers, that the climate
23:10
is changing and they are noticing more dramatic weather events.
23:15
They're noticing, uh, the amplitude around the mean is increasing and they, and we
23:22
understand that our, uh, our greatest challenge is unpredictability of weather
23:30
and also that amplitude around the mean.
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So.
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You know, very hot, very dry, very cold very wet.
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All of those sorts of things are really hard to manage.
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You know, if climate change was just a matter of the average changing and
23:44
the amplitude, you know, was small, I, you know, I, I think our, our ability
23:48
to adapt to be much greater and, and we might be a little bit less worried.
23:52
Might be, but that's not how it is.
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I mean, climate change, uh, starts to create chaos.
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And, uh, farmers can't, we can't deal with chaos, uh, in our climate.
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And so it is a real it is a real issue for us.
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Um, and farmers, regardless of political stripe, uh, uh.
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You know, there's, there's something that they will always
24:15
talk about and that's the weather.
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And they know because, um, many of them are observers for decades and decades.
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They know that this ain't normal.
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And, uh, and it's a problem.
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Our students as well, uh, who are always attuned to issues.
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One of the issues that they continue to be attuned to regardless of, of
24:37
the political rhetoric or what's going on, is climate change.
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That's very encouraging, uh, especially your point about farmers.
24:44
And it does suggest that we need to be having the kind of foresight conversations
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and the foresight collaborations that, that deal with those amplitudes,
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that deal with those big swings.
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'cause I think.
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Conceptually, that's what a lot of people are not understanding.
25:00
They're sort of thinking, oh, global warming, things are gonna get warmer.
25:04
They're not thinking climate volatility and the way in which things are gonna
25:08
get are really, uh, quite uncertain.
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So I, I guess as a, a. Second last question.
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How do we bake that in?
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How do we foster that literacy so that our, our foresight exercises are informed
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and, uh, prepare us for the big swings that inevitably we're all gonna be facing?
25:29
Um, I, I think you, you said it at the beginning, um, about, um.
25:34
Short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.
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And something I was hoping for the conference and worried about was whether
25:40
the conference would be very much about, you know, what's right here in
25:43
front of our faces versus, you know, what's out 5, 10, 30 years from now.
25:50
And thankfully, I, I think the conference was successful in keeping
25:52
people looking out over the horizon.
25:55
We, we need more of that.
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If we need more of that you know, the, the media the way it's constructed now,
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politics, the way it's constructed now is all about, what's happening this minute.
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As opposed to what's happening in the next year, what's happening
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in the next 10 years, what's happening in the next 50 years.
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And, um, and I, and I think there's another opportunity for leadership.
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I'm grateful to the adaptation council that, uh, that they're taking us on.
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I have a sense that they're gonna continue this conversation about looking
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out over the horizon and thinking about implications in that timescale.
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For us it's really, really important because so much of
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our society is the opposite.
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Uh, I, I say, you know, we're being subjected to populous politics of inches
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as opposed to nation buildings, nation building for decades or centuries.
26:44
Right on.
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And any final thoughts or, or, or visions uh, for this process in the future?
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You know,
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I wanna come back to you, uh, Jesse, and, uh, and really what a, what a
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revelation It was seeing you at that conference and listening to your
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keynote and being inspired by your keynote y, your ability to intersect
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to, you know, you, you are somebody who, who watches and looks out over
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their eyes and thinks about how pieces are coming together and how that fits.
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We need more of you more of that for us to help us to see what's happening
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to create awareness for us in terms of what's happening, to put it in
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the context of the future and, uh, and maybe out over the horizon.
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And especially your ability to intersect.
27:35
The living world, whether that's the environment or people or animals with
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the technology world and how those things intersect and what the implications
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are or the possibilities are in that respect, that is vitally important.
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And we don't have enough of that.
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We don't have enough of that.
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And so it denies us possibilities of seeing opportunities in the
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future in those intersections.
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So I. Anyways, I, I would just encourage that and I'm, and I'm, I, I'm thankful
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that, uh, that you exist and I'm grateful to, to have seen you now and know you.
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If there was video available, now you'd see that I'm blushing.
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That, of course, was my conversation with Rainey Van Acker, and what stays with
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me is his insistence that institutions must do more than manage the present.
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They have to cultivate the conditions for entirely new futures to take root.
28:31
His reflections on collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and the role of
28:35
students point toward a food system where knowledge is not confined
28:39
to silos, but moves freely across sectors, communities, and generations.
28:46
If this podcast has a purpose, it's to surface conversations like this,
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conversations that challenge our assumptions about leadership, and
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invite us to think beyond the narrow timelines imposed by politics and crisis.
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Thank you for listening and for being part of a wider effort to
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imagine and build a more resilient and collaborative AgriFood future.
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I'm Jesse Hirsch and this is the Future Herd.
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We'll see you next time.