New RST Strategy?

On Wednesday I attended the presentation by MP Wayne Mapp (Research Science and Technology Minister) on his vision for RST Policy in New Zealand.

Although I am always amazed at how long politicians can speak for and not say anything, I was actually quite surprised at the initiatives proposed in his speech. A few useful things may come out of this:

• Simplifying the whole system. This should hopefully mean less grant applications, and hence less time wasted. Talk to any academic and they will tell you that the amount of time they spend filling out grant applications, is hugely counterproductive. My supervisor once told me he could spend up to 1/5 of his time doing this! That is time wasted that could be spent on discovering the next big invention!
  

• More long term funding - good things take time, and so this gives the researcher more stability and confidence in their role.
  

• An examination of the funding balance of growth-oriented research (see here) and putting a bigger emphasis on the FRST to understand the value of their investments a bit better - this may mean that we find out exactly what things are worth putting money into, and as a result remain flexible to change investment policy further down the line if something isn't working.
  

Although one of the key things to the success of science contributing to the NZ economy (as highlighted in the speech) is "making it easier for business to be in touch with universities", it is ultimately how the two interact that will be important. But that is a post for another day.

We'll have to wait and see how this pans out - these changes will be made by the years end, and will be released in the Budget 2010.

* If you're interested you can listen to his speech via podcast over at the NZ Science Media Centre

NZ: Feeding the World?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will probably be aware that I am an advocate for science underpinning the NZ economy and ultimately leading to the future prosperity of our nation. There is often the confusion that scientists like myself think that for this to happen, we need to abandon agriculture. Not true. Scientists are not stupid, and many of us realise the importance of farming in the economy of our small export nation.

I believe there is room for both. We should capitalise on the wealth of knowledge in this area, as well as add a few 'bolt-on' solutions. For example, Finland, a forestry nation, now has Nokia, and Denmark, a small dairying nation like ours, is now home to a $10B export business in wind turbines. Both countries have many more smaller high tech companies, and there is no reason why we can't do the same here. We just have to be a little bit smarter about it.

I read an article on stuff.co.nz the other day by Prof. Paul Monaghan of Massey University, about how NZ is not putting to good use its excellent ability to produce food, in order to capitalise on the growing market for the next generation of value added agrifood products. The rest of the world is already catching on to new products that involve new science and technology (nanotechnology for example), to revolutionise the food and drink industry in terms of better food processing safety, improved product shelf life and more healthy products. In fact, the use of nanotechnology has already been introduced into the food and drink industry with successful applications in a number of areas including stay fresh packaging, butters and slim-line milkshakes.

In a world that is becoming more populous, short on energy and water, this could be an ideal area for NZ to apply some of its excellent food production knowledge, couple it with our brilliant image on the world stage, and NZ could feed the world with high value, high margin products.

And so back to the getting smarter bit. I believe in order to do both, we need a tweak in our science and technology research policy to a more balanced approach. Currently the government invests the majority of our science and technology research budget in the primary industry (36%). Yet if you look at the TIN100 (the top 100 technology companies in NZ), there are only 11 primary sector technology companies, comprising only 12% of revenue. Interestingly, the top 5 companies (nothing to do with agriculture) produce about $3 Billion revenue - not too bad for 5 companies I thought. As you can see, the results are not reflective of the investment made by area.

The rest of the world maintains a balanced approach and so should we. That way we can continue to add value to our primary sector through science and technology, in areas like high value foods where there are big gains to be made, but also remain flexible enough to 'bolt-on' a Nokia or Vestas should the opportunity arise.