Posted on by siphomabusela · 2 Comments

The role of research in eradicating food insecurity

The beauty of being an Animal Science researcher is having to attend the South African Society of Animal Science (SASAS) Congress, which was hosted by the Stellenbosch branch of the Society from 1-6 July 2016. During the congress, I was lucky enough to be part of the exceptional group that was in charge of blogging about the SASAS Congress. If you want to visit the blogs, you can go to http://sasas.co.za/sasas-gala-dinner-2016 and http://sasas.co.za/49th-sasas-congress-kick. Working with Dr Yonela Njisane, Sipokazi Nyeleka and Mzuvukile Mcayiya was a fun and humbling experience.

SASAS Bloggers
The SASAS Congress Bloggers 2016 – Dr Yonela Njisane, Mzuvukile Mcayiya, Sipokazi Nyeleka and I

 

I only attended as a “visiting professor” – I never had time to submit an abstract. Oh, but the joys of attending a conference where you aren’t actually presenting is that you get to enjoy all the presentations without having chest pains every time you think about yours!

 

A typical congress provides a platform where respective researchers can show off their research and findings. Having industry (farmers, feed, premix and additive manufacturers etc) and scientists in the same venue is always great because it is bound to raise much-appreciated questions and debates. These questions and debates in particular helped me to think about the context of research in the world that we live in. Mostly looking at the socio-economic ills facing our beloved Rainbow Nation.  The gist of the debate was the role that research could potentially play in solving the problems faced by the Agricultural Industry. When trying to contextualize the role of scientific research in our community, a few questions need to be posed by yours truly.

Dr Nkukwana (Supervisor), Sipokazi Nyeleka and I (the "visiting professor")
Dr Nkukwana (Supervisor), Sipokazi Nyeleka and I (the “visiting professor”)

What is research?

What purpose does it serve? Is it about simply about finding a plant, feeding it to an animal and testing a few parameters, or is it about identifying problems faced by the South African agricultural industry and helping solve those problems through novel solutions?

For a number of years, I have always believed research to be a tool that can be used by scientists to find solutions to the world’s problems. Currently, South Africa is facing the harshest drought in decades. This is undoubtedly related to global warming and climate change that scientists have been talking about for a number of years. Furthermore, the world population is growing exponentially, which means that food production needs to keep up with that growth. It’s however a sad reality that the conventional means of food production that have been used for the past millennia are becoming less and less effective due to climate change. This is where I think research can play a critical role in developing farming strategies that can help mitigate the adverse effects brought upon by global warming and climate change.

I believe that researchers should conduct research that will ultimately help improve the socio-economic status of the country. How do we do this? How do we make sure that scientists are conducting vital and relevant research that will benefit the South African citizens?

Collaboration is the answer for me. There needs to be a partnership between bodies such as SASAS, Industry and Government to ensure that applied and interdisciplinary research is being conducted. Currently we have a system where Industry conducts its own research with a respective institution of learning and when there is a breakthrough, the company will claim Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to the results and they will only publish the findings after 3 years or so. This is fair enough because the companies invest a lot of money in that research. The only problem is that this type of partnership tends to benefit only corporations and not every Jacob, Julius and Helen in South Africa.

Photoshoot with Professor Michael Scholtz - President of the South African Society for Animal Science
Photoshoot with Professor Michael Scholtz – President of the South African Society for Animal Science

Perhaps there should be a council or commission where Industry, Scientists and the Government are equally represented. This council would be tasked to identify problems in South Africa (which shouldn’t be hard) and assigning those problems to Research Institutes and providing funding. An example from Europe would be, “Improving knowledge transfer between research institutions and industry across Europe”. This document not only deals with the issues of IPR but it also ensures that the associations — businesses and farmers — who are in charge of producing local food will also benefit. All South African citizens will end up benefiting because our country will be not only be food secure but that food will also be affordable to everyone who lives in it. Perhaps a step further would be for the Government to utilize its Extension Officers to ensure that scientific breakthroughs get relayed to all the farmers. This would not only ensure that farmers do not suffer from problems that the country has already solved but it will also ensure that the money spent on research funding doesn’t end up in library shelves collecting dust.

Posted on by siphomabusela · 2 Comments

Life after data collection

So do you believe in life after death?

Awkward way to start a blog, right?  I know! If you do, then I’m sure you’ll paint me a portrait of how it’s better than your current life. Where there will be no guns, no wars and hopefully no sugar tax. I guess if you want to get out of this life alive, there’s always a need to believe in something bigger and better than rising petrol prices and the depreciation of the Rand. So why do I ask? Well, because that’s exactly how I felt about my research. If you’ve read my last blog entry, you’ll know that my Master’s journey has been nothing short of novel drama. To keep myself sane during that period, I just imagined a time after data collection where I would just analyse my data, start writing up and submit after a week. For the most part, that dream kept me going — but imagination and reality are two different things.

When things don’t go your way through the practical phase of your MSc or PhD, you imagine your last day of data collection. You daydream about how nice it will be and how you’ll virtually have your qualification in your hand.

It’s only when you actually get all that data when reality really hits you like a one ton truck. When you fill in the last digit on your diary, you breathe a sigh of relief. Happy, and reminiscing about all the days when you thought your experimental diets would run out, or when load shedding nearly killed your day old chicks; surely nothing can be worse than that. It is only when you open your Excel sheet that you realise that a new chapter in your Masters tale is about to start: your “life after data collection” chapter. Having to punch in data acquired over a seven week period is no child’s play, especially if the data that you have is for more than 10 dependent variables.

My data capturing was kind of fun, I mean I had been looking for this data for 2 years and finally I had found it. I felt like I owed it to the Almighty to push on with a smile on my face. The crazy part is that as each digit left my diary and into the excel sheet, so did my smile. By the time I finished entering my data I was tired, exhausted and so drained.

With all the data sorted, the next step was data analysis. I think this is the part most students dread. Having to sort your data is one thing, but knowing what it all mean is a challenge for most. At what level are you testing? What does the output mean? How do you express this data? I bet these questions make most postgrad students wish they had paid more attention to their Biometry lectures.

Fortunately, at University of Fort Hare, we are blessed with minds that eat data analysis for breakfast, lunch and supper. Who knew having to wake up early everyday to attend the experimental design and data analysis class would help? (Hahahaha I hope my supervisors won’t be reading this.) The thing about analysis programs, is that if you can’t speak their language then you are doomed, if you can’t tell it what you want It to do then you’re better off sleeping in your room. For me, the program was fine … the problem was with the user (me). I had an idea of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to express the data but the way I’d analysed my data didn’t allow me to. I was busy running up walls and pulling out my non-existent hair!

That was till I decide to speak to my varsity friends and mentor, Thuthuzelwa Stempa, Xola Nduku, Soji Zimkitha and Lizwel Mapfumo. Having to brainstorm my intended outcomes and data expression made an HUGE difference.

So here I am, sitting at the lab and finishing up my graphs and writing up, imagining myself walking up to collect my second degree and making my family proud. I hope that this time my imagination won’t be too far off.

So what did I learn? Life’s filled with challenges, and the very same sentiments echo through your research life. Be it admin, data collection, data analysis or writing up. Your life after data collection might be better than mine or worse, but the moral of the blog as always is about grinding it out, spin those numbers to letters and making sure you graduate in time.