Sergio Rustichelli Teixeira (1), Helen Ross (2), Tom Cowan (3)

Preferred presentation format: Refereed paper

(1) University of Queensland and Embrapa - Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation,

(2) School of Natural and Rural Systems Management, University of Queensland,

(3) School of Animal Science, University of Queensland

Keywords: R&D, extension, dairy, Brazil, Australia

Many years have been spent in research and development for animal production. Recently criticism has arisen as to how applicable these technologies are, or how useful to production systems (Carvalho 2000). Research and Development practitioners are also unhappy with the level of adoption of their technologies. In Brazil there are examples of the potential improvement of agricultural production through application of agricultural research findings (Brandão 2001), though these analyses, by R&D people, seldom involve the perceptions of stakeholders in production regions as to what really makes their farms more profitable. The objective of the present paper is to describe the results of field research designed to gain the perceptions of stakeholders on past and future research in three dairy regions of Australia and Brazil. The research also investigates production systems guidelines for new research and how R&D and Extension (R,D&E) should return results to production communities after the research is “ready”.

The results show that R,D&E is perceived in both countries to have done a useful job to help dairy farms to become profitable. Production technologies in nutrition, pasture, and genetics have assisted dairy farms, although there is also demand for other fields of research. When a wider set of stakeholders is consulted, the main demand for R, D & E emerges as how to communicate the results of research. Farmers and other industry stakeholders ask for more interactive and progressive communication of research, with final testing of new technologies in the regions where they are intended to be used.