Harper Adams University is in the business of educating its students about the benefits of all dietary options for mankind.
These will include a mix of animal proteins and all other alternatives.
The university’s vice-chancellor, Prof. Ken Sloan, explained:
“I don’t care what our students eat – I want them to be educated in what they eat. I want them to understand what they eat – it is not our job to say there is one form of diet.
“It is our job to evidence the benefits of all diets and then enable people to make choices.”
Harper Adams “is the type of place where these types of discussions have to happen, but is has to be a rational and informed debate”, the vice-chancellor added.
Prof. Sloan fully recognises that meat will remain a fundamental part of the UK and Irish diet.
“But we also know that there are some people who will make other choices, and these must be informed choices.
“We don’t want blanket decisions that say the world gets better on the back of plant-based diets, when there is no evidence to sustain this assertion,” he said.
Prof. Sloan recently addressed members of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland.
“My core objective is to keep Harper strong, vibrant and independent. Over the last number of years, we have seen a number of specialist colleges subsumed into larger institutions.
“Agri food will never be as important to any other university as it is to us. There are real challenges within the higher education sector at the present time,” the vice-chancellor explained.
Dietary options
Prof. Sloan views the current role of Harper Adams evolving in a number of directions. These include the need to deliver a sustainable future for agriculture while teaching the key digital skills they will need to help make this happen.
He specifically referenced the role of artificial intelligence (AI) within agriculture during the period ahead.
“Many people think that AI will be used to take their jobs away – this is not true. The technology will be used to take part of people’s jobs away, while leaving them to focus on other, more important issues.
“And this is already happening within agriculture,” he said.
Harper’s vice-chancellor recognises that students coming from Northern Ireland to England will have to pay high tuition fees.
“Tuition feed has been frozen since 2017. There will be one-off increase of £285 in tuition fees next year, but the amount of inflation incurred by universities over the past number of years has had to be absorbed in a number of ways.
“These include the generation of enhanced philanthropy, commercial income and increasing the number of international students,” the professor added.
