14 October 2018, Sunday
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
On Friday Mayor of Cork County, Patrick Gerard Murphy warmly welcomed the official launch of the VistaMilk Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centre at Teagasc Moorepark, as one of the partners to VistaMilk.
According to Tim Lucey, Chief Executive, Cork County Council, “As a strong advocate and committed partner to VistaMilk, Cork County Council are delighted to see this “game-changing” Centre co-funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, which will underpin the future of dairying, come to fruition. This unique collaboration between Agri-Food and ICT research institutes and leading Irish/multinational food and ICT companies represents a transformational agent of growth for the Irish dairy industry by being a world leader in fundamental and translational research for precision pasture-based dairying”.
File photo: Cork County Council Chief Executive, Tim Lucey.
Picture. John Allen
“Agri-tech is a burgeoning technology sector and in an increasingly digital economy, it is incumbent on us to harness digital technologies to revolutionise the agri and food sectors, akin to what has been achieved in other industry sectors. This is particularly true for Cork, which not only acts as a strategic bedrock in the agricultural community nationally, producing 26 per cent of Ireland’s milk production, but also possesses an extremely strong and successful track record in ICT. Convergence of these two key employment sectors present untold opportunities for the Cork region in terms of innovations and jobs growth into the future”.
“VistaMilk immediately connects into and benefits from a region with a long and proud tradition of innovation, agriculture, rural development and rural sustainability which will further enhance the success and the job creation potential of research which subsequently emanates from the Centre. As the leading innovation ecosystem builder in Cork County, we look forward to building our regional ecosystem to nurture rural innovative agri-tech start-ups and scale-ups that can serve the jobs, businesses and communities across Cork County into the future”, Mr. Lucey went on to say.
“We are delighted to see the launch of the VistaMilk SFI Research Centre taking place today in a lighthouse region for agri-food and agri-tech capability and would like to wish Teagasc, the Tyndall National Institute, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) and the Insight Centre for Data Analytics the very best in this revolutionary growth project for the dairy industry”, concluded Mr. Lucey.