Louis Robert (BScAgr’82, MSc’86), from agriculture to art

There aren’t many agronomists who have a piece of artwork that carries their name, but McGill Macdonald alum Louis Robert (BScAgr’82, MSc’86 – Agricultural Science and Plant Science) is one.

“I was flabbergasted when my son told me that there was an exhibit at the Musée de la civilization in Quebec City and it included an artwork that was entitled L’affaire Louis Robert,” the semi-retired agronomist told reporter Nick Fonda of the Sherbrooke Record.  “The artists had previously invited me to see the sculpture.  I couldn’t believe where it was being exhibited.”

After graduating from McGill, Robert was hired as an agronomist at the Ministère de l’agriculture, des pêcheries, et de l’alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ). In January 2019, despite whistleblower protections, he was fired after exposing industry interference in public research on neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides with destructive effects on populations of insect, bird, and other living organisms. Several months later, he was reinstated with a Prime Ministerial apology.

Eventually, the scientists' controversial study was published, showing no significant productivity benefits from neonicotinoids in soy and corn crops—a result reflected visually in L’affaire Louis Robert.

The artwork consists of 128 pieces of wood of varied lengths. They offer a visual depiction of a scientific study on the productivity of 64 commercial corn fields consisting of sections planted with seeds treated with neonicotinoids and adjacent sections planted with untreated seeds. The painted sticks represent the crop harvested from the treated seeds while the blocks in natural wood represent the control crop, from untreated seeds. The lengths of the blocks of wood corresponded to the crop yield in kilogram per hectare.

What is immediately obvious is that while the sticks vary in length, they are paired up in such a way that the sticks that make up a pair are of almost equal length, representing how the difference in yield from treated versus untreated seeds was negligible.