Gordon Lee McClymont AO (8 May 1920 – 6 May 2000) was an Australian agricultural scientist, ecologist, and educationist. The originator of the term "sustainable agriculture", McClymont is known for his multidisciplinary approach to farm ecology. McClymont was the foundation chair of the Faculty of Rural Science at the University of New England, the first degree program of its kind to integrate animal husbandry, veterinary science, agronomy, and other disciplines into the field of livestock and agricultural production. In 1978, in recognition of his work and contributions to his field, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia.
Born in Australia, McClymont entered the University of Sydney under the sponsorship of the New South Wales Department of Agriculture. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in veterinary science from Sydney and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, he worked as an animal nutrition researcher for the state of New South Wales. Believing that his education had not adequately prepared him for his work, McClymont designed a broader, multi-disciplinary educational approach to the field of livestock and agricultural production. Impressed with his ideas, the University of New England hired McClymont in 1955 to chair its new department of rural science.
While at the university, McClymont championed his approach to farm and livestock production and sustainability of agricultural ecosystems. Under his direction, the University of New England became a leader in ruminant research. The Australian poultry industry recognized McClymont's contributions to poultry production with a special award in 1967. After his retirement in 1980, McClymont continued to work with the agricultural industry in Australia and consulted with the United Nations and the World Bank on farm issues. In 1996, he expounded his approach to livestock and farm production in the book Rural Science: Philosophy and Application.
Early life and undergraduate education
McClymont was born on 8 May 1920. His father was one of seven sons of a Scottish immigrant to Australia. McClymont's father greeted him as a newborn with, "G'day Bill" and Bill stuck with him as a nickname for the rest of his life. McClymont's father's brothers resided in rural areas, including in the Orange, New South Wales, region. Thus, although McClymont grew up in the Sydney metropolitan area, he spent much holiday time as a youth in a rural environment. His activities at his relatives' farms included lamb marking, fruit picking, horse breaking, and pig shooting. McClymont also became familiar with the local animals and plants.
McClymont attended Chatswood Intermediate High School, where he became interested in science. In his fourth year, he transferred to North Sydney Boys High School. In his Leaving Certificate Exam, taken in 1936, McClymont earned First Class Honours in physics and chemistry, which placed him third and fourth respectively on the New South Wales state honours list. While in high school, he participated in the Australian Army Cadets in a horse-drawn field artillery unit.
Lacking funds to attend university, a family friend who worked for the New South Wales Department of Agriculture suggested that McClymont apply for a department traineeship. In spite of his lack of formal agricultural training, McClymont passed the exam and interview and was assigned to the University of Sydney's veterinary science program. Provided with a salary of £110 a year, he entered the university in 1937.
When World War II began in 1939, McClymont joined the Australian Army Veterinary Corps in the 2nd Cavalry Mobile Veterinary Section assigned to his university. His unit volunteered for overseas duty, but was refused. McClymont joined the Royal Australian Air Force as an aircrew reservist, but was again denied an overseas assignment and ordered to complete his education at Sydney while serving the military in a scientific advisory role. He joined the Volunteer Defence Corps at the rank of sergeant and served weekend duty during the war years at anti-aircraft and radar installations in Australia.
Because of the war, McClymont's final two years of undergraduate study were compressed into 16 months. He graduated in 1941 with a bachelor of veterinary science, First Class Honours, and a gold university medal.
New South Wales Department of Agriculture
Immediately after graduation in 1941, McClymont was appointed as a specialist in animal nutrition at the New South Wales Department of Agriculture. In that position, he was responsible for all extension, advisory work, and policy advice on animal nutrition for the state government. In one instance during the war, McClymont had to respond to a swine influenza outbreak caused by pig meat imported by American troops stationed in Australia. While participating in an operation to kill and burn potentially infected suidae in a local piggery, he met his future wife, Vivienne Pecover, sister of the farmer whose pigs were being slaughtered. The two married in 1946.
From 1947 to 1949, under a Walter and Eliza Hall Veterinary Research Fellowship, he attended the University of Cambridge from which he earned a doctor of philosophy. His thesis, called Interrelationships between the digestive and mammary physiology of ruminants, was based on research he had conducted in 1947 in which he discovered that green oat consumption by dairy cows produced milk with less butterfat. In the thesis, he explained how the complex interaction between environment, climate, soil, plant, and animal physiology and metabolism had combined to produce the lowered milkfat.
After completion of his term at Cambridge, McClymont toured agricultural research centres and colleges in the United States. While in the US, he gave 15 lectures on his doctoral research. A number of American agricultural scientists told him later that his lectures had caused them to change their fields of research. McClymont was not impressed by the agricultural education he observed in Britain or the US, saying that the British focused on estate management while the Americans concentrated on descriptive evaluations of livestock quality.
Upon his return to Australia in 1950, McClymont was reassigned as Officer in Charge of the department's Animal Nutrition Research Laboratory at Glenfield Veterinary Research Station. At Glenfield, he developed research programs on drought feeding and pregnancy toxaemia in sheep and established a nutritional diagnostic service.
Between 1945 and 1953, McClymont participated in adult education activities to rural areas around New South Wales for the Sydney University Extension Board and New England University College. New England University College was an extension college of the University of Sydney located in Armidale, New South Wales. The activities included holding seminars on animal husbandry and agriculture for farmers and graziers. From 1951 to 1953, McClymont helped New England University College establish facilities and adult classes in animal husbandry and agricultural economics in Walcha, Tamworth, Moree, and Dubbo.
McClymont's work experiences caused him to feel dissatisfied with the quality of education he had received in his degree program at Sydney. He felt the veterinary science specialization was too narrow, especially in the area of animal husbandry and livestock production. Moreover, he felt the specialization of the discipline did not provide sufficient knowledge in how the overall farm animal production process worked. For example, as an undergraduate, he received only three lectures on statistics, a skill he had to teach himself during his first few years as an animal nutritionist advisor. As a result, he took an interest in education and curriculum development. McClymont later said that he had "seen the educational deficiencies of narrow specialization, whether of veterinary graduates as specialists in animal health and disease or of agricultural science graduates as specialists in aspects of soil and plants. I had seen the problems created by such specialized knowledge when exercised without overall understanding."