Feedstuffs in Focus

The dairy market has shifted more toward an emphasis on components in recent years, giving farmers an important incentive to think about the production of those components rather than on the overall volume of milk produced. What can dairy farmers do in terms of management and production to optimize for those components? In this episode we talk with Hannah Tucker, a Ruminant Technical Services Mana...

The term “regenerative agriculture” has become more commonly discussed in recent years, but like many new terms – and like many oft-repeated buzzwords in agriculture and food marketing – it may not be well understood by most people, or even well-defined in general. What does regenerative agriculture mean, and what role does regenerative farming play in the future of the meat industry? In this epis...

Achieving something known as net zero – in other words, balancing the amount of greenhouse gas produced by an activity and the amount removed from the atmosphere – is a key focus of leaders in the global livestock industry and among food manufacturers and retailers. What will it take to achieve net zero, and how will the effort affect food production and consumption around the globe? Pathways to D...

EnTech Solutions has formed a joint venture with Northern Biogas LLC aimed at providing a sustainable energy future utilizing local agriculture, specifically dairy waste. Recently, EnTech added to its clean energy solutions portfolio an active biogas facility in the Middleton, Wis. Utilizing anaerobic digestion, the facility turns organic waste from local dairy farms into renewable energy.  Feedst...

Sustainability is such an oft-discussed topic of conversation in the food space that it’s become a buzzword. Who defines it? What does it mean? Aren’t farmers already doing a lot to improve soil, air and water quality? In this episode we talk with Lauren Brey, managing director of the Farmers for Sustainable Food Coalition. We caught up with Lauren at the World Dairy Expo this week in Madison, Wis...

Between the budget battle, funding the infrastructure bill and an ambitious tax proposal, tens of billions of dollars in the agricultural economy hangs in the balance as legislators in Washington wrangle over signature pieces of President Joe Biden’s domestic policy agenda. In this episode we’ll hear from agriculture policy expert Emily Buckman of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a member of t...

Bacteria are all around us, and the role these microorganisms play in our environment – both on the farm and inside the animals themselves, is an increasingly important area of study in animal science. Quorum sensing is bacteria’s unique biochemical communication system. It’s how bacteria interact and talk with each other. Understanding how that communication works and how we can use it in a varie...

Uterine prolapse is a serious issue of concern to swine producers. A 2018 Iowa State University study involving 400,000 commercials sows found that vaginal or uterine prolapse accounted for 15% of all sow mortalities during the study period, and earlier research found that all pelvic organ prolapses cost producers roughly $5,220 per 1,000 sows per year. What hasn’t been as well understood until mo...

Hurricane Ida rocked the Gulf coast last month, making landfall at New Orleans and causing significant damage to the infrastructure that supports the U.S. soy and grain export business. It damaged at least one major terminal and left several without power for several weeks. In this episode we talk with Mike Steenhoek of the Soy Transportation Coalition for a look at how badly Ida hurt trade at the...

Quite a lot has happened in Washington recently, from work on the federal budget to movement on further COVID-related relief policy. How has agriculture fared in recent policy movement? In this episode we hear from Farm Progress policy editor Jacqui Fatka. Speaking with colleague Mike Pearson at the Farm Progress Show earlier this week, Fatka explains the latest wrangling over the Waters of the U....

Producing more than 1.4 million tons of dry commercial feed every year is no small feat… doing it in a state beset by wildfires is another matter entirely. Western Milling’s facility in Goshen, Calif., is one of the largest and most diverse animal food production operations in the U.S., and currently handles more than 1,200 active and unique formulations. What does it take to not only operate at t...

We’re on the tail end of the cattle cycle, according to Oklahoma State University agricultural economist Derrell Peel, and a combination of COVID-19’s supply chain disruptions and drought across large swaths of cattle country have fueled a very interesting run in the cattle markets. How have those factors altered the outlook for cattle producer profitability over the next 12 months? In this episod...

The animal protein markets are very strong at the moment, given robust consumer demand for meat, milk and eggs, both in the domestic and export markets. The question then becomes how long that demand might hold if inflationary pressures dampen spending at some point in the coming year, or how additional COVID-related challenges such a surge in variant-fueled infections – and any new lockdowns or r...

As consumer demand for animal-derived protein grows, so do concerns among some consumer segments about the overall sustainability of livestock production. Increasingly, the animal health industry is researching the development of products and services that enable livestock producers to deliver products that fit consumer preferences for environmentally sustainable protein options. In this episode w...

In this segment of Feedstuffs in Focus, we talk with Chad Gregory, president and CEO of the United Egg Producers, and recently named Ag Association Leader of the Year by the National AgriMarketing Assn. We caught up with Gregory this week in Kansas City to talk about what it takes to lead in challenging times and to get an update on some of the issues the egg industry is currently facing and what’...

Stocking density and available bunk space play a significant role in determining rate of gain and feed efficiency in growing dairy heifers. While the research on heifer feeding isn’t as plentiful as it is in other areas of dairy nutrition, there are still some important findings for dairy producers and heifer developers. In this episode of Feedstuffs In Focus  we talk with Feedstuffs columnist and...

On July 9th, President Biden signed a raft of Executive Orders targeted at strengthening the U.S. economy by aiming to, quoting from the press release, “reduce the trend of corporate consolidation, increase competition, and deliver concrete benefits to America’s consumers, workers, farmers, and small businesses.” The President’s directives had several issues specific to agriculture, including the...

Last month Elanco and Ducks Unlimited announced a partnership to emphasize the strong bond between environmental sustainability and agriculture – specifically beef cattle production – across North America. Over the next two years Elanco will invest $50,000 annually with Ducks Unlimited to help purchase grass seed to support reseeding efforts on working lands in western Kansas, enough to reseed at...

As the U.S. economy pulls out of a pandemic-induced recession, the specter of inflation has reared its head. Wednesday the Federal Reserve hiked its expectations for inflation this year and signaled that it would move up the timetable for raising interest rates. All of this has great implications for the livestock and animal feed sectors, from the increased cost of inputs and materials to an incre...

President Biden has proposed a massive investment in U.S. infrastructure as part of his policy agenda, asking Congress to fund $2 trillion in a wide-ranging set of investments from roads, bridges, and waterways to electrification, broadband, and healthcare. But with a sharply-divided Congress, which – if any – of the President’s proposals will move forward? Earlier this week at World Pork Expo in...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday that it continues to investigate the weekend cyberattack on JBS, revealing that the May 30 attack was the work of a Russian ransomware gang. The incident, which shut down nine beef plants across the U.S., was the latest cyberattack on U.S. infrastructure and one of the first in the food production industry to gain widespread media attention.  Whil...

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the global disease keeping U.S. swine producers awake at night was African Swine Fever. A virulent disease that devastated the Chinese swine herd and ran rampant throughout several Eastern European countries, the virus was clearly something that hog farmers on this side of the ocean wanted to keep as far away as biologically possible. With China struggling to rebuil...

Advances in biotechnology have garnered the spotlight in recent years, particularly with regard to landmark uses of genetic biotechnology… think of the role mRNA technologies played in developing vaccines for COVID-19 as a recent example. Biotechnologies are increasingly utilized in agricultural and environmental applications, with terms such as CRISPR gaining widespread recognition among the cons...

The concept of group sow housing in swine production is far from new, but the implementation of California’s Prop 12 imposes a much heavier burden on producers in terms of the space required for gestating sows in a group system. That burden generally means smaller inventories and higher costs – not a winning recipe for profitable pork production. In this episode of Feedstuffs In Focus we talk with...

Nearly 300 U.S. agriculture and forest products companies and associations delivered a letter to Secretary of DOT Pete Buttigieg last week, calling for the immediate intervention to protect U.S. exporters and their access to foreign markets. A global shortage of containers and ocean-going vessels, along with carriers’ increasingly-frequent refusal to carry agricultural products from the U.S. back...