By David MacKenzie Contributing Editor
One of the highest priorities any government must have is to feed its nation. Food security undoubt-edly came back to the fore during Covid, but some recent political decisions – namely a major change on farmers paying inheritance tax when passing on to the next generation, paying for land to come out of food production for environmental benefits and the increasing demand for new sources of en-ergy production to replace fossil fuel use – challenges this thought process.
With the current decline in Ruminant numbers, mainly with beef cow-calf units steadily declining, the competition for feedstuffs once solely destined for livestock, is tilting itself with the ever-increasing demand for producing energy through anaerobic digesters or large power plants (using up vast amounts of products like straw).
In the United Kingdom (UK) today we have 723 operational anaerobic digesters (AD) with a reported 446 being fuelled with farm feedstock and food waste. Where there is a number of farm businesses that have set up AD plants that can utilize slurry and farmyard manure and help the whole financial viability of large livestock units, a huge number across the country have seen distillery co-products that were once destined solely for livestock now going directly in to AD plants. This policy is based on businesses not only helping to achieve their net-zero targets, but the feedstuffs being more thought of as “waste products” to be used to produce subsided gas.
We have seen distilleries that previously provided 30,000 metric tonnes of wheat or maize-based dis-tillers dark grains (from the whisky industry) stop drying their product and produce 90,000 metric tonnes of a wet draff feedstuff, all being fed to ruminants in the north of the UK. We have also seen all this produce go directly into an on-site digester, leaving a considerable vacuum in supply in that lo-cal area.
This change in approach has given a major challenge to the ruminant feed industry that would have historically always tried to use home-produced or UK-based protein and cereal sources, now having to import dry distillers grains into the UK. This is coupled at the same time with a hardening attitude on the use of soy products, which the UK and Europe are to follow due to the EU’s strict anti-deforestation laws. The majority of beef processors require consigners to sign a declaration stating the animals have not been fed any form of soy products. This has come into greater focus as all of our major retailers have set net-zero requirements that are gathering pace in the monogastric world to find soy replacements.
The system in the UK of being born in the west in the spring, grazed through to weaning in the fall, housed through the winter on a diet of either silage made in a pit or in round bales and wrapped with plastic and given supplemented concentrate feed of 2 pounds of grain with protein to 200 pounds of live weight. They’re then sold in the spring where larger animals of more than 900 pounds will head to finishing units and be housed where they will go on to barley-based, ad-lib systems with many feeding alkaline-treated cereals that may include wheat and taken through to slaughter 90 to 120 days later.
In feedyards where feeding less cereals, waste vegetables, bakery and distillery co-products are fed in a total mixed ration system. These feeds previously offered a low daily feed cost (often a higher cost per pound gained) but have recently increased in value due to finding their way away from the farm and into AD plants at an ever-increasing tonnage. The percentage of maize in the diet depends on the economical valuation against using barley or wheat. In a complete opposite from the heat-treated, steam-flaking process that is the backbone of U.S. feedyards, the maize kernels are hammer milled into a fine powder at the docks and delivered to farms.
The comparison on the physical approach to feeding cereals, in particular maize, is an area where a lack of consistent feed intake information and facilities to heat treat cereals is the major difference between the European and U.S. approach. We would also feed cereals on an ad-lib continuous feed-hopper system with straw available alongside as another completely different approach to the slick feeding. This ad-lib cereal feeding was started as the barley beef system that was developed by the pioneering approach of the Rowett Research Institute of Aberdeen in the 1960s. The use of this sys-tem hasn’t altered dramatically in the past 60 years, although the industry demands of carcase size and fat cover has been evolving.
The big question that seems to go unanswered here in the UK is, where will our food come from if we keep prioritizing feedstuffs for energy production over producing food?
David MacKenzie is ruminant director at Harbro Limited
