First published in Milling and Grain, February 2015
2015 marks the fourth consecutive year that Alltech has conducted its global feed survey. It has become the industry’s most authoritative resource on feed production by country and by species and has challenged several leading organisations that represent animal feed output to re-evaluate and bring their figures up-to-date.
“This undertaking requires a significant amount of work each year, mainly because the feed industry is measured differently and in varying degrees of thoroughness from country-to-country,” says Aidan Connolly, Alltech’s Chief Innovation Officer.
“Yet, each year, better information is discovered and more is learned about how farmers around the world feed their livestock.”
Alltech isn’t the only entity interested in these trends.
Increasingly, more farmers, supply companies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, NGOs, food businesses and indeed consumers are interested in what goes into the food humans consume.
What foods are truly nutritious? How do farmers raise livestock that are healthy? How can agriculture increase efficiency and therefore, feed more people?
Answers to these questions and many others can be found by starting with an examination of the feed animals are eating worldwide, says the company.
The report outlines Alltech’s estimate of the world’s feed tonnage and trends to date and is intended to serve as an industry resource for the coming year.
Alltech assessed the compound feed production of 130 countries.
“Where possible, information was gathered in partnership with local feed associations and, when that wasn’t possible, it was done utilizing information collected by the more than 600 members of Alltech’s global salesforce, who had direct contact with more than 31,000 feedmills.
“When reviewing the data, there are two considerations to bear in mind.
“First, numbers for less developed countries may be less accurate, but given their size, this had little numerical influence on the overall dataset. Second, the definition of feed, feed mill and species varied from country to country,” adds Mr Connolly.
The findings based on the data from 2014 reveal an increase of two percent in the feed industry.
Global feed tonnage was measured at 980 million metric tons, while last year it was roughly 960 million metric tons. Feed industry trends throughout 2014 were impacted by myriad events, including widespread droughts, high costs of raw feed materials, fluctuating governance over import/export standards, and animal diseases such as avian influenza and the PED virus in pigs, which proved to be disastrous for many farmers.
Although China was once again the leading producer of feed with 183 million tons manufactured in the official estimate of more than 9500 feedmills, this is the second year of decline in its production.
The country experienced a notable four percent decline from last year’s numbers.
Some analysts contribute this downturn to a slow hog market and bird flu that suppressed consumer demand.
India, on the other hand, had a considerable increase in feed production, up to 29.4 million tons (a 10 percent increase over 2013), owing mainly to favorable weather conditions and consistently-improving farming methods and technology.
The United States and Brazil ranked second and third respectively, with 172 million tons from 6718 feed mills and 66 million tons from 1698 feed mills.
When grouped into regions, Africa and Latin America saw the greatest growth in 2014. Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and the Middle East all showed a slight incline. Several individual countries can be highlighted as bright spots of growth and development.
Among them were Turkey, Indonesia, Romania, Tunisia and Bolivia, all of which experienced their second consecutive year of significant increase in feed production.
Read the magazine HERE.
2015 marks the fourth consecutive year that Alltech has conducted its global feed survey. It has become the industry’s most authoritative resource on feed production by country and by species and has challenged several leading organisations that represent animal feed output to re-evaluate and bring their figures up-to-date.
“This undertaking requires a significant amount of work each year, mainly because the feed industry is measured differently and in varying degrees of thoroughness from country-to-country,” says Aidan Connolly, Alltech’s Chief Innovation Officer.
Alltech isn’t the only entity interested in these trends.
Increasingly, more farmers, supply companies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, NGOs, food businesses and indeed consumers are interested in what goes into the food humans consume.
What foods are truly nutritious? How do farmers raise livestock that are healthy? How can agriculture increase efficiency and therefore, feed more people?
Answers to these questions and many others can be found by starting with an examination of the feed animals are eating worldwide, says the company.
The report outlines Alltech’s estimate of the world’s feed tonnage and trends to date and is intended to serve as an industry resource for the coming year.
Alltech assessed the compound feed production of 130 countries.
“Where possible, information was gathered in partnership with local feed associations and, when that wasn’t possible, it was done utilizing information collected by the more than 600 members of Alltech’s global salesforce, who had direct contact with more than 31,000 feedmills.
“When reviewing the data, there are two considerations to bear in mind.
“First, numbers for less developed countries may be less accurate, but given their size, this had little numerical influence on the overall dataset. Second, the definition of feed, feed mill and species varied from country to country,” adds Mr Connolly.
The findings based on the data from 2014 reveal an increase of two percent in the feed industry.
Global feed tonnage was measured at 980 million metric tons, while last year it was roughly 960 million metric tons. Feed industry trends throughout 2014 were impacted by myriad events, including widespread droughts, high costs of raw feed materials, fluctuating governance over import/export standards, and animal diseases such as avian influenza and the PED virus in pigs, which proved to be disastrous for many farmers.
Although China was once again the leading producer of feed with 183 million tons manufactured in the official estimate of more than 9500 feedmills, this is the second year of decline in its production.
The country experienced a notable four percent decline from last year’s numbers.
Some analysts contribute this downturn to a slow hog market and bird flu that suppressed consumer demand.
India, on the other hand, had a considerable increase in feed production, up to 29.4 million tons (a 10 percent increase over 2013), owing mainly to favorable weather conditions and consistently-improving farming methods and technology.
The United States and Brazil ranked second and third respectively, with 172 million tons from 6718 feed mills and 66 million tons from 1698 feed mills.
When grouped into regions, Africa and Latin America saw the greatest growth in 2014. Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and the Middle East all showed a slight incline. Several individual countries can be highlighted as bright spots of growth and development.
Among them were Turkey, Indonesia, Romania, Tunisia and Bolivia, all of which experienced their second consecutive year of significant increase in feed production.
Read the magazine HERE.
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com
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