Sizer brand returns to feed market

The Sizer brand is returning to the feed pelleting market. After receiving input from customers, Newburgh Pelleting Solutions, which bought Sizer in November 2007, has decided to rebrand under the Sizer name.
Sizer Pelleting Solutions will continue to focus on the manufacture and sale of pelleting machines from its home base in the United Kingdom, according to a company press release. It will offer its own Orbit pelleting machines, as well as spare parts and services for many types of pelleting presses. Later this year, Sizer plans to launch its own range of small pellet machines for applications such as the laboratory testing of pellets.
The company has spare-parts distribution centers in the United Kingdom and Holland, and partners with international distributors in Canada, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.

Feed Mill Management Seminar to take place in March

The 2010 Feed Mill Management Seminar, sponsored by U.S. Poultry & Egg Association’s Poultry and Egg Institute, will take place March 10–11, 2010, at the Renaissance Hotel in Nashville.
The seminar will examine best practices, changes in OSHA regulations, the latest technology in conditioning and pelleting, new truck anti-roll over devices, boiler management and other feed manufacturing topics.

Philippines feed production falls

The Philippines produced less feed in 2009 because of a drop in livestock numbers from disease and typhoons, according to the The Philippine Star. It estimated that total feed production for the year was 5.5 million metric tons. Less demand also meant a 15% to 20% drop in feed prices.
The Philippines imported 1.1 million metric tons of soybean meal in 2009, compared to 1.6 million metric tons in 2008. Total weight for feed wheat imports was also 1.1 million metric tons, but this was an increase from 2008 as mills looked for a cheaper alternative to domestic corn. Imported feed wheat was less than a third of the price of corn, according to The Philippine Star.
The newspaper reported that 60% of the country’s feed goes to swine and 20% to poultry, with the remaining share split among aquaculture, goats, fighting cocks and other specialty animals.

Vietnam increases tariffs on feed ingredients

In an effort to decrease the country’s dependence on imports for animal feed, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance has announced tariff increases of 5% to 15% on feedstuffs in 2010, reports the Vietnam News Agency. Included in the increase are corn, other grains, soybeans and powdered fish.
Imports comprise 70% of animal feed in Vietnam, according to the agency.
"I think it's such an unreasonable and unacceptable decision. Farmers will be the first victims of the upcoming price hike," said Le Ba Lich, chairman of the Viet Nam Animal Feed Association. He added that the move will result in higher food prices.
Animal feed prices have already risen 10% to 15% since 2008, reports the Vietnam News Agency.

Written to your local newspaper recently?

I wrote a letter to the Editor of The Daily Telegraph, the widest circulating daily newspaper in the UK, this past week.
My letter has not and might never be published, but I don’t see why the point I was trying to make is not made because an editor considers other letters on the subject more suitable for publication or there is insufficient space to accommodate everyone's views. That’s where blogging comes into its own.
The subject I was particularly aggrieved over was the claim that we should eat less meat to help save the plant from global warming! Quoted were scientists and politicians saying what a great idea it would be to reduce our consumption of meat by at least one third. The article was written by the paper’s medical correspondent and did not quote anyone from the livestock sector.
Call me a ‘flat-earther’ - as Prime Mister Gordon Brown would label me - or a cynic if you will, but personally I think the whole climate change issues is more reflective in the ‘King has no cloths’ analogy. I support many of the policies being proposed by the climate lobby if only because it makes good sense to clean up after ourselves and leave the place as we found it when we check out. Therefore, in terms of recycling, reducing the pollution we pump into the environment and atmosphere and avoiding contaminating water and land resources, I go long with many of the suggested polices. However, encouraging us to eat less meat will not mean we will all live longer and happier lives in a landscape as pristine as if there were no human habitation. ...Read the full blog on AnimalAgNet.

Feed output takes hit in Brazil

The decline in the global economy has hit Brazil's feed production sector hard.
For the first half of 2009, total feed production was down 3.8% from the same period a year earlier, with beef cattle and dairy cattle sectors both showing greater than double-digit declines, according to data from the Brazilian Feed Industry Association.
The only categories to show improvement over 2008 in the fourth largest feed producing country behind the U.S., the European Union, and China, were layer feed use, which was up a modest 1%, and fish & shrimp feed demand, up an impressive 18%. Read the full blog on AnimalAgNet.

Managing risk during stormy times

How feed companies are managing risk during boom and bust. Read the full article.

Russia to increase grain exports

According to reports, Russia is closer to its goal of increased grain exports. Black Earth Farming Ltd. is expected to export grain to Japan and expand grain production by more than 500,000 metric tons this year.
Russia plans to double its exports in the next 10 to 15 years by developing fallow land. The country is promoting the endeavor with loans to support additional grain terminals and silos. Black Earth also plans forward sales with traders and fertilizer suppliers both at home and abroad.In Stockholm trading, Black Earth rose 1 krona, or 4.1%, to close at 25.70 kronor.

EU has only a month’s supply of soy left

European feed and livestock industries are “hugely concerned” that there have been no recent soybean shipments from the U.S. and no forward bookings to the in the immediate future, says David Green, a consultant to the U.S. Soybean Export Council.They appreciate that they are in a “serious position” with the U.S. harvest underway, South American stocks at almost record lows, the Chinese market being very strong and the failure by the EU to resolve its slow biotech approvals process and its zero tolerance issue for EU-unapproved biotech events.

Hog producers running low
Hog producers in Spain and feed compounders in France and the UK say they have only a month’s soy supplies at most.Some are paying $90 a ton premium just to get soy from any source, Green states. Others are using other protein sources but accept that can only be a stop gap measure. They are enormously frustrated with politicians and officials in various member states who they say simply do not grasp the seriousness of the issue.Two reports – one from the feed and livestock industry and another from the prestigious Dutch university at Wageningen state that the loss of US shipments could cost the EU up to $5 billion between now and next March, Green says. However, there are some encouraging signs albeit temporary.

Lost in committee
Later this month one of the corn varieties not yet approved in the EU and which has been showing up in trace amounts in US soybean shipments will go before the EU’s Farm Ministers for a vote on authorization.It is likely there will be a split vote with the dossier unable to muster the required number of votes either to approve or reject EU authorization for import and processing. Under the EU’s rather complex voting and approval system this means that final approval will be left to the European Commission by a default process.In that event, the Commission will almost certainly issue an EU authorization within one or two weeks in line with the positive assessment of the European Food Safety Authority’s findings earlier this year.The second EU-unapproved corn event is likely to go before the Farm Ministers for a vote in the middle of November with a similar outcome resulting in the Commission using an authorization. That’s the good news providing there is not an outright vote against at either Farm Ministers meeting.Authorization of these two biotech corn events will take care of the immediate problem of dust traces being found in soybean shipments, Green says.The not so good news is that once the ‘phew we got out of that mess’ eases, the problem of the EU’s unworkable biotech laws remains, he says. Already, the EU feed and farming industries and consumers have been hit by unnecessary costs. Without a workable solution soon they’ll get to pay all over again next year, Green says.

Biotech an ongoing problem
He continues that the EU stands virtually alone among countries with functioning biotech regulatory systems “in having its system held hostage to political cowardice.”Various counties opposed to biotech have hijacked science and proven technology in favor of ideology and ignorance. In doing so they ignore their own scientists and food safety agencies such as EFSA and fail to provide leadership and sheer common sense to their consumers, he argues. “As more and more biotech soy and corn events come forward both in the U.S. and the rest of the world, the EU’s current policies will once again create chaos. That’s a prediction that’s fairly safe to make,” he adds.