Transcript
Speaker: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Feeding Grain podcast. And thank you for listening. My name is Stephen Kilger. I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain and your host. We have a great show for you today. Laura Moody, executive director of the Institute for Feed Education and Research, also known as iFeeder stopped by to talk about the next stages in iFeeder's sustainability project and how the organization needs industry partners for the project's next stage.
Speaker: We also talked about ifeaters work with the World Wildlife Fund and how the industry can work with civil society organizations with similar goals. It's always fun to talk with Laura and I hope you guys enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Speaker: But before we get onto that, I've got a few bits of housekeeping to go over. If you're listening to the podcast within a podcast app, please consider subscribing to it. It would help us out a lot. If you have an idea for a topic you would like me to cover or someone within the animal feed grain handling or related industries you think would be a good interview, let me know. This podcast page on feedinggrain .com has a button right under the title that will let you send me an email directly. I hope to hear from you soon. All right. That's all out of the way. So onto my talk with Laura.
Speaker: Hi, Laura. Welcome to the Feeding Green podcast. Hey, thanks for having me on, Steve.
Speaker: Oh, always a pleasure. So it's been about two months since we talked last. That was right around IPPE. And iFeeder had just finished the first part of a sustainability roadmap project. And you just launched the Animal Food Industry Sustainability Toolkit. For anyone not familiar with the roadmap or the toolkit, give us a quick, I guess, elevator pitch on what those projects are and how they came together.
Speaker: Yes, iFeeder spent the last year and a half putting together a roadmap for itself so that we can have framework and guidance for supporting the animal feed and pet food industry sustainability efforts. So that's the roadmap element. It's really the roadmap for iFeeder and the work that we're going to be pursuing going forward. But we also, along with it, launched the toolkit. So the sustainability toolkit was then.
Speaker: really intended for the use by animal food and pet food industry members to be able to start or advance their own sustainability journey. So it has a set of resources within it that are indexed back to, we call it the crawl walk run approach. So, you know, getting started kind of making progress and then really advancing your journey in the sustainability space. So toolkit is out there and it's getting used by the industry, which is really great.
Speaker: Yeah, it sounds great. When you announce the project, I really love the idea because as I'm sure you're aware doing this, the level of ability to commit and level of commitment to sustainability in our industry is kind of all over the place depending on the size of the company. So it's really great that you have now provided this toolkit for people of all sizes. What has the response to it been so far? Have people been reaching out and have they liked it? How's it gone?
Speaker: Yeah, so we've had a lot of interest in the toolkit. It's definitely garnered an increase in the number of speaking requests and podcasts like this one, as well as it's really significantly driven traffic to the ID feeder website. So we know people are seeing it and we know they're paying attention to it.
Speaker: I've really appreciated some of the feedback that I've received. So we kind of on a continual basis get the occasional thank you note from somebody who really appreciates the fact that we're providing a toolkit for companies that may have not done anything yet. Right. And they're small and they don't have a significant set of resources to advance. So having the toolkit has been really helpful to them. And some of those folks have let us know that. So that's been really great.
Speaker: But we've also heard from folks that there's so much content in the toolkit that it can be overwhelming on first take. And so we've been working with American Beat Industry Association and the communications team there to roll out the toolkit also a little bit one at a time. Right. So we're looking at each of the different elements within the crawl walk one sections. And we're starting to take a deep dive into some of the individual elements within the toolkit.
Speaker: so that we can share those across longer time period and give people the opportunity to take a look at one resource at a time versus seeing the whole collective of 25 resources. So we've had great feedback and we are continuing to think about what to add to it and we're continuing to go out and speak about the toolkit to industry members or to provide support or guidance to them as they start their journeys.
Speaker: Well, you've gotten feedback, which is, I mean, I love our industry, but they're not always the most vocal people. People are at all different levels. It's really encouraging to hear that you're listening to it and then you're accommodating that. Yeah. We want to make sure they have a soft introduction to it, right? And can find their own place to start rather than getting overwhelmed. We don't want anybody to be overwhelmed with the effort.
Speaker: Well, they always say that's one of the biggest barriers to entry, right, for anything is if you look at it and you're like, oh, this is just too much, then you just don't do it at all. And that's, that's not the way to the future. So I saw that you're starting on the second phase of your sustainability roadmap. You released a press release, I think last month about it. What is next for the project?
Speaker: Yeah, so we do a combination of efforts right with the first phase of the roadmap with the feed system sustainability summit we co hosted with World Wildlife Fund last year, and just the surveying that we did to kind of focus and identify where we needed to put some effort.
Speaker: To kind of advance sustainability and provide greater support for the industry we identified a set of objectives and so i would say collectively if you look at those objectives and in one pitch i would say. Our phase two work which were launching now and starting to get underway.
Speaker: is would be collectively to advance the role and recognition of animal food as a sustainability solution within the food supply chain. So when we think about livestock production, you know through the communications that we've seen on this lately and really is driven by the all of the scope three
Speaker: work relative to greenhouse gas emissions that our downstream stakeholders are doing. But we have this identity now that feed can be 40 to 80 % of the footprint for animal agriculture, for the production of animal agriculture. And so we then have these downstream stakeholders that are like, oh, we need to focus on feed. Great. But then they oftentimes end up jumping right over the feed sector itself and focusing on feed stuff production.
Speaker: or focusing on the crop that's being grown in the field. And so they're putting their efforts towards regenerative agriculture, which is about utilizing practices to either sequester carbon into the soil or to reduce runoff or things we think of as climate smart practices. That's great. We absolutely need that. But
Speaker: There's a lot of work that animal feed and food sector does that should be considered an innovation or strategy or practices that can also reduce the footprint of animal agriculture. And so we want to put more of a focus and help those downstream stakeholders understand the opportunities that exist with innovation and the feed space relative to reducing that footprint.
Speaker: so that not all of the effort is focused on feed stuff production in the field. We think there's a place for both of them and we think it's on us a little bit to be able to show them what the art of the possible is relative to innovations that the feed industry brings to help reduce that environmental footprint. So collectively there are several projects that will be in that phase two work but that's really the desired outcome for it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really interesting because I would argue that sustainability, while it's been a topic for the public and for production agriculture for a long time, the feed industry has kind of gotten a pass on it just because not a lot of people know what the feed industry is. But it sounds like now we're catching up and there are a lot of improvements that the feed industry itself can make. And it's important that kind of the burden gets shared by everybody. It's not going to be a one -shot solution. You talk about the improvements that can occur in the feed industry, right? It's improvements in
Speaker: feed production itself, but it's also feed additives or feed ingredients or innovations that we bring that can improve the feed to gain, you know, the feed conversion ratio, or can improve the production efficiency. And if we can do things like that, we can get an animal to market faster. And that means it's using less water and it's emitting fewer greenhouse gas emissions and its footprint is smaller.
Speaker: And so, those are the things that I think we have to get better about speaking to and getting our downstream stakeholders to understand so that's, that's a ordinary focus for us. Plus not to sound crass that's going to end up being savings for you at the feet.
Speaker: Well, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So many times people think that sustainability is, people are turned off by sustainability because they just think about climate change or greenhouse gas emissions. But that's really short -sighted because sustainability is about so much more and they're understanding the different elements, the different risks, the different drivers within your own footprint.
Speaker: are often translated to cost savings when you get those under control. And so that's an important element. Yeah, definitely. So you're looking for industry partners for this next stage. What are you looking for in a partner and how should companies reach out if they want to participate?
Speaker: Yeah. So I feeder, we pursue our mission and this work with support from industry and non -industry members. And so we have partners that of course are folks within the animal feed and pet food industry. So corporate entities, but we also have partners in university systems that we're collaborating on grants with or from some of the check off or stakeholder organizations that we have obtained grant dollars from.
Speaker: And so we mix those resources and we mix those partners to make a strong collaboration to advance the sustainability effort. So from a corporate standpoint, from an industry member standpoint, we are a I -feeder, the Institute for Feed Education and Research. We are a 501c3. We are a nonprofit, which means we are in fundraising mode a lot of the time for our projects.
Speaker: And so a good corporate partner for us comes with some dollars we're open to all amounts of funding we don't turn any amount away and we treat all those folks equally when they come in to work on a project with us, so the current efforts underway.
Speaker: We are just getting ready to kick off our new sustainability roadmap advisory team and that group is made up of funders for the phase two work. So now's the time to get involved. If somebody, if there's an entity out there that wants to be involved in the sustainability effort, you know, please, by all means contact me.
Speaker: at iFeeder, we really need industry members involvement because they all come with a slightly different perspective. Either they're well advanced on their sustainability journeys or they're early on in their sustainability journeys or maybe they're in the feed ingredient space or in the co -product byproduct space or in oil seed, grain seed processing, you know, everybody comes from a different place within the feed sector or comes from a different perspective of where they are in their journey.
Speaker: and those voices are all really important to us to be able to create resources and efforts that support the broader industry. Yeah, iFeeder always made sense to me because really it's a donation and it's technically a charity organization, but it's really an investment too in the industry as a whole, which kind of keeps us all going, which you guys, your website is I believe iFeeder .org. That's correct.
Speaker: And there is information there on how to make a contribution to any of the different projects or they can also reach out to me and I'll tell you my email is lmoody at afia .org and you can reach out to me if you want to learn more about the different projects we have underway.
Speaker: Yeah. You're always open to chatting with members of the industry. So I feed her and you mentioned earlier is kind of, I don't want to say complete partnership, but you've been working a lot with the WWF, which for whatever reason, as a 35 year old man, I can't disassociate with the wrestling organization.
Speaker: But it is the World Wildlife Fund, which is a really great organization and seemed very willing to work with the industry on sustainability. Can you talk to me a little bit about your partnership? And you recently, they recently released a white paper that you contributed on called Focus on Sustainable Feed, which I read and is a really interesting read and available on their website. I'll have a link to it in the show notes. But it was really fascinating to get through. And I'm just kind of
Speaker: I was interested in how this partnership started and what you've been working with them on.
Speaker: I came from working with the fertilizer industry, Steve, before I came to the feed industry. And when I was at the fertilizer industry, I had the opportunity to partner with the Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund on different projects. And, you know, that really brought home to me the opportunity that we have to work with civil society organizations, especially those that are pragmatic in their thinking, meaning that they see, they see something they want to change, but they recognize that they
Speaker: need to work with industry and not against industry for the betterment of all. And so not every civil society organization is like that, but WWF in the US is one of those entities. And so they see feed as important to the things that they want to pursue relative to agriculture. They see it as important relative to greenhouse gas emissions. They see it as important to
Speaker: maintaining land use the way it currently is so that we're not converting prairie or forest for feed production. And so those things are important to them, but they see the opportunity to work with feed in that space. And so actually have a pretty strong team at World Wildlife Fund here in the US that's focused on livestock production and feed elements and
Speaker: We had this opportunity last year to collaborate for the Feed Systems Sustainability Summit, and we brought together the whole animal feed and pet food value chain together to be able to really discuss where some of our challenges lie in this space and to start thinking about solutions to pursue. So the white paper actually came as a result of that Feed Systems Sustainability Summit, and they built that focus around solutions
Speaker: from content that came out of that summit, and so the effort, and as it reflects in the paper, the summit effort
Speaker: was focused on regenerative agriculture, which we said a little bit about, was focused on innovation in the feed industry, circularity in the feed industry. And there we're talking about the ability to use co -products and byproducts in animal feed, because oftentimes we're feeding products that can't be used for human consumption, but animals can consume those. And so we're taking waste out of the system. So circularity.
Speaker: is an area and then the fourth area we focused on at the summit and in the paper is on responsible sourcing so obviously responsible sourcing could be the feed industry responsibly sourcing feed ingredients or commodity crops that we're using within our system or responsible sourcing could be
Speaker: a downstream stakeholder and where their decisions they're making about protein, right, that they're purchasing. And so within that space, we worked on all of those areas. And I think the most important takeaway that I had from the summit that really was clarified for me
Speaker: as they were pulling together the white paper, is that it's not just the feed sector who's responsible for these solutions. It's the whole value chain around the feed sector, because if we bring innovations to bear, but the downstream stakeholder isn't interested in those innovations, then why are we doing it? And it's not economically feasible for us.
Speaker: Similarly, if we want to focus on responsible sourcing, but our upstream crop producers aren't doing all the things that they could do to reduce the footprint of the production of that grain, then again, we can't responsibly source those materials. So we have to have collaboration and partnerships across that whole value chain to act on the solutions that WWF speaks to. And really important, we have to have market signals, right? So we need
Speaker: we as the feed sector need to hear from the livestock producers and the downstream customers that they want the things that we could actually bring to help reduce their footprints. Definitely. I like that it's reasonable solutions too. Like you said, they're pragmatic about what is and what isn't an option because there are some environmental groups out there like, oh, let's just all stop eating animals and you're like, well, that's not going to happen.
Speaker: That's not gonna happen, right? Oftentimes those folks that wanna stop eating animals forget that animals consume a lot of their waste products from their vegan efforts. And if we weren't feeding that stuff back to animals, then what would they be doing with all those waste products, right?
Speaker: Exactly. And it's not as simple as just, oh, we'll just grow vegetables now. It's just not how things work, unfortunately. But those are all the questions I have, and it's really exciting the work you guys are doing. I really look forward to these talks every six months or so where I get to kind of catch up and see what you guys are up to. So thank you so much for speaking to me and my audience.
Speaker: Well, we really appreciate the opportunity to be able to share what iFeeder is up to. And just as a reminder, if you want more information on the toolkit itself or making a donation or learning about some of the other projects that iFeeder has underway, you can catch us on iFeeder .org. Yeah, please everyone go there. There will be links to it all over the show notes and within the transcript and things as well. So no excuse not to just click a button. Well, thank you so much, Laura. And we'll talk again soon.
Speaker: Great, thanks Steve for having us on.
