Transcript
Speaker: Hi everyone, my name is Steven Kilgur and I'm the managing editor for Feeding Grain Magazine and the host of the Feeding Grain Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries.
Speaker: Today's episode is brought to you by the Binwhip from NewMat Systems. The powerful dual impact binwhip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry.
Speaker: Learn more today at binwhip.com. I'm recording my intro at home, but today's podcast will be my interview with Laura Moody, the Executive Director at the Institute of Feed Education and Research, also known as iFeeder, and Dr. Yoon Tan Hung, Senior Manager of Research at iFeeder. I got a chance to talk to them at this year's International Production and Processing Expo, which already feels so long ago.
Speaker: But we chatted about iFeeder's expanded team and research capacities, their recently published reports on feed ingredients and vitamin amino acid supply chains, and the organization's newly launched Project Warehouse Initiative.
Speaker: I hope you enjoyed the interview. It was recorded on the trade show floor, so forgive the occasional background noise and badge jingling. If you want to help out with the podcast and listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. if you're listening online, sign up for the Feeding Gray newsletter and just watch to see when new podcasts drop and stay up to date from news around the industry. And for now, on to the show.
Speaker: Thank you guys so much for joining to me today. I really appreciate it. Steven, thanks for having us on. We always love to sit down and chat with you about what iFeeder has going on. Well, it's weird. iFeeder came around, I think, the first year I really joined the industry. iFeeder had also just launched.
Speaker: So I have this kind of like special relationship with iFeeder. Like as I've been in the feed industry, you guys have been in the feed industry. It's... I don't know, and you've been doing more and more. It's nice to see your evolution year over year, because it seems like you're doing more and more every year. can you talk a little bit about what you guys did last year and how it went? So let's start with the evolution. You alluded to the growth that iFeeders had, right?
Speaker: And part of that growth in the last year is us bringing on additional resources. So since the audience can't see us sitting here, So first, Laura Moody, Executive Director for iFeeder, Institute for Feed Education and Research. But last year, we were able to bring on a senior manager of research, Dr. Yun-Tai Hung, who is going to be able to help us expand the scope. So I'm going to pause for a minute so that the audience gets another voice in this. Yun-Tai, can you introduce yourself quickly? Yes, so hello everyone. My name is Yuan Kai Hong. I'm trained as a swine nutritionist from the University of Minnesota.
Speaker: Prior to joining iBeater, I was working in the U.S. feed industry for private feed companies. So very glad for this opportunity to join iBeater to expand what iBeater's capability Yeah, it's great to have you you here. We got to talk a little bit. For everyone listening, we're at IPPE right now, is currently speaking. And so far, you guys have already, like, we've talked a little bit, but we didn't get a really good chance to kind of discuss what you guys had going on last year. At IPPE, we rolled out our feed ingredient consumption report, and we have been using that data to talk about over 70 ingredients and how they're used in quantities across the livestock and poultry and aquaculture industries in the US. So that report actually we put out about a year ago.
Speaker: We followed that up in April with our pet food ingredient report. Also looks at ingredients, but over 600 ingredients. That's where we buy Nielsen's data, reverse engineer the product labels, and then sort out all of the ingredients. That report we published last year.
Speaker: And then we finished off our year with publishing the vitamin and amino acid assess strategic assessment of the supply chain and it's ah what a disruption could look like for food security.
Speaker: Dr. Yun Tai-Hang came on about a week after we had a version of that report available, and he was very much a part of our reviewing and parsing that report out and getting it ready to present. So we've been talking a lot about that report ever since November.
Speaker: And that research is already coming back to benefit the industry. i mean, I was at the Animal X sustainability summit yesterday and I noticed already that research is being referenced by other members of the industry for their own kind of evaluation of their sustainability efforts. So when you say the industry's responded, they really have. Was there anything interesting kind of in those findings that you guys like want to highlight or you think is really cool? Yeah, I think one thing that I'm going turn to Dr. Hung to talk about is when we look at it by species, we just launched our sub reports. And so on the iFeeder website right now, if you go to iFeeder.org, You can download the full vitamin and amino acid report, all 200 plus pages, which some of us have read multiple times. Or you can get the shortened summary. Or now, as of this week, you can get any of the sub reports. So if you just want to know about vitamin amino acid production and the impact on boiler industry, you can go get that sub report. So I think to me what folks would be interested in is like some of the key findings that we have from that and why it's why it matters and then what AFI is doing with it. So I'm gonna let Yun Tai say a little bit about the findings. Yeah, so so basically right now we released the sub-report, a cover reporter.
Speaker: mayor, year turkey, and swine. So if you go to the full report, and you may see the order of the information is a little bit here and there.
Speaker: But right now in the sub-report, you can clearly see from how much percentage of these nutrients supply from the feed and from the supplements. And you can also see in the representative industry diets within these diet for either quarters, swine, tertio layers, how much they rely on on these supplementations in amino acids and vitamins.
Speaker: Then we also showing you that When there is a supply chain disruption occurs, obviously these nutrients will be short in these diets. then Then we can also estimate the impact on animal productivity. is that For example, in our lysine supplementation using MarketHawk as an example.
Speaker: you may see at 100% supplementation rate, average growth rate will be two pounds a day. But once we start limiting lysine supplementation in a market hot diet, in a very severe deficient scenario, if there's 0% lysine supplementation in our simple diet, we start seeing these market hot fits will only grow about one pound a day. That is considered as about 50% reduction in growth rate.
Speaker: And obviously, this growth rate reduction will lead to taking additional time to market this pest. So if you consider the bar space during the summertime, when all the producers chasing for the game, if we don't have sufficient nutrients supplied in the diet, either it's amino acids or vitamins, it's not just impacting animal productivity, but also impacting producers' profitability.
Speaker: and nobody wanted to take these laws. So obviously these laws were all, the additional cost would add to the consumer's whole product. So very likely that will impact affordability for the food supply as well.
Speaker: And it's interesting because this data like really wasn't available before, right? At least not in enough public forum. We had opinions. We generally knew what to expect. We generally knew there was an impact.
Speaker: but we had never really quantified the impact. And you know, the reason we wanted this is so that AFIA could then do the policy work to be able to start finding mitigation options for this challenge of this concentration of products being produced in China, and what do we do to mitigate a potential disruption.
Speaker: If we go to the Hill with documented information that has been quantified and can be really more considered a fact, right, that gets a different response. And so for AFIA, it was really valuable for the industry and for the trade association to be able then to use the report, but then work on some policy triggers, which is what they're doing now. Because for so many, i mean, feed suppliers, right, they don't have the ability to do this kind of research themselves. And I think the pe industry, they are aware that there's reliance on imports for their critical key ingredients.
Speaker: But if you ask them to give you numbers, they probably couldn't tell you how much percentage of imports into the United States is brought in country, B country. And then in the reports, we do provide these type of information. So what we found valuable is we can provide the actual data, not just the OPU, so we can talk in a stack.
Speaker: Yeah. and For such, I mean, we love our representatives some of the time, but they don't always know our industry very well. And so being able to really give them facts and numbers about ingredients that, let's face it, they probably never even heard of and have no idea that it's used in animal feed.
Speaker: For them, they're like, we grow corn, just feed them corn. So knowing that all these things out hopefully helps them with their own trade knowledge and trying to work on all these deals that are going through right now.
Speaker: But that's last year. Old news. What are you guys up to now? The new news. I think, like I like i said, you know we have been evolving and expanding, and we continue to do so. And so we, we I think I can speak for you and are really excited about where we're going this year.
Speaker: And so at the request of my board of trustees, at the iFeeder board of trustees last year, we have developed guidance to be able to gather more input on projects that iFeeder can do to support the industry.
Speaker: And so AFIA has 14 committees. Anything from the Aquaculture Committee to the Product Quality Committee to the Equine Committee, Nutrition Committee, right?
Speaker: Those folks have a goal within their committee work plans to identify policy priorities for AFIA. and then also then to work on actions to help advance those policy priorities.
Speaker: And so our board asked that we find a way to gather potential project ideas from those committees. And so one of his first tasks was to build out that guidance So we create a project submission guideline. Basically, it's a two-page to tell you what is the purpose of these project submission guidelines and what the project we are looking for and how does these projects align with the A-by-A priority. We also attach a few examples that the project I've been previously achieved.
Speaker: And with this project guideline, we believe that we'll help AFI committee members to prepare a project submission. In addition to project guideline, we understand each committee has their daily business they need to work on.
Speaker: So we prepare a template. This template is about two-page project submissions to tell you how to prepare a these from the idea to a project submission. So we believe with this resource available, we are able to collect project idea from each committee members or community group then that can benefit our industry because they always in the industry. They know what industry is needed and benefit themselves.
Speaker: So our goal then is to really create a project warehouse that we can have for iFeeder. And then within that project warehouse, as we have projects that get recommended from that group, right, then we'll bring them to the board, and then the iFeeder board will say, hey, this is really important.
Speaker: We should just use iFeeder funds that it has available because it's a high priority for the industry and we should pursue it now. Or maybe the board says, hey, this is really important. Let's do a funding call. Let's see if we can get some contributions to cover this work.
Speaker: Or maybe they say, hey, this is bigger than iFeeder. Let's see if we can find some partnerships or collaborations with others or with some university folks, and let's go after a grant application for this. And so really, this project warehouse gives us the ability to pursue just a broader array and gives us more ideas that we can take forward. So we're super excited about where the project warehouse and incoming ideas from the AFIA committees is going to be able to take us with expanding the scope of what iFeeder is doing.
Speaker: way to involve the industry too in the kind of direction that you do. Industries seem so important to what iFeeder does. It's where you guys get obviously a lot of your support. It's also where you get a lot of your ideas and things. So any time you can involve them is really great.
Speaker: and i like i said i went to your animal at cultural sustainability summit your panel and you guys put together great speakers i really love the message of it the efficiency city it matters yeah efficiency matters and focusing on how far the industry has come not necessarily always how far it has to go it's very easy to be like these are all your problems and not compare them to where we were and 20, 30 years ago.
Speaker: Are you guys planning on doing more kind of outreach to members, doing more education sessions? So, I mean, we, in bringing on an additional resource, you know, iFeeder has a lot of ways that we do outreach to members. Our newsletter each month, if you don't get that, you can go to the iFeeder website you sign up to get it.
Speaker: We have added a monthly blog series. So we have two to three blogs a month that come out where we're picking apart pieces of work or things that we see and adding content on that. Within our newsletter, we've been able to do some more kind of research-focused pieces because of his interest in animal nutrition. It's going out and finding things that others might find interesting and reporting on those within that space. So from that standpoint, we've got that outreach underway.
Speaker: we also are looking at ways that we can continue our sustainability work. We potentially are going to be doing some sustainability workshops this year on the feed industry, but for consumer product goods companies so they can learn more about the feed industry as they look for opportunities to engage. That's to be determined yet. We have some grant dollars applied for, and so we're waiting on some feedback for that. We're continuing to do work in the sustainability space, and I think AFIA, we work so closely with them, has brought on a new education person, and her role is to help us do some education programs within AFIA. And so I think we'll have the opportunity to take more of iFeeder's work and translate it into some education programs. So that's a little bit of elusive response, but it's in the picture. I just don't quite know what it's gonna look like on the landscape yet. It sounds like you have a lot. It's an exciting time. You guys are growing and you're doing a lot. the Quick question, how has IPPE been for you? Is this your first time? It's my, well, you can come see that it's my first time because my last time on IPPE is 10 years ago.
Speaker: So it's totally different. And I would say right now, I don't have enough time to visit the food right now because lots of activity. Because I have too many things for you to do otherwise. That is my struggle as well. Yeah. I mean, this is an opportunity for us to meet with a lot of industry members, do a lot of interviews and podcasts and presentations and get our word out there. So IPPE for us is like all about doing outreach and communications.
Speaker: And if anyone wants to get involved, wants to talk to you, and wants to submit something, wants to do any of that, where should they go? Yeah, you can find us at iFeeder's website. So www.ifeeeder.org.
Speaker: Don't forget, we are a 5013C nonprofit. We have an easy way for people to donate. There's a donate link right up there. For us, we love corporate donations. We also love individual donations. Be on the lookout for our individual giving campaign coming up this spring. We'll celebrate iFeeder's anniversary with the Day of Giving. You'll see some outreach on that. And so we love to hear from our contributors and we will take anything that's helpful for us. We have small projects that we do annually that $1,000 projects and we have bigger projects that are and projects. And so for us,
Speaker: ah twenty five dollars contribution from an individual is great and a $5,000 contribution from a company is great. And so easy ways for people to do that. Yeah, I think it's an important thing to remind. This is your organization, right? This is for you. This is to represent you. This is to represent projects that probably won't get funding in any other way. So get involved.
Speaker: Talk to people. I'm sure Laura would love to talk to you. Just send her an email. That's right. Send me an email. I'll even say it. lmoody at afia.org. Well, thank you guys so much for talking to me today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker: I'm looking forward to all you guys do and to continue you to follow your work in the future. Thanks, Steven. Thank you.
