Agriculture Business Week

Antimicrobial agents, or a group of drugs like antibiotics, antifungals, antiprotozoals, and antivirals, are potent weapons’ against pathogenic microorganisms in veterinary and human medicine, the long term use of animal feed supplemented with low or “sub-therapeutic” doses of antimicrobials has come under the greatest scrutiny.

The main concern is focused on the potential emergence of’ antimicrobial resistance. Scientists have determined that the potential for antibiotic resistance to occur in food borne bacteria exists, but using science-based risk analysis, assess the human medical consequence as low.

It is thought that the mounting problem on human infections are difficult to treat due to antimicrobial resistance rooted in antimicrobial overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics, with antimicrobial resistance in food borne bacteria being only a smaller contributor.

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Posted on September 16th, 2009 under Livestock, Poultry. Tags: Animals, Antimicrobial, Feeds. Comments: None

Organic farming is a vibrant commercial agricultural system practiced in 120 countries, covering 31 million hectares of cultivated lands and an additional 62 million hectares of certified, wild harvested areas. In 2006, the organic market was worth US$40 billion and it is expected to reach US$70 million by 2012.

Professor Ivette Perfecto, a researcher from the University of Michigan, believes that organic farming can feed the world’s growing population. She said the idea that people would go hungry if farming went organic is “ridiculous.”

She pointed out: “Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies – all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food.”

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Posted on September 15th, 2009 under Farming, Organic, Plant. Tags: Azolla, Farming, Feeds, Organic. Comments: 3

In the banana producing areas in Mindanao, the growers have a problem with their so-called “rejects” which are either too small or too big for the export market.

One big plantation alone may have 15 tons of rejects every day. There are some businessmen who buy the rejects dirt cheap (P500 per truckload) but they can buy just a small fraction.

One company that is taking advantage of the availability of cheap off-size bananas is Perfect Milling, a feedmill in Tagum City, Davao del Norte, managed by Aerol Conde. Thanks to the off-size bananas, Aerol can produce high quality feeds at a lower price than the competition. He said that his feeds (for swine and poultry) are at least P40 per bag cheaper than the leading brand in the market.

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Posted on September 9th, 2009 under Fruits, Livestock. Tags: Banana, Feeds, Fruits, Pigs/Hogs, Swine. Comments: 1

DIAMOND V XP CULTURE IS DIFFERENT
Diamond V XP Yeast Culture is different from other yeast products in the feed market. It is a fermented product and not just yeast cells or yeast biomass. Manufactured by Diamond V Mills, Inc., this unique yeast culture product is more like a fermented beer, wine or bread than like baker’s yeast or an active dry yeast blend. Its vital components include yeast cell walls (beta-glucans and mannan-oligosaccharides or MOS ). yeast cell solubles and metabolites (organic acids, peptides, vitamins, lipids, oligosaccharides, nucleotides, amino acids, esters, and alcohols).

The guaranteed analysis of Diamond V XP Yeast Culture is as follows: not less than 12 percent crude protein; not less than 3 percent crude fat; not more than 6.5 percent crude fiber.

PRODUCTION OF FERMENTATION METABOLITES
Production of nutrilites or fermentative metabolites by the yeast cells is the principle behind the yeast culture fermentation. A specific culture media is inoculated with live yeast cells, allowed to ferment under a specific set of conditions, and then the entire fermented media is dried. It contains both the residual live yeast cells used in the fermentation as well as metabolites or metabolic byproducts which the yeast produced.

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Posted on May 20th, 2009 under Aquaculture, Fungi, Livestock. Tags: Feeds, Fish, Fungi, Livestock, Yeast. Comments: None

For more than 100 years have been fed to animals either as yeast, fermented mash produced on the farm, byproduct from breweries or distilleries or commercial yeast products specifically produced for animal, feeding. A veritable contusion exists throughout the feed industry, though, concerning what the various yeast products really are.

WHAT YEASTS ARE
Yeasts are single-celled microscopic fungi which are generally about 5-10 microns in size. The Latin names represent the genus and species (e.g. Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Candida utilis). The species differ from each other on the bases of where they are found, their cellular morphology or shape, how they metabolize different substrates, and how they reproduce. Nearly 50,000 species of fungi exist, yet only 60 different genera of yeast represent about 500 different species.

UBIQUITOUS SPECIES
Yeasts are abundant. They can be abundant on cereal grains, grains byproducts, silages, hays, and are even present in the soil and water. The Diamond V Mills Laboratory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, has found that various feed ingredients contain a few thousand (103) live yeast cells per gram to over a million (106) per gram.

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Posted on May 19th, 2009 under Aquaculture, Fungi, Livestock. Tags: Feeds, Fish, Fungi, Livestock, Yeasts. Comments: 3

Tilapia farmers claim that the biggest slice in their production cost is spent for commercial supplemental feed. This is because intensified tilapia production has resulted in growers’ dependency on commercial feed.

Findings of researchers of the Freshwater Aquaculture Center of the Central Luzon State University (FAC-CLSU) have shown that the cost of supplemental feed accounts for about 60 percent of the total production cost. This means that for every P 10 spent in the production of tilapia, P6 is spent for feeds. That’s big. Tilapia growers would surely derive more income from their enterprise if the amount spent for feeds is reduced considerably.

It is for this reason that scientists of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh, North Carolina have been continuously collaborating with researchers in the Philippines, Cambodia, China, Kenya and Mexico on the conduct of studies on tilapia feeding strategies.

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Posted on April 17th, 2009 under Aquaculture. Tags: Feeds, Fish, Tilapia. Comments: 38