IFIF Logo

Download Executive Summary

"

Menu

a

FEED CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES

The global feed industry sits quietly at the heart of our food system, an essential link between the earth’s resources and the world’s nourishment.

More than 1 billion people rely upon livestock for their livelihoods. Milk and dairy products, meat, and eggs play an essential role in nourishing people throughout their lives, especially those at risk of malnutrition. Sustainable production means ensuring these foods are available, affordable, and safe, and that those who produce them can earn a meaningful living.

Every day, feed companies help farmers do something both simple and profound: sustain feed animals to stay healthy, productive, and resilient. A healthy animal is a productive animal; one that grows efficiently, uses fewer resources, and stays protected from disease.

Healthy animals
mean less waste,
lower emissions, and safer food for people.

"

Our feed industry is at the heart of this wider food system

The feed industry has long been a pioneer in circular economy practices. Before the term even existed, they've been upcycling agricultural and industrial byproducts, rendered animal waste, almond hulls, cottonseed, citrus and beet pulp, into nutritious livestock feed.

According to the American Feed Industry Association, over 40% of feed ingredients come from industrial byproducts that would otherwise require disposal, preventing millions of tons of annual landfill waste. Circularity isn't a trend in feed; it's foundational.

The next opportunity for the feed industry today is to 'follow the molecules' and identify new waste streams from other industries that it can upcycle, particularly where ingredients have a heavy water or fossil fuel footprint.

40%

of feed ingredients used today originate from industrial byproducts that would otherwise need disposal.

Learn more about Circularity
"
 

A WORLD WITHOUT COWS?

As explored in the documentary, World Without Cows, agriculture is a vast complex system central to survival in all corners of the world. We see that farmers and ranchers aren’t just putting food in front of all of us; they are producing nutritional elements that bring more than food to the customer (i.e., use of co-products, fur, leather) and participating in a system with deep cultural and spiritual significance.

The diversity of that system spans nomadic tribes on shared grazing land to feedlots housing and finishing thousands of cattle. These different models and paradigms have very different impacts on communities, water, soil, land use, emissions… And there are as many different 'sustainability' definitions as there are farms.

Learn more about a World Without Cows in our Sharing Feed's Story case study.

"

Feeding the World

Today, we in the feed industry reliably deliver feed to nourish livestock efficiently. All while upcycling a range of waste streams.

We support human health and each other through crises, and we have even embedded some key sustainability principles into our businesses.

We face, however, mounting pressure: political and trade volatility, resource scarcity, extreme weather, more pests and diseases, and shifting expectations among policymakers and consumers.

The question is 
not whether change is required, but whether we will act proactively? So it can be on our terms.

"

THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD

While we are a highly competitive market, our industry has unparalleled capacity for collaboration. That’s because, when it comes down to it, we in agriculture know what’s important.

A powerful example is a story from Canada, where weeks of climate change-driven flooding threatened lives and livelihoods.

As extreme weather made roads impassable, feed mills suddenly could no longer reach their customer farms. Instead of retreating into competition, mills across the region united, delivering to the farms they could reach, regardless of whose customer it was.

In solidarity, 'competitors' set aside business boundaries to ensure animals were cared for and farmers weren’t left behind.

This story reminds us that we could come together now to prevent crises in the future.

This story reminds us that we in the feed industry and agriculture know how to act as a community. But we tend to react, and the challenges our industry faces today require proactivity.

Click here to learn more about ongoing collaborations tackling key challenges.

Click here to learn more about the systemic reasons why collaborations often don’t deliver on their potential.

Go to Industry Alliances
"

FEED CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

#

Previous

Open Key

Next

$

As every farmer knows, there is no economic bottom line without good soil, water and sunlight.

The global feed industry is not alone in facing accelerating risks, challenges and uncertainty. This change can be a powerful catalyst for positive growth if proactive actions are taken towards a brighter 2050.

The first step is a honest assessment, as all industries must do, of the incompatible reality of pressure to continually grow businesses that depend extracting on finite (limited) 'resources' such as fossil fuels or phosphorus (P), or using other resources like local water, topsoil or marine resources faster than they can be replenished.

The road to 2050 does not look like the road behind us through the 1900s.

Maintaining our markets and capital requires addressing increasing pressure on water, land, topsoil, energy, and minerals - and overarching, stable weather and healthy ecosystems are already failing.

They are all under increasing pressure with shortages and price hikes driven by trade volatility, policy shifts, degradation and extreme weather disruptions.

Feed is a low margin business reliant on a global supply chain that it has influence, but no direct control over. And these are challenging times.

Unless changes are made, this will make it increasingly difficult to maintain already low margin feed businesses, and to feed maintain current herd sizes. For example, the U.S. beef herd is at a 50 year low due to climate change driven drought conditions.

The good news is there are many direct and indirect opportunities to make improvements across multiple issues and support livestock production system in multiple ways (aka 'multisolving' solutions). That is solutions that make improvements across multiple issues at the same time, such as upcycling phosphorous from municipal waste which:

a) Cuts phosphorous costs
b) Takes pressure off a limited resource
c) Reduces harmful waste
d) Lowers feed carbon footprints

This is an example of decoupling growth from resource extraction.

We will explore many solutions with case study examples in the following pages.

Multi-solving approaches are especially important because they also surface trade-offs.

There's a common misperception that sustainability will cost more. Many case studies here will show that isn't true, even in the short term and especially in the medium and long-term.

But there are also trade-offs within sustainability metrics. For example, while the feed industry doesn't directly control crop production, it's natural to assume that the best way to improve carbon footprints is to change ingredient formulation.

While there are certainly opportunities, like supporting sustainable agriculture upstream or finding alternative substrates for petrol-based additives, what one company found is that when they ran a formulation test with stricter carbon footprint limits for Norwegian salmon feed, the model unexpectedly shifted from vegetable ingredients to fish meal and fish oil.

Because land-use change drives much of the footprint for crops, and marine ingredients have none, the formulation appeared 'more sustainable' on paper. But following the recommendation could have increased use of finite, fragile and already overdrawn marine resources. This reminds us to explore whole system ripple effects like eutrophication, acidification or resource use when we explore solutions.

Go to Case Studies