In a country of over 1.2 billion people, agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy. It contributes to the overall economic growth of the country and determines the standard of living for over half of the population of India.   

The state of Karnataka, an agrarian area in the southwest region where much of the state is still dependent on the monsoon season, has experienced substantial growth in food and grain production through the introduction of improved seed varieties, fertilizer applications and the implementation of irrigation practices. However, these advancements have also resulted in depletion of nutrients and a decrease in organic matter in the soil. In order to overcome these challenges, the local government has implemented measures that include soil fertility status reports and then use the results of these tests to advise growers on more sustainable crop management practices.   

Karnataka’s growers face several challenges in terms of maintaining their economic viability:

• Land holdings: Nearly 80 percent of farming families own less than 2 acres of land.
• Irrigation: 70 percent of the arable land is rainfed.
• Crop technology: There is limited distribution of seeds and other primary inputs available to average growers, who find cost to be the most prohibitive factor in attaining new technology.  
• Soil erosion and depletion: Large areas of land are susceptible to soil erosion from wind and water. Soils have also historically been overused and overworked, resulting in deteriorated soil health. 

“The registration of Alltech Crop Science [in Karnataka] is just the beginning,” says Aman Sayed, Alltech’s director of India and South Asia, who is looking forward to giving growers in the region a natural alternative to the traditional fertilizers available.

The use of natural-based fertilizers can help increase nutrient availability in the soil and improve plant defenses to stressors, such as those caused by lack of irrigation, and help plants reach their full genetic potential.  

Have a question or comment?

Have a question or comment?

Antibiotic-free is a hot topic these days, but have you noticed the discussions mainly center on poultry? What about pork, “the other white meat?”

If pork intends to align itself with poultry in the minds and preferences of consumers, it’s time for the industry to pay heed to the consumer demand for protein produced without the use of antibiotics. Many areas around the world, including the European Union and the United States, are already legislating the judicious use of antibiotics, but some consumers have pushed even further for “no antibiotics ever.” While some consumers’ demands may emanate from misinformation, it doesn’t require a crystal ball to understand that change is at hand for traditional production.

According to a recent study by Feed International, 57 percent of respondents report more than half of their company’s production is antibiotic-free. The study was not specific to production animal species, but it’s clear that the antibiotic-free movement isn’t slowing. It’s coming down the pipeline fast, and pork producers would do well to prepare for their customers’ expectations.

It is probable that consumers will soon turn their eyes to pig production with the same scrutiny and expectations they have had for poultry.

Pork’s majority in stomach share

Pork has the greatest stomach share among meats in world consumption. The Alltech Global Feed Survey 2017demonstrated an 8 percent increase in feed for pork production in 2016, and that growth is expected to continue its rise, particularly as the population increases. In the U.S. alone, pork is projected to have a 3 percent growth, according to Rabobank’s 2016 fourth quarter report.

Despite its top position among meats and its growth, pork has not contended with the same level of consumer-driven scrutiny as the poultry industry, which has been pressured to remove antibiotics from production as much as is humanely possible.

The antibiotic-free pork pack leaders

In dealing with the demand for antibiotic-free poultry, some retailers and major restaurant chains have already anticipated the shift in attention to pork.

Here is a list of a few that have made their plans regarding future pork sourcing public:

Chipotle and Panera Bread: Both have made claims to commit to sourcing some of their meat from antibiotic-free livestock.

Subway: Intends to transition to antibiotic-free pork once it completes its chicken and turkey transitions. 2025 is the approximate date.

Walmart and BJ’s: Currently have some antibiotic-free pork meat available.

Whole Foods: Began offering antibiotic-free food products in 2010.

Chick-Fil-A: Aims to be “No antibiotics ever” by 2019, but their commitment has been specific to their chicken. Will the bacon and sausage be next?

As retailers begin to pull from the supply chain, we might see a domino effect toward wider adoption of antibiotic-free production within poultry.

Suppliers such as Country View Family Farms and Niman Ranch provide antibiotic-free pork according to strict standards. Last year, Tyson announced its Open Prairie Natural Pork produced by pigs raised without any added hormones or growth promoting substances, minimal processing, an all-vegetarian diet and no antibiotics ever. Earlier this year, Smithfield launched an antibiotic-free line of fresh pork products under its Pure Farms brand, which designates pork minimally processed with no antibiotics, steroids, hormones or artificial ingredients.  

Where else is the pork label turning “antibiotic-free?”

Antibiotic-free pork production is flourishing in Denmark, for example. In 1995, a program known as DANMAP was established by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and the Danish Ministry of Health for “surveillance of antimicrobial consumption and resistance in bacteria from animals, food and humans.”

For over 15 years, Danish farmers have only relied on antibiotics to treat illness in their herds. The program they follow allows for this therapeutic use and, when combined with other management techniques such as delayed weaning, it has shown to be just as effective as traditional production. Interestingly, according to an article in the New York Times, it would only cost U.S. farmers $4.50 per head to follow a Danish model.

What makes antibiotic-free pork more challenging for producers?

What’s holding pork back from capitalizing on the antibiotic-free movement?  First and foremost on producers’ minds is the risk of decreased profitability. Animals that do not receive antibiotics are more prone to sickness, and, of course, mortality. On several occasions, Dr. Rodger Main from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University has cited a 2011 study in which the cost of producing an antibiotic-free pig was $11 per pig, increasing to more than $15 if one incorporates the overall risk that only 70 percent of the herd will survive production. This is significantly higher than the more recent New York Times estimate, but this range illustrates how exact production costs are highly variable and may vary daily based on feed costs.

Another worry is decrease in production weight. This adds to higher production costs and, together with the threat of mortality, can account for the pork industry’s slow adoption of antibiotic-free production, especially given that antibiotic growth promoters have proven their ability to increase animal size and weight.

Additionally, certification of antibiotic-free pork can be costly and time-consuming. Transitioning one’s herd from traditional use of antibiotics requires strategic planning and the implementation of counteractive measures to minimize the effect it can have on the operation’s bottom line.

What has made antibiotic-free poultry successful?

The poultry industry has been finding success in their transition to antibiotic-free production by following practices such as good husbandry, fewer birds in pens, feeding vegetarian diets, increasing downtime between harvesting flocks, etc.

Differences in pig production make implementation more challenging:

1. Pigs live longer, increasing the likelihood of an illness within their lifecycle.
2. There is less time to clean and disinfect between herds.
3. Weaning is particularly stressful for piglets and can impact their immune system.

However, there are some ways these issues can be addressed. There is evidence that pigs can not only be less susceptible to infectious risks, but may in fact thrive when certain natural feeding supplements are added to the diet.

For information on how Alltech can support your swine operation in reducing antibiotics or transitioning to antibiotic-free production, visit www.alltech.com/antibiotic-free or contact your local Alltech representative.

References

http://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/animal-health/us-pig-farmers-celebrate-progress-antibiotic-stewardship

http://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/animal-well-being/transitioning-antibiotic-free-pig-production-change-your-expectations

http://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/animal-well-being/4-factors-consider-when-raising-antibiotic-free-pigs

Little Pig Farm. “Swine Terminology.” 2017. http://littlepigfarm.com/swine-terminology/

Estabrook, Barry. April 3, 2015. “Denmark’s Drug-Free Pigs.” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/opinion/denmarks-drug-free-pigs.html?_r=0

Iowa State University. October 2002. “Minimizing the Use of Antibiotics in Pork Production.” https://www.ipic.iastate.edu/publications/ipic8.pdf

Have a question of comment?

An interview with Dr. Karl Dawson

The following is an edited transcript of our interview with Dr. Karl Dawson, vice president and chief scientific officer at Alltech. For Karl’s full bio, click here.

Before you joined Alltech, you were head of the University of Kentucky (UK) animal science department for 20 years, and you still serve as an adjunct professor with UK. You have a unique insight from being in the private sector business as well as academia. How do we interest the next generation in ag science?

That’s a real interesting question because there’s been a gap develop between what we call agriculture, particularly animal science, and the technologies that are being developed today. As a scientist, I think the technologies are really exciting, but sometimes it’s kind of hard to get the next generation, particularly the people from rural America and agriculture, to get excited about the same things. We have a lot of unique technologies. We talk about molecular biology and the things we can see with molecular biology; most farmers I talk to, most siblings from farmer’s kids that are coming off the farm, do not have a good understanding of what those things are, so we have this gap that we need to fill.

What we’re finding is that often times just the university education is not enough to give them confidence and the ability to lead in agriculture through using these technologies. One of the things we are doing right now is looking at a lot of outside programs that go beyond their degree and beyond academic training to see how we can interest students in doing those things. It starts at a very young level. We have programs that are set up at the elementary school. On our staff in research, we have two liaisons that do nothing but interact with college, high school and elementary students to get them interested in what we’re doing in terms of science and how that can be incorporated into farm life.

Other programs that are very interesting are those that are competitive. We have an innovation program, where we have students build projects that will become a business plan themselves, taking technology and applying it to specific problems. It’s an outside-of-the-classroom activity that gets students excited. There is nothing like seeing them light up when they win an award for a project.

We have, at a higher level up, a career program. This is built around the idea that students who come out of college need that little extra boost and piece of information. We actually take students and embed them into the business situation and, in some cases, right on the farm so they get to know the animals and what the farm business really looks like. This is before they go out and try to set up their own business or work within a commercial business.

The take-home message is that we really need to give experience, hands-on experience outside of the classroom. That’s really becoming almost a requirement for our people as they move into our business.

That certainly makes sense. As a professor, and on the Alltech side as the head of our research program, are the up-and-comers that you’re seeing from an agriculture background, or do they come into agriculture by chance because of other things they are interested in?

You run into both kinds. I came up through the agricultural school system, so I’m used to land-grant universities and the kids that came from the farm. But I actually looked at the list of students that were competing in our Young Scientist awards, and I asked them: How many of you are from an agriculture background? Of the 15 sitting in the room, only two raised their hands. You know, the kids are gravitating to agriculture because they see some of the applications that can take place.

It’s almost reverse of what we think. We think about children leaving the farm and never coming back. These are students coming in from urban environments, from science environments, and wanting to understand what’s going on on the farm.

That’s encouraging and fascinating.

It really is. You think about that and it really reflects the excitement of agriculture research and application technology. I kind of coined a term I’m going to use in my presentation here talking about the “farmer technologist”; that is the kind of people who will probably be our leaders in the future.

Dr. Karl Dawson spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference. Audio recordings of most talks, including Karl's, are now available on the Alltech Idea Lab. For access, click on the button below.

Beat heat stress

With the European summer only weeks away, it is time to start preparing management strategies for heat stress. This issue has traditionally been associated with the hotter regions in Europe, such as the Mediterranean. However, as climate change continues to impact temperature, European countries deemed to have a more temperate climate must also be aware of and prepare to take action against heat stress.

When cows are suffering from heat stress, there are several indicators that can be observed. Often, the first indicator is a reduction in dry matter intake. This can be followed by a change in behaviour, combined with quickened breathing and excessive panting. This leads to difficulties in maintaining efficient rumen function, which results in decreased milk production and longer periods between conception. The cow’s maintenance needs will also increase, as the animal can be at greater risk of contracting diseases, such as subacute ruminal acidosis and laminitis. All of these negative heat stress effects will lower a farm’s ability to maintain efficiency and profitability.

Don’t let your profits dry up this summer!

Follow these top tips to combat the effects of heat stress on your farm.

1. Water management

As temperatures increases, so does the cow’s water intake. However, a large volume of water is lost through increased urinary excretion, sweating and respiration. Therefore, water requirements for lactating cows can increase by 10 percent as temperatures move from 15 degrees Celsius to 26 degrees Celsius. The need for more water will increase as milk production rises and as temperatures rise above 26 degrees Celsius.

A cow’s water intake can be improved by:

• Locating water troughs in shaded areas.
• Ensuring there is an adequate supply of fresh water at the trough.
• Cleaning water troughs regularly.
• Providing sufficient space for the cow at the water trough; there should be a minimum of two linear feet (0.61 metres) per 15–20 cows.
• Cooling the water trough by adding shade.

2. Forage management

It is very important to identify forages that are highly digestible to use during heat stress. This will help maintain intake and energy levels. Ensure a forage’s quality is not compromised by managing the silage face to minimise secondary fermentation.

When packing the silage, make certain that it is tightly compressed and covered sufficiently to avoid spoilage. Remove 6–12 inches of silage from the exposed face of the silo on a daily basis. This will help to keep the silage fresh and will prevent heating.

3. Feeding management

As the temperature and humidity increase, cows will change the time they feed to a cooler period of the day. A greater proportion of the feed should be provided later in the day, when the temperature has dropped. This will help to avoid secondary fermentation and drive consumption.

Three to four hours after cows feed, they will experience excess heat production due to the digestion process. By moving the feeding time to later in the day, the cow will have the opportunity to digest the food when the temperature is cooler. This allows the increased internal heat production to be more tolerable for the cow.

At the end of each day, it is important to clean out feed bunks. This will help to keep the feed fresh and will reduce the possible effects of heating or spoilage as well as lower the risk of secondary fermentation.

For more information please contact acasey@alltech.com

Stress can affect your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior. Stress causes our cortisol levels to rise. Cortisol can cause food cravings, usually for high carbohydrate or sweet foods. Not only do many people turn to food as a comfort during stressful times, they also tend to consume more highly refined carbohydrates like white pasta, bread, rice, bagels, chips, crackers, baked goods and other sweets. Although these foods may provide quick and immediate comfort, the more of them we eat, the worse our mood gets. High intake of these foods leads to crashes that may increase susceptibility to new stress. After a spike in blood sugar caused by eating a large amount of highly refined carbohydrates, it’s common to experience mental fog, tiredness, anxiety and irritability, all of which may exacerbate existing stress.

Cortisol also activates an enzyme in our fat cells. Visceral fat cells – the fat found around vital organs in our abdomen – have significantly more of these enzymes than subcutaneous fat – the fat just below the skin on other areas of the body like legs and buttocks – which is why stress causes belly fat accumulation. The more stress a person has, the more abdominal obesity can occur, which is linked to a greater risk for heart disease and diabetes.

Luckily, there are other components of food that can help regulate stress by providing specific nutrients or sustained energy.

Better mood foods

DHA omega-3

This essential fatty acid has been studied for its positive effects on mood and protection of our brain against chronic stress. Increasing dietary intake of DHA omega-3 may help prevent the harmful effects of chronic stress and the development of stress-related disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Better Mood Foods: DHA-enriched eggs, meat and milk, salmon, mackerel and sardines

Zinc

Diets low in zinc have been linked to anxiety and depression. A daily intake is required, as our body doesn’t have a zinc storage system.

Better Mood Foods: oysters, beef, crab, lobster, chicken, turkey, beans and nuts

Magnesium

This mineral has been called “the original chill pill” for its role in regulating cortisol levels and its ability to prevent the entrance of stress hormones to the brain.

Better Mood Foods: spinach, whole grains, legumes, potatoes, avocados, nuts and seeds

Vitamin B6

An important function of vitamin B6 is helping to produce serotonin and norephinephrine, both of which positively influence mood.

Better Mood Foods: chickpeas, tuna, salmon, chicken and turkey

Whole grains

Both simple (white bread and pasta, bagels, baked goods, etc.) and complex (whole grain bread and pasta, oatmeal, etc.) carbohydrates are turned into glucose, a type of sugar used as fuel by the body. However, complex carbohydrates contain vitamins, minerals and fiber that slow the release of glucose into the blood stream, providing the body a steady supply of energy, as well as serotonin, a “feel good” chemical.

Better Mood Foods: oatmeal, brown rice, whole grain bread and pasta, quinoa and popcorn

[ARAUCÁRIA, BRAZIL] – The Federal University of Viçosa (UFV-MG) in Brazil has launched a new edition of the “Brazilian Tables for Poultry and Swine,” which is considered one of the most important references in the formulation of feed for the global agribusiness industry. This is the fourth edition of the material, which was presented during the IV International Symposium on Nutritional Requirements of Poultry and Swine on March 29 and 30 at the Federal University of Viçosa.

The new edition verifies, through several studies using Alltech products, the efficiency of organic minerals in the supplementation of monogastric animals. The research monitored the inclusion of organic minerals in the diets of pigs between 66.1 pounds and 110.2 pounds, and in chickens during the growth period. These analyses indicated that the levels of organic minerals required for animal performance are 33 percent to 50 percent lower than that of inorganic trace minerals.

These levels can change according to the species and animal purpose, whether for production or reproduction. This is due to the bioavailability of the microminerals, which facilitate the absorption of nutrients in the digestive tract and can therefore aid in weight gain and feed efficiency in animals.

Other advantages of organic mineral supplementation are reduced impact on the environment and a greater return to the consumer.

“Our recommendations for the level of organic microminerals in diets can be lower than or equal to 50 percent of the recommended levels of inorganic minerals, which results in the best use of the minerals by the animal,” said Horacio Rostagno, professor at the Department of Animal Science at the Federal University of Viçosa. “The first thing to consider is the reduction in the excretion of microminerals into the environment through the feces, which we can observe in poultry production. This reduces the risk of environmental contamination by the decreased deposition of waste. It may even benefit consumers, who will find higher quality poultry and pork products because of the increased performance they had on-farm.”

This is the first time the tables have presented recommendations for replacing inorganic minerals with organic trace minerals and vitamins for supplementation. The new edition also includes updates related to genetic development and advancement in animals.

“We saw genetic advances related to feeding efficiency and conversion,” said Melissa Hannas, professor at the Department of Animal Science at the Federal University of Viçosa. “Because of this, we had to make adjustments in the calculations for the consumption of feed and ingestion of nutrients. All the energy requirements were recalculated to consider maintenance and production, resulting in a new definition of the ideal protein for feed formulation. Another highlight is the ratio of essential and non-essential nitrogen, which allows working with formulations to best meet the animal’s needs.”

On-farm, some producers are already putting the use of organic minerals into practice, and the results have shown efficiency and a gain in performance.

“In addition to the studies having proven the effectiveness of organic microminerals, we have been watching the performance of some industries that are using these ingredients,” said Marlene Schimidt, technical manager for Alltech Brazil. “For example, in poultry, it is possible to achieve improvements in the chicken carcass, feather production and egg laying. The inclusion of organic trace minerals will be a trend in the years to come, because it is directly linked to sustainability due to the decreased release of excretion into the environment.”

On March 28, prior to the launch of the new tables, Helvio da Cruz Ferreira Junior, a doctorate student at the Federal University of Viçosa, presented a study about poultry mineral balance during Alltech’s Mineral Efficiency Symposium. The event also included a presentation about trends in monogastric nutrition. Dr. Fernando Rutz, professor at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, discussed his work on the impact of a sick or stressed animal on the production system. He also detailed a strategy to minimize this problem, including vaccination, nutrition, management, physiology, planning, and genetics.

The event also received a global perspective from Dr. Ramon Diniz Malheiros, research associate at North Carolina State University, who discussed nutrition news from the U.S., showing that Brazil meets all the necessary requirements to compete in worldwide production. According to Malheiros, the Brazilian industry and its producers need to be alert to changes dictated by consumers, antibiotic-free meats and preferences for cage-free production.

“The judicious use and reduction of antibiotics in poultry production is here to stay,” said Dr. Kayla Price, poultry technical manager for Alltech Canada, in a recent webinar.

In the last few years, we have seen an influx of products being marketed as alternatives to antibiotics. This can leave producers wondering, “How do I choose between the numerous alternatives on the market?” “Is there a direct replacement for antibiotics?” and “What should be my biggest focus to maintain healthy birds?” In the webinar titled “Navigating the new world: Phasing out antibiotic growth promoters,” Price shares her insights on these questions and more.

“I think it is really important when we are starting to look at general bird health that we make sure we are taking on a holistic approach,” she explained. “Specifically, we really have to think of the intestinal system from hatch to finish.”

In the webinar, Price discusses:

• An overview of the market for antibiotic-free poultry production in the United States and Canada.
• How to support the beneficial gut bacteria and maintain the health of the villi/microvilli.
• A list of key questions to ask when deciding on an alternative to antibiotics.
• What benefits a holistic program can bring.

Price highlights that there is not one silver bullet solution for the removal of antibiotics; nutrition and biosecurity are both crucial to ensure success.

Alltech's Dr. Aoife Lyons is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in children, brain development and ADHD. In this interview, she discussed with David Butler the importance of docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, and its role in brain function and development. Dr. Lyons highlighted some of the exciting new research that is being done to examine the connection between DHA, sleep quality and attention span in children. We also discussed the pros and cons of fish oil versus algae as a source of DHA.

A transcript of the interview follows:

This is David Butler for Alltech, and I’m here with Dr. Aoife Lyons. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, please?

I’m a licensed clinical psychologist, and my specialty is in children and brain development. I ran a children’s clinic in Chicago for about 14 years where we saw all sorts of children. Many had Attention Deficit Disorder, which is more commonly known as ADHD, and we saw a lot of learning disabilities as well.

How long have you been with Alltech?

I have been with Alltech as a consultant for about 12 years, full-time now for about two years.

Very good. Tell us a little about omega-3 fatty acids and why they are important.

Well, DHA, or those fatty acids that you are talking about, are really, really important to support central nervous systems. Your central nervous system is in charge of your brain. It’s in charge of executive functioning, which is things like time management, being able to organize your time, being able to prioritize, having impulse control, things like this. It’s very, very important in children to have DHA to support that brain development, which is happening so rapidly. Also, it’s really important to have DHA through the lifetime, in particular in old age. There is a lot of literature out there that shows supplementation with DHA helps support memory function in patients with Alzheimer’s.

So, you talk about DHA and omega-3’s. I think it can be kind of confusing for people when they are looking for supplements and thinking about their diet. What is the difference?

Oftentimes when you go to Whole Foods or another health food store, you will see omega-3 fatty acids, and those are coming from fish oil, but when we think about where did the fish get their oil to begin with, it’s from algae. The more pure form of DHA would be from that algae. Alltech has several algae facilities that we’re developing at this point and lots of different uses that we are hoping for. My interest, of course, is in the cognitive development of children. I thought, wow, Alltech is doing this research with DHA and algae, how can we bridge the gap between what Alltech offers scientifically and what my personal interests are, which is in the health of children.

There is a lot of research into the importance of DHA, of course, and I’m sure that you have read several studies on it. What are the current focus areas, and what are some of the results?

Interestingly enough, most of the studies have been in 2012 and 2013, so this is really a cutting edge in terms of scientific research, into psychology and interbrain development. One study did supplementation through about 300 mg of DHA in children for 16 weeks, and then they asked the parents and the teachers, before and after, to rate the children on different behaviors, such as impulsivity, concentration, attention, these sorts of things. They did see improvement in children after the 16 weeks of supplementation.

What is more interesting is that for children with learning disabilities, it seems like the effects of DHA are greater than just more typically developing children. People say, why is this? Again, this is really cutting-edge research. It’s all very very new. There is one interesting study, I believe it was in 2013, that looked at children’s sleep cycles and children with ADHD in particular. They found for all children, supplementation with the DHA for this 16-week cycle, they hooked them up to sleep machines and the whole thing, and what they found is that children were getting on average 57-58 more minutes of sleep per night. Now, this does not mean that the children were in bed for almost an hour more per night. It just meant that they had less episodes of waking up during the night. And then they looked at the children’s attention after the supplementation, and they found that the attention and also their academic skills had improved.

Sometimes people will say to me, of course academic skills are going to improve after about four months, of course we’re going to expect reading to be better, and I think something that most people wouldn’t realize is that the tests that we give children, the psychological and academic tests, they are normed to the month so that children who are 7 years, 1 month old, would be compared to children who are 7 years, 1 month. So a child then who is 7 years, 5 months, is compared to other children of the exact same age. So, when we see improvement in reading, it is a true improvement.

That sounds like a pretty dramatic difference. Almost an hour of extra quality sleep, and I’m sure anybody that has kids knows that they're easier to get along with if they have better sleep. So what is the next step?

Well, again, this is very new research, and a lot of the studies that have been done were done in England. There hasn’t been a lot of literature coming out of the US yet. Small-scale studies, specific to schools or to clinical groups, maybe in a pediatrician’s clinic. What we need are larger-scale studies so we can piece out what exactly is going on with the DHA supplementation and the improved academics and the improved attention. I think that increased knowledge in the public about the benefits of DHA, exactly what it does in the brain to support the central nervous system development, is really important.

You know, when you think about it, we’re saying fish oil, and it could have easily been called snake oil many years ago. So I think educating the public is important, so that they are more on board in terms of having their children take part in these sorts of studies. I know for myself, I am taking the fish oil. I know whenever I had researchers Becky Timmons, she takes a lot of fish oil. Her daughter also took fish oil when she was studying for her law school exams.

So I think the larger-scale studies will be important, and I would love to see cross-cultural studies. I would love to see if children, say, in Japan, where the diet is more heavily based on fish, see if those children have better attention and concentration than the U.S. children, and is that due to their diet, or is that due to the cultural reasons and expectations that parents have for their child’s behavior?

Do you have any plans for your own research coming up?

Well, I do, actually. I would love to do another study. A lot of those studies that have been done have been using omega-3 fish oil. I would love to do a study that is just looking at the DHA, just at the algae. We have plans that are underway. We are just in the very early stages at this point. I would love to do a larger scale study with DHA from algae supplementation in a bigger group of school children with the same model as some of the other studies that have been done, but a bigger group of children so we can piece out, does this work for all children? Does this work with kids with ADHD? Does it work better with kids with learning disabilities? So there is a lot of research that can be done. I’m to the point where I have found a couple of schools that are interested in this project, but it wouldn’t get underway until probably a year from now.

Let’s suppose that you have two routes for supplementing the DHA and you could either take fish oil or you could take algae. If you had an equal quantity of DHA either way, would there still be advantages to algae? Why would that be preferable over fish oil?

Well, in terms of doing research with children, there are all sorts of methodological things that you have to think about. Taking the fish oil capsules is not exactly a pleasant thing, sometimes if you haven’t had breakfast it can make you feel a little sick to your stomach, but we do know that there are some gummy bear algae based DHA products available out there, so that would be one way to go. Try to make it a treat for the kid.

If we’re trying to increase the number of people that are improving their diet with DHA, would algae or fish oil be more sustainable method for that?

It’s a lot more sustainable to grow a lot of algae than it is to grow the algae to feed the fish to farm the fish. It’s kind of just going to the source instead of taking it one more step.

And it also doesn’t taste like fish.

Correct.

Thank you very much, and good luck with your research. I hope we have the chance to talk to you about that soon.

An interview with David Hunt

The following is an edited transcript of our interview with David Hunt, CEO and co-founder of Cainthus. Cainthus is a machine-vision company specializing in health analytics for crop and livestock.

Tell us a little bit about why digitizing agriculture is important and what the potential is.

How we got into all of this is, we looked at what was going on in the agriculture world. My brother and I got extremely concerned about how, if we keep on farming in our “green revolution” style agriculture of monocultures plus chemical input, we are effectively going to kill our planet. We realized that we need to make things far more efficient, and farm in more environmentally friendly ways, in order to stave off what currently looks like an inevitability at the moment.

We then said, “What’s the best way to go about doing this?” Despite coming from an agriculture background, I didn’t realize the sheer absence of measurement that was at the commercial field or commercial livestock level. We realized if you want to improve agriculture, first of all you need to start measuring things. Then, once you can measure things, you can work out how to improve them and then ultimately that will hopefully lead to a better system.

I am very much a science fiction fan, and one of the things that always excited me as a child was the concept of robots working in farms and fields. When we started out on this journey, it was all toward the view of what we needed to do to get robots into our fields. One of the things we found out was, a robot is actually only as good as the data that feeds it. If you have an absence of data and an absence of measurement in agriculture, then the robots are never going to be there.

My personal opinion is, we will never be able to move away from monocultures until we have on-demand precision harvesting, which probably needs to be performed by robots, given the cost in increased human labor. When we went looking at what was the best way to systematically capture commercial field scale data in a manner that would be affordable to the farmer, we couldn’t get beyond the fact that digital imaging was going to be the way to do it. Camera technology is increasing at an exponential level at the moment. We only just got HD TVs and they are talking about 4K TVs, ultra HD, 8K TVs, etc. It’s that technology, and how cheap it is becoming, that’s enabling us to use drones to get highly precise images of what’s going on in our fields, far beyond the capability of what we can see with the human eye. One of the big concepts that I think people on farms need to understand, particularly crop farms, when it comes to drones: The drone is incidental and is simply the best current delivery device we have for getting one centimeter per pixel resolution, which is the minimum requirement in my opinion to spot what’s going on in a farm.

Tell me about some of the ways that you want to take that visual information. What would be the practical application? What are some of the things you have in mind?

Stand counts are something very useful we can do today. One of the biggest decisions a farmer makes every year is when they plant a field and the crops start emerging. If areas in the field do not emerge, well, what do I do about it? When you can count every individual plant in a field, you can make a data-driven decision as to whether it makes financial sense to re-sow or simply do nothing. I know enough farmers to know how difficult it is for a farmer to sit on their hands and do nothing when they are looking at a big bare patch in the middle of their field. Financially speaking, when it comes to your profit margin, it may actually be the best decision to simply do nothing. Introducing data-driven decision to agriculture, via increased digital measurement, is what enables you to do things like that.

Another application we have: Crop maturity analytics is something we can do today. The whole point of that is, when you ask farmers when they harvest their fields, it is generally they are afraid of bad weather coming, so they are going to harvest before the bad weather. If they see the neighbor out or the local agronomist tells them to do it, very little of it is based on data. I heard Aidan Connolly make a great point that today we farm based on what we see happening in our fields or what we see happening with our animals. Increasingly, as agriculture becomes more digitized, we are going to start farming data. We will look at what the data feedback is coming off our farm, and we will be making decisions on our farming activity based on that.

You talked about the importance of getting to a sustainable form of agriculture. What are some of the problems that we have, the way we are farming currently? What’s the potential risk for not dealing with it?

The potential risk of not dealing with it is our planet dies. That doesn’t mean humans will go extinct or anything like that; it just means that this planet won’t be a very nice place to live. Elon Musk is doing everything he can to get to Mars, but I’m not sure that’s going to be much nicer.

When we look at the principal risks that can be dealt with by using digital technologies, number one is our out-of-control nitrogen cycle. Currently, we are spending $140 billion dollars annually on nitrogen fertilizer. Depending on the target plant, 17 to 26 percent of that is being used by the target plant and the rest is being taken up by weeds, getting locked into the soil, or going as runoff into our waterways. We have an inefficiency loop in terms of our nitrogen fertilizer. The difficulty with that in terms of an environmental perspective is, unfortunately, nitrogen fertilizer does a lot of damage to our soil. We are in a situation where we’re putting in more and more fertilizer to get the same results. The only way we are going to break out of that vicious cycle is by getting technology that allows us to apply fertilizer and other chemical inputs on-demand when appropriate to do so, as opposed to just doing blanket hit-and-hope spraying as we do today.

Will the application in the future be more directly just to the plant’s root system, or do you think there will be more ways to deliver it more efficiently so it’s not covering the whole field?

I really can’t see beyond using robotic applications. DJI Drones has already released a robotic sprayer that can spray sixty acres per hour at $15,000. One of the things we can do is spot very early where there is a problem in your field. Then you identify the problem, and you can send in your precision sprayer to spray the area in the field when it is only impacting a couple of square meters, as opposed to having to spray the entire field when you see it with your own eyes.

How do you visually, with a camera, determine where you need nitrogen? I would assume that’s based on plant growth or color?

Nitrogen application is not something we can do with visual technology today in a manner that is affordable to a farmer. The best sort of sensor tech to use, to identify where you need nitrogen, is hyperspectral. That is way too expensive to be using at farm level currently. The other thing is, if you do decide to spend the money on something like hyperspectral and look at it at the start of the year, that is only so useful, because your requirements are going to change throughout the growing season. For technology to actually make a meaningful impact, it needs to be cheap enough that you can use it consistently throughout the growing season so you can apply inputs as and when needed by the plant.

How will you make It cheaper?

If you look at RGB cameras, which are like the cameras in your smartphone or a normal camera, they are getting incredibly cheap, incredibly quickly. Again, so cheap that you have a camera included in your smartphone for free that a professional photographer would have killed for ten years ago. Hyperspectral is the same; the underlying drivers of the cost of that technology are the same for RGB. The reason hyperspectral is so expensive is that an RGB camera looks at three spectra, red, green and blue, and hyperspectral looks at two hundred spectra. Your underlying data cost is obviously a large multiple of the cost associated with an RGB camera, not to mention the cost of the sensor itself.

I think you mentioned, aside from the nitrogen cycle, two other big issues with agriculture. Can you talk about those a little bit?

Number one, we really need to stop using pesticides as much as we do, because obviously that indiscriminately kills all sorts of things, not just the target pest species. Also, we need to stop farming in monocultures. As I said, one of the technologies we have already developed is precision. We can spot on a grain-by-grain basis when a crop is mature and ready to be harvested. When you can do precision on-demand harvesting, that will enable you to get away from your combine harvester green revolution paradigm, where you have to harvest an entire field in a couple of hours. If you can plant many different species of plants in one field and harvest them on demand when appropriate, that’s a far more environmentally friendly way to farm. In theory, it should also be a more profitable way for a farmer to farm. They are not beholden to the commodity markets in an individual crop. They have greater resilience to commodity markets, certainly, because they have many different crops.

One of the other things farmers should also be aware of in the future is there is a big trend creeping in that bio-suitability is arguably the best way to grow things. What I mean by that is, what did nature intend to grow in the area where your farm happens to be? The more you try to force something to grow where nature didn’t intend it to grow, the more chemical inputs and artificial methodologies you are going to need to make that happen. One of the things I think that farmers need to consider in the future is, what should we actually be farming here? What nature intended for us to farm here is going to minimize how many inputs we need to make it happen.

There are also going to be more exotic types of farming available to us in the near future. Solar panels are a great example. How many farmers in semi-arid regions would actually be better off having solar farms rather than crop or livestock farms? Similarly, there is a chance we are going to see algae farming developing, so you know if you have a high level of solar activity, you are going to be better off farming algae than farming crops or livestock. I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know we are going to have far more options as to what we do with our land as we move further into the future.

You mentioned alternative ways to manufacture commodities like milk.

Yeah. If you look on a long enough time horizon, we can already see emerging trends. We are starting to create agents of nutritional complexity, as opposed to biological agents of nutritional complexity. What I mean by a biological agent of nutritional complexity is, well, an example of one is a cow. You feed a cow grass, you get milk and beef from that animal when you have just fed it grass. That’s what I mean by an agent of nutritional complexity.

We are already starting to see the emergence of synthetic meat. There is synthetic milk, which is a bio-fermentation process including a type of genetically modified yeast that, when you feed it sugars, it excretes something that is molecularly identical to milk rather than excreting alcohol.

The other big one is algae. Alltech’s heterotrophic algae facility never ceases to amaze me. I just think it’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve seen. On the best land in the world, if you get 4.5 tons of wheat out of it a year, you are doing well. If you put a heterotrophic algae plant on the worst land in the world, you can get 60 tons of that stuff every nineteen days. The parallel I draw to this is, it’s not dissimilar to where we were in the energy market in the ‘70s. We could see that the future of energy was more than likely going to be nuclear plus solar plus batteries, but we had to make our fossil fuels system more efficient and less environmentally harmful in order to buy us time to get there. We are just about there in the energy market now. When I look at agriculture, I think there is no doubt that if we want to feed 10 billion people by 2050 without destroying our planet, we are going to need stuff like nuclear and solar that give us what we need without depleting our natural resources. I would be arguing that what we are currently trying to do is make a green revolution and agriculture more efficient and more environmentally friendly until we get to such a point that we can actually create edible, tasty and nutritious food that comes out of processes like bio-fermentation, such as synthetic milk and algae.

The other big outlier in that, as well, is insect meal. There is a big question of whether synthetic meat will ever be viable for reasons that are quite long so I’m not going to go into them here. But the other big issue with synthetic meat is, insects are able to convert base nutrients into more complex proteins at an eighty percent efficiency level. So any synthetic meat is going to have to beat how efficient insects are already. I get a little frustrated by the lack of adoption of insects in our industry, because they are such a suitable food for chickens and fish as well as humans. The thing I like to say is, when we eat insects from the sea, they command a price premium and are considered a delicacy. Insects that are found on land are considered disgusting, which I really don’t get.

That’s a really interesting point, because if you take a really good close look at a shrimp or a crayfish, they are very much like an insect or closely related. Do you eat any land-based insects?

I have. They are not that widely available in Ireland or the United States. I have no issue eating them whatsoever.

This is where stuff gets a little bit disgusting, but one of the other big things that’s important about heterotrophic algae and insect meal is, you can actually use human faeces to fuel those technologies. Scientifically speaking, there is no problem with that whatsoever, but when people think about that, even though it makes tremendous environmental and ecological sense, that really turns people’s stomachs. If we want to have 10 billion people on this planet, these are the types of solutions we need to think about. We need to make better use of our waste. If we can use our waste to make food with it, I can’t think of a better use case than that.

Maybe a starting point is to feed animals with insect protein.

I wouldn’t expect us to feed human waste to insects, then eat the insects. When I’m talking about doing that, I mean feed the insects to chickens; then we will eat the chickens. Even feed one group of insects the human waste and feed those insects to other insects, and then we can process those insects with a lot of flavorings and hopefully people will eat them then. It’s very difficult to predict the way these things will go when it’s something quite so disgusting.

One last question: How did you name your company, and what does the name mean?

We completely over-thought the name, as is our habit. I did Latin for six years, and canthus is the Latin word for the corner of your eye. In Caesar’s propaganda that he used to send back to Rome, he was always winning battles that no one else could win, because he saw things out of the corner of his eye that no one else saw. Then there is a huge artificial intelligence (AI) component to what we do as well, so Cainthus is part canthus and AI.

David Hunt spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference. Audio recordings of most talks, including David's, are now available on the Alltech Idea Lab. For access, click on the button below.