Nature has menacing ways of reminding us who has the ultimate upper hand.

Wildfires. Hurricanes. Floods. Droughts. Earthquakes. These powerful natural events can deliver massive destruction and loss of life. Often overlooked by the media and general public are the consequences for agriculture, and all who depend on farming for food and sustenance.

Agricultural impacts from natural events and disasters most commonly include:

   •      Contamination of water bodies.

   •      Loss of harvest or livestock.

   •      Increased susceptibility to disease.

   •      Destruction of irrigation systems and other agricultural infrastructure.

This article looks at many of the major natural disasters of 2017 and how these events have impacted farming, from the back-to-back powerful hurricanes that have wrecked crops in the Caribbean and the U.S. Gulf Coast and the wildfires that have decimated cattle ranches in the American West to a prolonged, devastating drought destroying crops in Portugal and Spain, and an earthquake in Latin America.

The furies of wind and rain

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was extremely destructive and among the costliest on record.

The August National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast for an above-normal, hyperactive season featuring two to five major hurricanes turned out to be horribly understated.

There were 10 of these ferocious storms during the season, and they all occurred one after another, the greatest number of consecutive hurricanes since satellites began tracking storms.

Three in particular left trails of devastation from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to Florida and Texas: Harvey, Irma and Maria.

Harvey

At 10 p.m. CDT on Aug. 25, a storm of intense ferocity rolled over the Texas Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi. Hurricane Harvey arrived, delivered its first blow, bounced back out over the warm waters of the Gulf, regained strength and slammed Texas a second time.

The weather analytics company WeatherBELL estimates that Harvey dumped 27 trillion gallons of rain over Texas and Louisiana during a six-day period. At 51 inches of rainfall, it was a record for the most ever from a tropical storm system in the continental U.S.

Estimates by Moody’s Analytics put eventual total losses from Harvey alone at approximately $100 billion.

Among the major casualties was what had been shaping up as one of the Texas cotton industry’s most promising years in recent times.

“The cotton crop along the Gulf Coast was exceptional. It really was,” said Russell Boening, Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) president. “Yield-wise, this was going to be one of the best in 10 or 15 years.”

That outlook disintegrated in only hours as Harvey roared inland, destroying at least $100 million in cotton, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service economists, and perhaps much more, by Boening’s estimate.

The economists peg losses for Lone Star State livestock producers at $93 million, conservatively.

“Livestock were lost and livestock were affected because they were standing in water so long,” said Boening. “They may have survived, but may have some health issues.”

The Wendt Ranch in Bay City, Texas, after Harvey. Credit: The Wendt Ranch. 

Adding insult to injury, Harvey’s blow to Texas farmers arrived as grain producers were already dealing with trouble of another sort.

“In Texas, we have really dramatically high levels of fumonisin,” noted Dr. Max Hawkins, nutritionist with the Alltech^® Mycotoxin Management team.

The increased presence of fumonisin was a result of hot weather in late June and July followed by a cool, exceptionally wet August. 

The fences, barns and animal-handling facilities destroyed in the storm must be rebuilt. And there are concerns about the replacement costs of hay that was destroyed in the high flood waters.

“We are right on the verge of entering winter feeding season, and ranchers will have to find replacement hay that averages $63 per round bale,” said Dr. David Anderson, AgriLife Extension livestock economist in College Station, Texas. “A rancher may typically feed two or more round bales per cow during winter, so even if there isn’t hay available, they will still have to purchase some type of supplemental feed. All of this comes with a hefty price.”

Learning of all the destruction and loss early on the morning following Harvey’s landfall, Alltech’s founder and president, Dr. Pearse Lyons, issued a company-wide call-to-action on behalf of the Texans.

When word of this reached Alltech’s Ridley Block Operations managing director Earl Witham, trucks hit the road loaded with $40,000 in feed supplements, bound for the company’s Texas distributors to donate to ranchers in need.

“I just have to say this,” shared Witham. “The day that it happened, the day of the hurricane, I got a call, and they said, ‘Dr. Lyons wants to do something right now.’ So, it was driven from the very top that Alltech was going to get involved; we were going to volunteer people; we were going to donate product; we were going to give as much in funds as we could. It’s a good feeling to work for a gentleman who is that giving.”

Dr. Lyons' directive also resulted in the launch of "Hope After Harvey,” an effort to raise support funds for Texas farmers and ranchers.

Alltech committed to match donations made to its nonprofit Alltech ACE Foundation. As a result, company representatives presented the Texas Farm Bureau’s Agriculture Research and Education Foundation with a $42,607.12 check. The funds are providing support and relief to Texas farmers and ranchers who were affected by Hurricane Harvey.

Alltech’s “Hope After Harvey” campaign resulted in a donation of $42,607.12 to Texas Farm Bureau’s Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund. Left to right: Brian Lawless, North America brand manager, Alltech; Si Cook, Texas Farm Bureau executive director/chief operating officer; Lee Pritchard, account manager for Ridley Block Operations, an Alltech company; Neil Walter, Texas Farm Bureau District 8 state director; and Randy Asher, regional sales manager for Alltech. Credit: Texas Farm Bureau

Boening said the hurricane was a tough blow to the Texas agricultural community, but farmers are resilient people.

“If you’ve been a cotton farmer, more than likely you’re going to continue to be a cotton farmer, and if you’ve raised livestock, even though you might’ve had a setback from this storm, you’re probably going to continue raising livestock,” he said.

Irma

One thousand miles eastward from the Texas coast across the Gulf of Mexico, the citrus growers of Florida were already struggling with crop losses due to the bacterial disease citrus huanglongbing(HLB). Also known as “yellow dragon” or “greening” disease, HLB had infected all 32 of the state’s growing citrus counties. There is no known cure.

But things finally seemed to be looking up in August when Dr. Elizabeth Steger of the Kissimmee-based Citrus Consulting International — whose crop yield forecasts have become something of a gold standard among Florida citrus growers — predicted a 10 percent increase in yield over 2016.

That forecast was dashed on Sept. 10 when Hurricane Irma struck the coast of southern Florida and tied with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane as the strongest ever to make landfall in the Atlantic basin. The huge storm proceeded to barrel north, straight up the peninsula, raking citrus groves in Florida's top-producing citrus counties: DeSoto, Polk, Hendry, Highlands, Hardee and Collier.

Citrus groves in Florida remain under flood waters Sept. 13 after Hurricane Irma. Credit: Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

Now, instead of the long-awaited growth that had been predicted, the Sunshine State’s citrus growers anticipate producing 35 percent less for 2017 than in the year before, according to Jim Ellis, financial examiner/analyst with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

And the impact doesn’t stop at grove’s edge.

Ellis noted that Florida is home to 18 fruit packing houses. In 2016, the industry packed 12 million 4/5 bushel cartons. He estimates that there is only enough citrus remaining after the storms of 2017 to fill 6 million cartons. Three packing houses can process that entire crop, he said, adding that the state’s fruit processors will pack an estimated 50 million boxes this year —down by 20 million boxes from 2016.

“The industry is crippled now,” said Ellis. “The packing and processing plants can’t run at full capacity, so there is a direct impact on labor and profits.”

Maria

Irma was soon followed in late September by Hurricane Maria, sweeping across the Caribbean, smashing Puerto Rico with Category 4 winds and in only hours wiping out about 80 percent of the U.S. territory’s crop value, which had only weeks before been hit hard by Irma. The island suffered a loss of $780 million in agriculture yields, according to preliminary estimates by the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture.

Also taking hits from Maria were Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dominica, where crop losses were estimated at between 90 and 100 percent, decimating small-scale agriculture.

Hurricane Katia had in the meantime struck Mexico on Sept. 8, dumping 10 to 15 inches of rain on northern Veracruz, eastern Hidalgo and Puebla. The winds and flooding left damage across 200,000 hectares of maize, pineapple, papaya, banana and other crops.

Cyclones and typhoons

Growers and producers in the Pacific basin were experiencing their own struggles with an intense cyclone season.

As 2017 dawned, nearly 67,000 farmers in the Philippines were only beginning to take stock of damages wrought by Typhoon Nina. The storm struck just days before the beginning of the new year. Nina’s destruction of Philippine rice farms, coconut groves, fisheries and livestock operations topped P4 billion ($80 million USD) in losses, according to the country’s department of agriculture. 

Madagascar vanilla beans. Credit: Shutterstock

In March, Cyclone Enawo slammed Madagascar, exporter of between 75 percent and 85 percent of the world’s vanilla beans. Many vanilla farms across the island nation were lost. In certain areas, the tree canopy that typically shades vanilla vines and serves as a scaffold for them to climb was either severely damaged or destroyed by the storm, placing the vines and vanilla pods at greater risk of UV damage from direct sun exposure. Pastry chefs and ice cream shops the world over have been forced to get creative. Vanilla pods are now trading at an all-time high, according to Craig Nielsen of the U.S. vanilla and flavorings group Nielsen-Massey.

“Inventories were already depleted, and now we have the damage caused by the cyclone,”  Nielsen-Massey told Financial Times. “It will be a tough time [for the vanilla market] for the next couple of years.”

Cyclone Debbie was, at the time, inundating farms in Australia, leaving heavy damage among tomato, capsicum, sugarcane and eggplant producers. Tree crops such as mangos, pawpaw, custard apples and lychees also suffered heavy damage, according to reports.

Cyclone Ockhi wiped out banana plantations and rice farms in western India.

Heavy early December rains and severe flooding hit rice production in Bangladesh, and agricultural damages from major storms was also reported from Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia to Greece and Albania.

Send some of that water our way!

Even as many of the world’s farmers slogged through high waters to rescue or defend their crops and livestock, their counterparts in other regions of the planet suffered the opposite dilemma: severe drought.

One of the worst dry spells in recent decades is devastating southern European crops. Just this year, the damage is estimated to top €1 billion.

In Italy, around 30 percent less rain has fallen in 2017 compared to last year. Grains have been especially badly damaged by the lack of water and the intense heat.

The drought now threatens to reduce cereal production in Italy and parts of Spain to its lowest level in at least 20 years and hit other regional crops, including olives and almonds.

Spain is living through its worst drought in decades. Reservoirs have dried up. Corn, potato, beets and bean crops have died. Wildfires have wrought destruction, according to Euronews.

Some farmers have said they won't even harvest this year because the overall result would be so low it wouldn't be worth the money.

Rains have barely brought relief from a prolonged drought that is affecting the Horn of Africa region. Up to 75 percent of livestock has died in the worst affected areas, according to watchers.NEWS.

Sri Lanka has suffered from prolonged lack of rain. The charity Save the Children reports the country’s worst harvest in 40 years.

And in an ironic prelude to the hurricanes that slammed the state later in the year, Florida endured an extreme dry spell until June when just seven days of heavy rainfall, record-breaking in places, pulled the entire state out of extreme drought conditions.

Even so, Florida experienced extreme heat for the entire month of July, setting a record for hottest July. Only a single day had a high temperature below 90.

Fire!

A severe heat wave that brought record temperatures across the western United States exacerbated North American wildfires, which by July had spread across six U.S. states and into British Columbia, Canada.

More than 47,000 wildfires burned more than 8 million acres across the country, according to CBS News.

Late winter of 2017 brought flames to Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Thousands of cattle and hogs were lost, according to Alltech’s Global Supply Chain Weekly Market Notes.

Some 1,500 square miles of agricultural grazing land burned in early March. Thousands of cattle perished, and countless homes, buildings and fences were destroyed as windswept flames scorched pastures, reducing generations of hard work and dreams to ashes. In several cases, ranchers died trying to save livestock.

Alltech’s Hubbard Feeds and Ridley Block Operations both teamed up to provide livestock feed relief to fire-stricken cattle producers and ranchers in the four afflicted states.

In April, the Market Notes reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had opened emergency grazing lands previously protected under the Conservation Reserve Program in these states.

By summer, the thick, black smoke and red-hot, wind-fueled flames were consuming hundreds of thousands of acres in six Western states.

Taylor Brown herds recovered cattle across a charred pasture on L.O. Bar Ranch to water and food near Sand Springs, Montana. Credit: Billings Gazette | Rebecca Noble

Among them was drought-stricken Montana.

Multiple wildfires blackened over 1 million acres throughout the state. The most devastating to ranchers, the Lodgepole Complex fire in eastern Montana, impacted over 270,000 acres.

U.S. Highway 200 is surrounded by blackened earth in July after the Lodgepole Complex fire burned through the area. Credit: Billings Gazette | Casey Page

“The Lodgepole Complex fires didn't just wipe out this year; they wiped out years to come,” the Billings Gazette reported on July 30. “Many ranchers will likely have to sell off cattle to survive — losing years of carefully honed genetics.

“Other ranchers will have to wait until 2019 to see new calves reach market age — and who knows how they'll make it until then,” it continued. “And for new, young ranchers, the fires may have wiped out their budding businesses before they even got on their feet.”

The farming community rose to the occasion. Jerry Beggar, general manager of Alltech’s Montana-based WestFeeds, said his company joined the effort by donating supplies of feed supplements.

“We’re part of a community out here and care about everybody,” he said. “With all of the expenses they’re going to incur, we tried to lighten up the load a little bit.”

By Aug. 7, Seattle matched its all-time record for consecutive days without precipitation.

Oregon and Washington, the states that produce most of the nation’s apples, pears, cherries and hops (for brewing beer), were battling record blazes. Farmworkers were having difficulty getting out into the orchards, vineyards and fields due to choking smoke.

After California, Oregon and Washington have the highest number of wineries in the country. Together, the industry brings in more than $5 billion a year to the Pacific Northwest. But with wildfires becoming all too common in the region, growers are worried. The effects of wildfire smoke are being debated in wine circles across the West Coast.

October brought even more Western wildfires, this time decimating vineyards and wineries in California’s famed wine country.

According to San Francisco Chronicle wine writer Esther Mobley, “Depending on how widespread the destruction of vines is across wine country, it could mark a severe shortage of grapes for years to come. When vineyards are planted, it can take three to five years for them to bear fruit. Additionally, most Napa and Sonoma wineries hold at least three vintages of wine in barrel at any given time, not to mention the large inventory of bottles that many wineries hold back for years.”

In British Columbia, the 2017 fire season has left behind the largest total area burnt in a fire season in recorded history: more than 1 million acres.

“People have not only lost homes and buildings, but there’s also dead or injured cattle and the long-term health effects to some cattle,” Cody Cox, Cariboo Cattlemen’s Association president, told Business Vancouver. “The ranchers have lost miles and miles of fences; their summer and fall pastures that sustain the cattle until they sell them in the fall are burned up and gone. Some have lost their hay crops, their bales — it goes on and on.”

Shaken

When we think of damage from earthquakes, we tend to default to urban settings. Although risks are normally associated with densely populated cities, the effects on farming communities also can be devastating. Earthquakes sometimes trigger tsunamis, landslides and occasionally volcanic activity. The results can include injury and loss of family members and workforce, damage to irrigation systems, loss of crops and livestock, and damage to infrastructure.

A powerful Sept. 7 earthquake rumbling through more than a dozen states in Mexico damaged 138,000 hectares of crops, including bananas, coffee and corn, Fruitnet.com reported. No one could have foreseen that Mexico was in for a double whammy: 24 hours later, Hurricane Katia roared ashore.

Necessity is the mother of invention

While meteorology is delivering ever-improving forecast technologies, we are still never fully prepared for the unpredictable realities of powerful weather-related events. These include the severe wind and flooding damages wrought by hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes, as well as droughts that contribute to wildfires.

From the citrus growers of Florida and the cattle ranchers of Montana to the vanilla bean producers of Madagascar and the farmers of southeastern Spain, 2017 has delivered more evidence of the critical agricultural assets and infrastructure that natural disasters often destroy, disrupting production cycles, trade flows and livelihoods.

The number and frequency of natural disasters, along with the associated impact and damage to livelihoods and economies, are increasing significantly, according to The impact of disasters on agriculture and food security,” a comprehensive report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

Food security is impacted and value chains are disrupted. Such disasters may slow overall economic growth, especially where agriculture and food production still account for a large share of gross domestic product and employment.

Many efforts are underway at national and international levels to improve agriculture’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and recover from these events.

However, vital systematic data and information on the impact of disasters and hazardous events in agriculture and its sub-sectors — crop, livestock, fisheries, aquaculture and forestry — remain limited. Perhaps this presents a challenge as well as an opportunity for innovation and invention.

There are two important parts to free stalls. One is the neck rail. The purpose of the neck rail is that, when a cow stands up, the rail positions her so that it touches the top of her shoulder, guiding her to back up a couple of inches so she will defecate in the ally.

The next important part of the free stall is the brisket locator. The brisket locator positions the cow so that she doesn’t lie down too far forward in the stall.

When we measure stalls, we want to see stalls that are long and wide. Today, we have bigger cows, especially when we consider the Holstein breed. Our goal is to see stalls that, when measured from curb to curb, are between 17–18 feet wide to allow personal space for the cows. When measuring stall width, we measure what the cow feels. We do not measure from the center of the loop to the center of the next loop; we measure from inside to inside of the loop. With our bigger cows, we should be around 50 inches, not at 45 inches, which I see in many barns. For these larger cows, the neck rail should be around 50 inches high as well.

Next, we want to avoid obstruction. Horizontal obstructions are often seen in older barns and affect the cow’s ability to get straight up and straight down. If we watch a cow out in the pasture as she gets up naturally, she rocks her head forward toward the ground, puts one front foot forward, planting herself to stand up straight. When obstructions are in their “rising,” they will do everything they can to use the valuable inches of space. I like to say that cows know geometry — they figure out how to use angles in the stall to get the most use out of the space they are provided. If the stall is too narrow, or too short, the cow will naturally angle herself in the stall.

If we see cows standing with two feet in the stall and two feet out of the stall, we call that “perching,” and this is not good. We want the cows to come into the stall and lie down immediately. We want them off their feet because these are 1,400- to 1,600-pound animals. They should be comfortable and lying down because more blood is pumped through the udder to make milk when they are lying down versus standing up.

Cow comfort

When considering stall design, we need to be sure to look directly at the cows themselves. When you look at a cow, you want to see a very nice set of feet and legs. While in the parlor, if I see swollen hocks, skinned hocks or injuries on the inside of the leg of the animal, that tells me that the stalls are too short and too narrow and the type of surface that the cow is lying on may be having a negative effect on her legs. Consider yourself: If you’re in a hotel and the bed is not comfortable, what do you do? You toss and you turn. When a 1,400- to 1,600-pound animal is not comfortable in the stall, she is moving her legs, tossing and turning in the stall, leading to swollen and skinned hocks.

When we see an injury on the inside of the leg, that tells me that the stall is too short and her leg is hanging over the curb.

These are very important aspects of cow comfort that we can observe in the parlor before we even look at the cow in the free stalls.

Water quality

When we talk about overall milk quality and cow comfort, another critical component is water. Over 87 percent of milk composition is water.

When I am looking at the stalls, I also spend time examining the waterers. Are the waterers clean and scrubbed? Are we doing a good job of protecting the waterers?

I always like to see a high rail around the water so cows can’t jump up and put their feet in the waterer. We want the distance between the edge of the water and the edge of the wall to be over 12 feet so the “big boss” cows can be drinking water and other cows can go around behind them to eat and lie down. Plenty of clean water is very important, and it must be enough for the number of cows. Cows can consume between 30–50 gallons of water per day. Providing enough available space of water for the number of cows, approximately 3 feet of available water area per 10–15 cows, is important to milk production.

Air quality

Air quality, or the movement of air over the cows, is another very important part of cow comfort in a free stall building, a cross-ventilated building and a natural-ventilated building. 

When measuring stalls, I check what the wind speed is, or how good the air quality is moving through the building. Smoke is a great tool for showing the air movement through the building, but cows do not like smoke and can smell it up to 5 miles away. So, instead of smoke, I go to my grandkids’ toy box and find a little bubble machine. This little bubble machine gives me a good indication of which way and how fast the airflow is moving in the building. Plus, the curious cows seem amused by the bubbles!

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s discussion with a panel of experts on the future of farming. Click below to hear the full discussion:

Tom:                I'm Tom Martin, and with us to share their perspectives on what the future holds for agriculture and food production and consumption are Dr. Karl Dawson, vice president and chief scientific officer at Alltech — Dr. Dawson directs activities at the company's bioscience centers around the world — and Dr. Michael Boehlje, who will be joining us shortly. Dr. Boehlje is a distinguished professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, where he conducts research and teaches in the areas of farm and agribusiness management and finance.

                        Mary Shelman is also with us. Mary is former director of Harvard Business School's Agribusiness Program and an internationally recognized thought leader on the future of the global agrifood industry. And Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech. Aidan has been with Alltech for 25 years. I appreciate you all joining us this morning.

                        I'm going to pose questions to each of you. Once you've offered your views, your fellow panelists will have an opportunity to comment on those views. But let's begin with a very broad, very big question that could itself consume an hour — we also have some questions that have come in from media, and we'll try to get them in as well.

 Beginning with you, Dr. Dawson, are you optimistic about the future of farming, and if so, why?

Karl:                 You know, it depends a little bit on what you call “farming” right now and the definition of farming, but I would say that I'm not very optimistic if we continue thinking about farming as we did a decade ago — as a typical family farm. The farm has changed a lot, and it's undergoing a revolution — or evolution — with more technology being in the farm, all the time.

                        To put this into context, I was thinking about a visit I had with my nephew, who runs a farm in northern Montana. He and his neighbors think about farming, using agricultural units, as thousands of acres. That acreage was inconceivable many years ago. We never even thought about using that much land or that many resources, so it's changed considerably.

Even just two decades ago, a 100-acre farm was considered a large farm. These farmers are ready to move to the next level and quadruple in size in the next five years. That's their goal. When they do that, they need the support of technology. 

Even just two decades ago, a 100-acre farm was considered a large farm. These farmers are ready to move to the next level and quadruple in size in the next five years. That's their goal. When they do that, they need the support of technology. Whether it's data from the machines they drive, the harvest or crop materials, the seed stock used for animals or in plants — that support has to come from technology. Farmers are really a technology group now.

Tom:                Mary Shelman, are you optimistic, otherwise?

Mary:              I have to be optimistic. As a farm owner in Kentucky, I have to be optimistic about the future. I do think it's actually a great time. I'm a little more optimistic than Karl. It’s not just about the scale that we can achieve — and a lot of that through technology — it’s also about the ability to achieve more differentiations, to be able to address more consumer needs, and we see now that there are louder voices impacting the food system.

  But if I look around the world — and we go back to those tremendous figures that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provides regarding the change in population and income growth —  with the demand for agricultural products, the output of farms is only going to increase and will increase by maybe 60 percent or 70 percent in the next 35 years. That's a great time and a great need that needs to be fulfilled, and I completely agree with Karl that technology will help us do that.

 On the other hand, I do think there's this issue of economic viability that we also need to be aware of: the dynamics of how pricing works at the farm level — the typical supply-and-demand economics — those don't tend to move in lockstep. At times — for example, crop farming in the U.S. today — prices are relatively low compared to other times within the last five years. So, we need to maintain that economic viability for farmers to survive and, in particular, to attract new, younger farmers to the system. As we all know, the average age of farmers in the U.S. is increasing. We're approaching the 60-year-old mark. We need new talent, and they will only come in if there are attractive returns in the agriculture sector.

Tom:                Aidan Connolly, you work within the areas of innovation and ideas. What do you see in the future?

Aidan:              I have the chance to meet the United Nations FAO group every year, and they, of course, have been quite pessimistic about the future of agriculture. We consider the numbers that Mary mentioned of 70 percent increase in food production over the next 35 years, but if you actually compound that out, Tom, you're really only looking at a figure of 1.7 percent improvement in productivity per year — and agriculture has actually exceeded that. I would be extremely optimistic about our potential for increasing and improving the amount of food we produce. I think farming is going to be very much part of feeding this population we've spoken about by 2050.

 When you look at the gaps we have from the nutritional perspective in feeding animals, nutritional perspective in feeding crops — these factors that are holding back agriculture — productivity losses, the amount of food that we lose, the amount of fertilizer we waste and where food is lost, even within the food chain. I would be extremely optimistic about our potential for increasing and improving the amount of food we produce. I think farming is going to be very much part of feeding this population we've spoken about by 2050.

Tom:                Okay, let's move into our questions and we'll begin with Mary Shelman. Consumers are being described as millennials, “prosumers” and “super consumers.” Do you think we're facing fundamentally new groups of consumers, and do you think this reflects a real change in the marketplace? And, if so, what are their needs?

Mary:              Tom, I do think we are facing a fundamental change. We're in the midst of a fundamental change, and that's a very good thing, and I think it's very positive for the food industry and the ag industry. I think people overall — not just millennials — are asking more questions about where their food comes from and how it's produced. And it's not just in the U.S. or in first world countries. This is true around the world in areas, whether it's driven by food safety or whether it's driven by greater awareness because technology — the new digital media — has made information so available. So, I do think we're in the middle of a food movement. I think that this idea of engaged eating is a really attractive thought to get your arms around. A big piece of that, though, is this new millennial consumer that we talk about.

Tom:                What is that?

Mary:              “Engaged eating” is this idea that someone born between 1980 and 2000 has grown up at a time when technology is all around them — they get information in different ways, they have different values, they've grown up being fed products like Annie's Organic Mac & Cheese compared to Kraft. And now this group — the biggest demographic group with 83 million in the U.S. compared to 75 million baby boomers — are at the stage of having families and moving up in their income potential. So, they are very attractive to the food industry.

                        First, millennials have a much greater understanding of the link between what they eat and their health, and that's a very positive change. The second thing is that what they eat is part of their identity. It actually reflects who they are as a person. They enjoy taking pictures of their food and posting them on Instagram, sharing a meal with their friends and going out and seeking information about food in different ways — not just from mom or from an advertisement.

...not only do consumers want products that meet a certain price point and a certain safety point, they want products that have a purpose.

                        Food also reflects our values. This is the thing that perhaps poses the biggest challenge to the traditional food industry because not only do consumers want products that meet a certain price point and a certain safety point, they want products that have a purpose. They want products from an industry that has the same values that they do, and they're often willing to pay more for these products. As a matter of fact, I was at a meeting last week in New Zealand, and someone was presenting the results of a worldwide survey that was asking this millennial group how they thought they had more influence and whether it was through their vote for a political candidate. They say, “No, it's our vote with our dollars.” So, millennials believe that they “vote” for these types of products, and they’re willing to pay for this.

                        We’re actually at a time that there's kind of a bifurcation in the food system. The majority of consumers need safe, affordable food and accessible food, but yet this group that's a premium category is really growing in their needs and growing in their demands, and they like the stories, they want transparency, they need traceability. I think that’s putting a very interesting twist on the system right now.

Tom:                Aidan, any thoughts on this?

Aidan:              I would say that, as a father of two millennials, I question whether millennials are really that much different than prior generations. They are compared to the immediate generation before them. We consider whether their values and their beliefs are similar to those that we saw in people from the 1950s and 1960s, who were also very aspirational in changing the world.  “Prosumer” is a word I like a lot because I think it grasps a little bit more the fact that they're people proactively making food choices based on their ethics and their desires, what they believe and what they would like to support. And that part, Mary, I think, has been described extremely clearly. That is definitely something that we have not seen before. We certainly haven't seen in the last 20 or 30 years. We provide food which is affordable, which is available, which is safe. Consumers or prosumers are looking for something more, and that's a fundamental change in our food system.

Tom:                Dr. Dawson, do you want to add anything? I don't want to exclude anybody here.

Karl:                 I agree with the comments that have come out. I think you are looking at a different marketplace, and I think that that's something that will drive the overall agricultural system completely. So, as time goes on, it will be interesting how that evolves, but I think it's going to be a simple adjustment in the way markets look at the consumer.

Tom:                Okay, Dr. Dawson, next question is for you and Mary, if you would respond. It appears that nutrition has not changed for decades, and we may be at the limits of what we can do given the ways in which nutrition is researched. Are there new tools that allow farmers to understand better how to feed their animals and be more precise in nutrition?

Karl:                 Absolutely, there are new tools, but I guess I would take a little bit of a different view on this. I really don't see that nutrition has been a stagnant science over the last two decades, or even the last century. We've had a lot of advancements that have really been responsible for a lot of the changes in livestock production we've seen. Particularly in underdeveloped countries, we're using lots of new technology with amino acid balances. Nutrient balances are new things that have come out of that.From our point of view, working at the very molecular level, we can see what effect food and food ingredients have on the basic physiology of an animal by looking at gene expression.

 But we do have a lot of new tools that are coming out that are really going to change the way we've looked at this. Some of this comes from the ability to collect data and process that data, to integrate it into a very precise model. We've never had the capability to do that before. From our point of view, working at the very molecular level, we can see what effect food and food ingredients have on the basic physiology of an animal by looking at gene expression. This is a new tool that's progressing. We could probably talk a lot about this, but it's a very precise tool that tells you exactly what's happening and it has really allowed us to uncover a lot of the “hidden secrets” with nutrition.

So, as those new tools are becoming available, they’re going to allow for diagnostic tests. They're going to look at new ways of managing and looking at the way we train our animals to eat.

Tom:                There are many tangential areas we could go off to here, and we're only two questions into this conversation. But let's go off on one: big data, because we know that it's having an overwhelming impact and is something of a latecomer to the agricultural world. Does anybody want to offer some thoughts on how big data is changing things and what the future holds in that area?

Karl:                 I would start off by saying you have a tool here to take millions and billions of observations, whether it's productivity, food intake, the way we grow our crops, how much rain we get — all of this can be integrated into very precise models, and that's going to be the big change in agriculture. If you would like, we're talking about moving to “armchair” farming. We're going to be making our decisions while sitting in front of the computer, looking to see what we can predict in the future. That's a tremendous tool we've never had before.

Big data — whether it be used in terms of diseases, performance of animals or crops, or whether it be used in the realms of a lot of these sensors and new digital technologies — can capture a lot of information we've never been able to capture before.

Aidan:              I think, in particular, we've seen some of the bigger questions such as food safety — something which is extremely difficult to measure on-farm — and what can influence it, what causes it to increase or decrease. We at Alltech have been working with other programs where big data allows us to capture the factors that we have underlined — why that occurs — which we've never been able to analyze before.

 We're starting to understand things in a very fundamental way, and I think that big data — whether it be used in terms of diseases, performance of animals or crops, or whether it be used in the realms of a lot of these sensors and new digital technologies — can capture a lot of information we've never been able to capture before. We can now interpret that information because we're able to use larger algorithms, larger systems to be able to understand what exactly we're looking at.

Michael:          Okay, sorry for the problems here in terms of getting engaged, but I'm here now. To comment on big data: It seems to me that, specifically, we have had significant advances in this area, and the advances may be as much along the entire value chain as they are at the production sector. In fact, the production sector may be lacking and just starting to catch up. The whole issue of the opportunity we have here, in terms of both capturing the payoff of big data not only at the farm production level but also throughout the entire value chain, is really critical. We can now accurately receive the message from consumers of what they want in terms of physical characteristics of their food or their eating experiences and also get more feedback in terms of those credence attributes, which are really important but difficult to measure. Now we can get them more accurately with traceability through that value chain. So, that’s a big advancement.

Tom:                Okay. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Boehlje. Let's dig a little more deeply into technology and the next question is for you, Aidan and Dr. Dawson. Let's look at the range of primary technologies that are transforming agriculture beyond big data. What else is happening out there?

Aidan:              There's an awful lot happening, and it's very hard, I think, for somebody to capture the degree of change which is occurring. I think if anybody thinks that agriculture is going to be the same way in 20 to 30 years' time, they've got their head in sand. We've written a certain number of papers on the digital technologies and the rate that digital technologies are transforming agriculture at the moment. This includes robots, drones, blockchain, the internet of things, virtual reality and enhanced reality. These are technologies which, either from a hardware or software perspective, can fundamentally change the ways in which we understand what happens when we grow plants or grow animals.

There are other technologies, such as nutrigenomics. That's one that Alltech is invested in very heavily. We're the only ones in animal agriculture to do so. We are big believers that understanding how nutrients impact gene expression in animals and in organisms is going to be very important for maximizing their productivity. I wouldn't forget gene editing, either. This is an area — described as CRISPR — that is dramatically transforming what we can do, again, with the ability of plants and animals to resist disease, enhance productivity, achieve certain characteristics we're looking at from the food perspective.

I don't know how to capture it all in such a short way, Tom, but I'd certainly say the digital technologies, nutrigenomics and gene editing are the three major areas that are going to transform the way we think about how food is produced.

Tom:                Karl Dawson, anything to add to that?

There are things that are happening in the area of biochemistry — findings that are really changing the way we think about processing feeds, handling feeds, the way we think about using feed additives. 

Karl:                 I think I'd add a few other things: There are things that are happening in the area of biochemistry — findings that are really changing the way we think about processing feeds, handling feeds, the way we think about using feed additives. All of those are coming from very basic biochemical evaluation of what's going on in the animal systems and the way they eat. We're doing the same thing in plants today.

                        One of the things that comes up when you start thinking a little bit about this is that we always think about what we're going to do on the nutrition side and how we're going to change the nutrition. We can do that, and we're starting to home in on the gap between genetic potential and what the animal can do.

  The other side of that issue that comes up is that we can start thinking about selecting our animals for specific nutrition. We talked a little bit about gene editing and the capabilities there. We have the capability of doing that and changing what those animals look like coming into the system, and we have the same capability on the plant side. That’s a very important thought process to keep in mind: that those two things are going to come together someday, and we have to be able to go forward with those in the future.

Tom:                Okay, an open question to all of you: This comes to us form Irish Farmers Monthly, and it dovetails nicely with what you've just been talking about. From both the environmental and the productivity perspectives, how important will electric and autonomous vehicles be on the future farm? Will such machinery become more important in light of the increased need for sustainability as the world population increases? Any thoughts?

Aidan:              Look, we're facing a world where we're talking about having planes fly themselves, cars drive themselves. It's perfectly logical that we would see the same thing on the farm. And anybody who's seen some of the injuries that can occur on a tractor and cause somebody to lose an arm or a limb understands that there are all sorts of safety issues that could be addressed by no longer having the potential for operator error.

                        From my perspective, I think it is difficult to find labor on-farm. When you find labor, you want labor to be well-trained and well-prepared. You have safety opportunities, also. I think there's just going to be a lot of factors that are going to drive for these autonomously driven tractors and harvesters to become part of our future.

Automation and robotics are going to be, I think, much more common and more rapidly adopted than many people think.

Michael:          Automation and robotics are going to be, I think, much more common and more rapidly adopted than many people think. We have a debate here on the Purdue campus of how quickly we're going to see those happening in the field. The discussion is related to whether it's going to be five years or 10 years before we're going to see an adoption of automated tractors and other systems within crop production agriculture. We already see it in the dairy industry in terms of robotic milking. We're seeing it happen particularly in terms of harvesting, especially crops. It’s going to happen much more rapidly than we realize, and it has the opportunity to profoundly change the agricultural sector. It’s a really, really important development.

Tom:                Anybody else?

Karl:                 I think that's true, and, quite frankly, it's not that far off. Some of it is already here. I've been on combines that essentially drive themselves down the row. You need a driver there to turn the combine around, but in the big fields, these 18-, 19-, 20-foot stalls can be driving themselves, and they're controlled by GPS. It's amazing to see how little manpower it really takes to run those.

Michael:          And now they’re able to turn themselves around. So that's even changed.

Karl:                 They didn't the day I was there.

Michael:          Oh, I understand, but that's how fast this technology is coming. It's coming very rapidly. My belief is we'll see this in the fields in five years — not 10 years — and rapidly adopted.

Tom:                Aidan?

Aidan:              I was just going to say I was with an ag-tech startup that obviously made too much money because the owner had just bought himself a Tesla. He just took his hands off the steering wheel and let the car drive itself, which gave me a little bit of heart palpitations as I watched it maneuvering its way through the city. But it shows you what's possible. In the fields, we've got a much more controlled environment — we have much less risk of things such as car doors opening or bicycles. It’s an inevitable part of our future, and we have the perfect opportunity to use this technology.

Mary:              I just want to add an even finer detail around it: What happens when we get in the field and we have the sensors on and the sprayers operating and you're actually sensing which weed to spray or which bloom doesn't have enough pollen on it so you can provide supplemental pollination? We have this micro-level influence. Technology can help us get closer to achieving that potential.

Tom:                We're talking about 9 billion people by 2050. Do these innovations get us to where we need to go to be able to feed the world?

The technology is developing fast and it will continue to keep up with the demand for the foreseeable future.

Karl:                 I think there's no doubt about that. I think the technology is developing fast and it will continue to keep up with the demand for the foreseeable future.

Aidan:              I had the opportunity to talk to a cooperative this week that was asking for some ideas about 2050, and I said that 2050, for me, has become unimaginable in terms of what could potentially happen. I often wonder whether 2050 is the right number to use. Maybe we should just be focusing, as Dr. Boehlje mentioned, on the next five to 10 years, where we can concretely comprehend what will change. But if you say the number is 9 billion and Mary says the number is 10 billion and somebody else says, “Well, what happens if we start being capable of changing life itself and really extending life spans?” maybe the number we're looking at is 15 billion. Maybe we're looking at a much greater number of people that we're going to have to feed.

                        I think we need to be really cognizant of the fact that this technological thing is moving so quickly. Don't stretch yourself too far in predicting. Look concretely at what should be used and how it should be used in the foreseeable future, which is probably more like 10 years than 35 years.

Tom:                These things are changing so much more rapidly these days. You mentioned nutrigenomics earlier, and I wanted to touch on that with Dr. Dawson. What are the main benefits that you see from a nutrigenomics perspective for farmers, and how will that change the way that they farm?

Karl:                 Well, if you think we're going to have a diagnostic kit tomorrow that solves all the nutritional problem of animals, nutrigenomics isn't going to deliver that right now. However, it is redefining nutrition. When we think about the value weight of feed material or feed product, the supplementation strategy, management practices, the way we feed calves or young chickens — all of those things are starting to change now because we have a tool that allows us to actually measure what happens when we make a nutritional change. That's a very powerful thing, and it's not only allowing us to look at productivity. We can now measure immunity in a bird and change that by nutritionally altering the young chick's diet. Same thing with calves: We can pass material information from one generation to the next using a nutritional strategy, but we can actually measure that and see how it's done.

Nutrigenomics is really going to redefine things. It's already redefined mineral nutrition. Trace mineral nutrition will never be the same...

                        Nutrigenomics is really going to redefine things. It's already redefined mineral nutrition. Trace mineral nutrition will never be the same as we view it from now on. We know that we can use less minerals. We can change and have less impact on the environment by using these tools. This tool allowed us to very rapidly understand that and change our nutritional practices.

Tom:                Dr. Boehlje, I want to give you an opportunity to jump in here.

Michael:          Let me just comment quickly. I'm not a scientist at the same level as Dr. Dawson, so I don't have that understanding at a granular level. But, we sometimes describe the technologies as moving agriculture from “growing stuff” to biological manufacturing. This biological manufacturing is very much in the context of what we've already been talking about: it's understanding the science and nutrigenomics. It's understanding biotechnologies and everything that has the potential to significantly impact the growth process of plants and animals at a much more scientific level. We’re getting sciences and technologies that are developing because of the interconnectivity between science bases previously kept in silos: nutrition, nutrigenomics and biology. We see some universities that have said, just as an illustration, that science is not only important, but is also essential. In fact, the required science increasingly in many universities is you have to take biology. You have to take biology to get an understanding because biology is increasingly driving the world.

Mary:              You know, can I come back to that, Mike? I agree with you and Dr. Dawson that science and nutrigenomics is giving us amazing tools. But, Mike, you used that term “biological manufacturing,” and I put on my consumer hat, and I just think that that's a terrible term. Today’s consumers don't want their food manufactured in any kind of factory, and that's just kind of the picture that comes to mind (with the term “biological manufacturing”). We were talking about how we can be more responsive to consumers, have differentiation, we can give this credence attributes, yet you're proposing or using this term that's actually far from that.

Michael:          I understand your perspective and I absolutely agree with that perspective. We aren't going to promote or advertise, we're not going to be saying to consumers, “This is a biological manufacturing process.” In fact, the word “processing,” generally, is not something consumers really want to hear relative to food.

It's interesting, though, that consumers are more than happy to hear the term “processing” relative to health issues or other things they buy, but they really are, in many cases, very negative about the term as it relates to food.

                        I'm not going to promote “biological manufacturing” to consumers, but it’s certainly a concept we in the industry, at the production level, must be increasingly mindful of. This allows us to adopt and facilitate the process of growing and producing food more scientifically and better than we have in the past.

Tom:                Dr. Boehlje, a topic that we were discussing before you were able to join us is big data — or farming data — in the future. Actually, it's happening now. How does that affect the types of people who will choose farming as a profession in the future? Do you think it will change the attractiveness of agriculture in some way?

Michael:          I think that, increasingly, what we're going to find in this industry is that those people who are going to be successful have some skills that maybe they need to enhance to be successful. Particularly, what we're interested in is analytical skills — analytical skills that are tied to data and information.

                        We see this particularly in the financial area, which is the area I work in. Some farmers abhor recordkeeping. They abhor this idea of having to keep financial information to provide to their lender, to understand their own business, to get the financial performance assessment that they need. We need to, increasingly, develop that skill and feel comfortable with that skill of looking at numbers, looking at information, trying to understand what the numbers say and the story they tell — not just crunching those numbers. Data assessment, data summarization, data visualization — those are going to be skills that we need to have more and more of our producers understand, and they will be the skills that might be very important differentiators.

                        And it's not just the stories that we need to have in terms of average yields. We see that, as we go across the fields with our yield monitors today, it's the distributions that count. It's what happens when you are in parts of that field where you have low yields as a function of a number of things that happened — whether they be weather or whether they be agronomic-oriented — and where you get those high yields as well. The same is true with animals. We're starting to see different animal performance even in the same pen in the same group as a function of their genetics, as a function of a number of things. We're going to get more granular in the data, and we need to understand the story there.

                        Data assessment, data summarization, data visualization — those are going to be skills that we need to have more and more of our producers understand, and they will be the skills that might be very important differentiators. Certainly, strategic thinking is another one of those skills, risk assessment, a lot of other skills. But the one specifically related to big data is this willingness to work with data and understand "the story" it tells.

Tom:                Aidan, do you have thoughts on that?

Aidan:              Yes, from a historical perspective, I think of what our system was for deciding who would become farmers. I suppose, originally, everyone is a farmer, and then gradually we decided that there would be land and that land would be passed from a farm owner to their eldest son. And over time, then, it seems, — at least in Ireland — it was divided amongst as many children as you had. Each one got a parcel of land, which created its own issues. Gradually, we seem to have moved toward a system where those who don't want to stay on the land go to cities or go and find other jobs, and we've been left with the people who really want to be farmers. Only in the last 20 or 30 years did we start to understand that being a farmer involves education as well. So, obviously, all the educational systems were set up through land grants and other systems around the world to try to create farming as a profession.

                        I think what we're looking at now is a fundamental change in what that farmer will look like. They won't necessarily grow up on a farm. They might grow up in the city. They won't necessarily have the skills of understanding animals or understanding plants. They'll understand data, they'll understand analytics, equipment, decision-making between all the various technologies, and what they should buy and what they shouldn't invest in.

 I think what we're looking at now is a fundamental change in what that farmer will look like.

                        So, those are dramatically different skills and skills that were used for the last, I'd say, thousand years — you might say a hundred years — to select or to decide who is it that's a farmer, who is not a farmer, and that's very fundamental. And back to the same numbers we're talking about, I think those influence not who is going to be a farmer in 10 or 20 or 30 years' time. Probably even in the next five years, we're going to see dramatic differences in terms of who are the right people, who are the successful people who are going to take over stewardship of the land.

Tom:                It seems to have broad implications for the entire culture. Are we talking about these attributes appearing mostly in large farming operations, or all the way down the chain to small family farmers?

Mary:              I think they have to go all the way down to small family farmers. I would come back to this and say to both of you, to Mike and to Aidan, that you gave a great description. I agree completely. It's about understanding the data to use the data. But, again, what's missing is the typical production push, and we now have consumers controlling more of the acres.

It’s not just about producing at the lowest price, but producing what the market wants...

                        I would add to this list — and this is whether it's maybe more appropriate even for a small family farmer or the new generation that is very attracted to farming for different reasons — is being able to understand the market. It's about being able to understand how to deliver this differentiated product that has extra value. It’s not just about producing at the lowest price, but producing what the market wants — or different segments that the market wants — and being able to sell into those channels, connect with those channels.

                        This is a very big basket now — a very big ask — which is a great thing for family farming enterprises because, typically, you don't have just one person doing all the decision-making — you have a whole set of people. The whole family is around the table, and it's the husband and the spouse, even the children as they come into the family business. I see these enterprises, and they have different specializations within, and that's fantastic because everybody can bring their strength to the table.

Michael:          Let me just completely agree with what Mary said. That's a really important issue. We have a tendency in agriculture to talk about supply chains. That's true in almost all industries and is reflective of the “push” mentality that we've had in a lot of industries, including agriculture: how we're pushing through the supply chain to the consumer. Increasingly, we're talking about “chain reversal,” and that's the whole idea: demand-driven change. We have consumers increasingly telling the entire chain what they want, how they want it and how it ought to be done.

 An important skill that's going to be much more important for farmers is going to be this whole idea of understanding and a willingness to work in an interdependent system — rather than being independent — and be very focused on relationships, collaboration and interpersonal skills. Those are things that many farmers haven’t historically — if I take my own father, for example — liked to do. He wanted to be in his farming operation. He didn't want to do farm records, and he didn't want to have a whole lot of relationships with other people. And, increasingly, those skills will be essential to be a successful farmer in the future.

Tom:                I have a question here from media that I think is appropriate at the moment. Let's just open it up for everybody. I think each of you can bring a perspective to this. This is from Owen Roberts. He's with the University of Guelph and is president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, and he asks a very appropriate question because of what happened yesterday in Switzerland — the country renowned for its food supply. They held a national referendum yesterday designed to anchor food security in their constitution. It initially won approval by about 77 percent of the electorate. Globally, this was quite a groundbreaking exercise on their part, reflecting the growing interest by people everywhere in the production of the foods they consume, as you mentioned, Mary. He asks that we touch on some reasons why precision nutrition can give them confidence about the future of food supply and how they get that message to consuming public. If you'd like to begin with that, Mary?

Do we have the water? Do we have the land? How is climate variability affecting things? This precision nutrition piece is an important data tool that will enable us to do as much as we can with the resources that we have.

Mary:              Wow, that's a tough one. I think this issue about food security is really important for everybody in the world, right? And you're talking about Switzerland here. The challenge is that in some countries you don't have the resources to do that. I don't know enough about this referendum or the backend pieces of it. But, I'd say that precision nutrition will be incredibly important to meet this global demand. At the country level — we have talked so much about the fact that we can enhance productivity, but we have to do it in a time of decreasing resources, decreasing natural resources. Do we have the water? Do we have the land? How is climate variability affecting things? This precision nutrition piece is an important data tool that will enable us to do as much as we can with the resources that we have. I think country by country you're not going to get the same answer.

Tom:                Wheels are turning here, I guess.

Aidan:              I think that we talk all the time about the need for countries to produce all of their own food, and in essence, that sounds like motherhood and apple pie — you have to agree with it. I don't feel that old, but I can remember days, or growing up, when there weren't oranges in the supermarket, when you couldn't find bananas all year round, when things were much more seasonal. We've all gotten used to the idea that there's an abundance of food. It's available relatively inexpensively. Its carbon footprint, even if it comes from Colombia or Kenya, is actually quite low because the systems of distribution have become extremely efficient. I'll even look at countries like China that want to be sufficient in food yet increasingly are consuming corn from Brazil and soybeans from the United States, and they are purchasing pork and chicken. These are countries that have said they want to produce everything themselves. It's clear that that isn't always that easy.

..the fact is that we have this increasingly interconnected global system, and consumers have an expectation of being able to have food available at a relatively cheap cost and all the foods they want all year round.

                        Mary and I have had this debate in the past about people storing food in cans in their houses. Is that what we should be doing? We imagine people would start to do that again. I struggle with that idea. I think the world has become increasingly global. It requires, of course, free trade and requires us to trust that other countries won't declare war on us — which maybe is a big thing to wonder about. But the fact is that we have this increasingly interconnected global system, and consumers have an expectation of being able to have food available at a relatively cheap cost and all the foods they want all year round.

Tom:                Dr. Dawson, do you have thoughts on this?

Karl:                 I agree with the direction that Aidan is going, but the important things that are coming out today with agriculture boil down, oftentimes, to resource limitations — what do we have to work with? Whether it be the environment, land, water — those are the things that are going to drive the way we look at efficiency as we move forward. I don't know the initiative that they're talking about in Europe, but the idea that these are things that we can control right now is probably not right. We're going to have a limited amount of resources.

I look at an area where I grew up in southwest Montana. At one time, people died over water rights. For many years, it hasn't been that way, but I received something in the mail the other day that said I had to declare my water rights again on the property that I own there with the idea that that's going to go away pretty soon. It's going to be legislated. Maybe there are some security issues there we need to look at. One of the reasons that it's bad there is mining, which uses a lot of water, but the fact is that it's going to happen around the world. So, security does need to be legislated to some extent.

Tom:                Dr. Boehlje, thoughts on food security?

It’s not just our ability to produce enough to have "food security." It's also our ability to protect the amount of production we get and make sure that it actually gets to consumers and, as a matter of fact, to be more efficient and effective in terms of consuming it...

Michael:          Yes, I think the other dimension here is what kind of losses we have in the food chain, particularly in different economies in different countries. It’s not just our ability to produce enough to have "food security." It's also our ability to protect the amount of production we get and make sure that it actually gets to consumers and, as a matter of fact, to be more efficient and effective in terms of consuming it and not having such waste as we frequently have, particularly in the developed countries and developed world.

                        This whole issue of trying to reduce the amount of losses — the wastage — the amount impacted by storage losses, waste in the field, by not getting harvested adequately, by not getting transported adequately — particularly in many countries in the developing world. At the same time, in countries like the U.S., we have a lot of food wastage that occurs just out of our own refrigerators, out of our own food systems, where we buy food products, we don't consume them, we don't take care of them, we don't refrigerate them — and if we do refrigerate them, we lose track of them — we throw it out the back of the restaurant, we may try to donate it, but sometimes it's already expired in terms of its ability to be able to be consumed. There's a lot of waste in the system, and there actually are some major initiatives underway on the part of both corporate and university organizations to try to reduce the losses in the food chain, and that's an important part of this discussion.

Tom:                Dr. Boehlje, I want to stay with you for this next question, and Mary, if you would consider this as well: Economically, the U.S. has been the best place to farm, as you have written, based on its strong infrastructure and on its open markets. Do you think that that will continue to be the case in the future or should farmers be seeking new places to conduct business?

Michael:          We already see that occurring. We have significant expansion of production in agriculture, as everyone knows, in South America, Brazil, Argentina being particularly the case — significant expansion of agricultural production in Ukraine, and they are major competitors now to the U.S. We see it occurring in China, we see it occurring in Africa. So, we do see opportunities much more broadly in terms of farming than we used to. I can name a farming family here who has both a U.S. operation and a Brazilian operation. I actually know three families that have that kind of situation.

So, we are expanding agricultural production more globally. If you go back 30 years or longer, a crew chef from the former Soviet Union came to the U.S. to buy wheat to feed his people. Here we are in the middle of a cold war and he comes to the U.S. — his archenemy — to buy food. This has to be the ultimate indication of the failure of the system. Why did he come to the U.S.? Well, in a way, we were the only store in town. We were the only place where you had the opportunity to get the amount of wheat that he needed to feed his people. Now you can get that in a much broader base of geographies, in addition to corn, soybeans and other products.

 Now, the interesting dimension is that we're going to see farmers who are more geographically diversified in their production systems. We already see it in the specialty crops, where farmers in California have Mexican production as well because they can't grow what they need there. We see it happening in terms of other parts of the U.S., where farmers are in different geographic regions even across the U.S. I've got a potato grower friend who grows potatoes in nine states, 15 locations.

 We see it already happening in the U.S. We think it’s going to go into a more global perspective, and that's really an interesting question and issue because it has profound implications: If we geographically diversify production agriculture, how will the potential weather variability impact total supplies? Will we get diversification benefits? We don't know. But one would logically think that we do. So, will there be farming opportunities in other parts of the world that farmers — whether they be U.S., whether they be European, whether they be South American — ought to be seriously thinking about? The answer is yes.

Tom:                Mary Shelman, thoughts on this?

Land probably isn't the unit of natural resource that we should be looking at. I think water is, in the future, the way that we're going to frame farming operations.

Mary:              Well, I absolutely agree there are opportunities all over the world. Mike didn't mention Africa. I think that's the next frontier for farming, and they need a lot of strong technology and value chain development there to make that work. However, to come back to the opportunities in the U.S., I think they're still very strong, although it's a bit of a transition from the typical push mentality into one that's more based on getting the most value per acre, per animal, per unit of natural resource. Land probably isn't the unit of natural resource that we should be looking at. I think water is, in the future, the way that we're going to frame farming operations. You think about what happens with the tremendous growth of the Brazilian soybean industry — it's basically shipping water from Brazil to China. That's really how I think about agriculture in the world: removing water from one place to the other. There is also the New Zealand dairy industry, selling water basically through milk powders to China, to India, to other places in the world.

                        I think here that there are tremendous opportunities, but our farmers have to be much smarter in terms of all these technologies we were talking about, the different ways that they think about their business, and connecting to markets and figuring out where to get the most value from that water, from that land, and how to factor in the risks.

Tom:                Karl? Aidan? Thoughts?

Karl:                 One of the things that we haven't touched on much here is the efficiency of animal protein production. If you start looking at things that are going on around the world right now, aquaculture is one that will really get your interest. The development of recirculating aquaculture systems is full-steam right now. More of them are going into Norway — their production of fish. These recirculating systems are going to grow tenfold in the next five years.

Tom:                And those are land-based, correct?

Karl:                 Those are land-based systems, but they're very intensive when looking at protein production. We're talking about a system that's probably three to four times more efficient than any of the terrestrial animals we're used to working with. They're better than chickens, they're better than pork, they're better than beef by a long way. So those kinds of impacts are going to be tremendous when it actually comes to looking at animal protein and the way they're being developed. For us in the feed industry, the implications are gigantic.

Tom:                Thoughts, Aidan?

Aidan:              No.

Tom:                Nope. Okay. I do have one that I think you might like to address: Blockchain. This, by the way, comes to us from Simon Duke of Feedinfo.

Aidan:              You can thank him personally from me.

Tom:                What’s your opinion of blockchain and its potential for the animal nutrition industry?

Aidan:              Blockchain is one of the most exciting of the digital technologies. It's also one of the most difficult to get your head around. I suppose the bitcoin example is the one that most people are most familiar with, and it's the one that probably makes it easiest for people to understand: You have something which is this digital ledger where you can understand what's happening in the chain, but not see the individual actors or the individual people who are involved in the chain. I think that has tremendous implications for agriculture. Typically, as farmers, we have not liked people knowing exactly where our cattle come from. At the same time, when there's a disease, we want to be able to trace it back. We've not liked knowing who the people are who transform our food from when it's grown on the land to when we consume it. And, yes, again, if there's an E. coli outbreak and a child dies, we want to know where it occurred and how it happened.

Traceability is a fundamental part of our future. Recapturing the confidence of consumers is extremely important, and I think blockchain is the technology that allows us to do so in a manner that keeps us comfortable.

                        I think when you see companies like Walmart getting behind blockchain and using it in countries like China and being so impressed by its potential — and then they start taking it to the United States and elsewhere — I think you can see what the possibilities are. Traceability is a fundamental part of our future. Recapturing the confidence of consumers is extremely important, and I think blockchain is the technology that allows us to do so in a manner that keeps us comfortable. We're not giving away all of our secrets and, therefore, perhaps not trading our margins to the end food retailer, but at the same time making sure that something does occur. How fortunate that is that we can actually find out where that occurred, what it is that we need to do to stop it happening again.

Michael:          I think this issue of blockchain is a really important issue — sorry for interrupting — but let me just leverage those comments on food safety and traceability just a little bit further. A lot of people, when they talk about blockchain, think about it in terms of the financial markets and some other breaches we've had recently in the financial markets and personal security, et cetera, are really important. So that's where a lot of the common perspective is. But it's interesting how some industries are actually quite ahead of us in terms of using blockchain traceability. For example, the diamond industry is using it as a mechanism to try to trace and make sure that those diamonds that they're sourcing not only are true and accurate diamonds, their location and — back to Mary's points — are with the right credence attributes — that they are mined in the right way with the right work pros, with the right people. So, I think that this whole issue of traceability and food safety will be probably the biggest impact that blockchains have on the agricultural sector.

Tom:                Okay. We have time for one more question before we wrap things up, and let's begin with Mary, if you would. What are the opportunities for farmers to change the way they sell food? Are there specific ways in which farmers can view this as an opportunity to be more profitable or to gain even new markets?

Mary:              We talked about this growing fragmentation on the consumer end of it, that it's moving beyond just wanting cheap and accessible and safe food into things that align with values and other things around the specialty side. I think that does provide some opportunities at the farm level, first of all, just to be much more market-oriented and know where that profit potential is and basically growing what the market is interested in buying rather than what you want to sell. But not everybody can be direct-to-consumer. There are opportunities with technology now. We see the rise of some brands from the farm level. It starts out like a Laura's Lean Beef or Creekstone Farms or Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs — things that come with some specialty proposition — that actually move all the way to the brand level. When I was in New Zealand last week, McDonald's had big banners in their stores saying, “We sell 100% free-range eggs.”

                        These types of changes are coming. If you look at the AmazonFresh website, you can buy hamburgers from a single cow. When you think about the implications of the supply chain for that and that differentiation, not everybody, clearly, is going to be able to deal with the market at the consumer level. But even at the customer level, the processor level that's buying in, the sustainability pushes inside of these companies, and also better understanding. Again, if you don't satisfy their consumer needs, it will be more about providing these products that have the exact kind of value or attributes that market wants.

                        I think, though, the challenge is that there's tremendous resistance to making those kinds of changes because our system has been set up to move big quantities of relatively undifferentiated products. I was speaking with a buyer of U.S. soybeans in a Southeast Asian country. He said, "We want to buy soybeans based on their oil content because we know how that breaks down in the value proposition." But the big processing companies want to sell soybeans based on whether it's, basically, color and size and the fact that it's this kind of bean and they really don't want to tell. So, it's finding these unique opportunities that are able to match that scale and finding those buyers that are willing to pay.

Tom:                Aidan, what do you see out there?

Apps on phones, websites, digital technologies, the ability to be able to see through cameras what's actually happening on the farm, to be able to see through blockchain what has actually occurred in terms of the way your food is processed — these are all just tremendous opportunities for farmers to engage directly with the end consumers of their food...

Aidan:              Well, Mary summarized it extremely well, which makes it difficult, but I'll maybe take a slightly different approach. I think that we are seeing very large changes in consumer behavior. You see that when they go to the grocery stores or supermarkets and they’re not going to the so-called “center aisles” anymore. They're not choosing to purchase the cornflakes, they're not buying food that, traditionally, was perhaps the macaroni and cheese that was extremely processed, for example, and they're looking for the “mom and pop” — as I call them — brands. These companies may not even have commonly recognized names. Consumers are looking for these companies they perceive as being more organic, more local and fitting with their ideals for food and the way they “vote,” as you put it earlier, Mary.

                        From my perspective, I think that's a massive opportunity for farmers to engage directly with consumers. Instead of farmers going to big food companies or medium-sized food companies, they can go directly farm-to-consumer. They can have a relationship directly with a consumer of their food. That can allow them, hopefully, to capture more value, so they can charge a higher price or just capture more value within the system and to, hopefully, adapt to what they find consumers are looking for. Maybe consumers are asking for questions that larger systems can't accomplish.

The massive opportunities, particularly, through apps on phones, websites, digital technologies, the ability to be able to see through cameras what's actually happening on the farm, to be able to see through blockchain what has actually occurred in terms of the way your food is processed — these are all just tremendous opportunities for farmers to engage directly with the end consumers of their food, and I think, eventually, that makes potentially a more profitable farming system.

Tom:                Dr. Boehlje?

Michael:          Yes, I think Aidan and Mary have really, really synopsized this issue quite well. Let me just put a broader context on it with some keywords. We're increasingly seeing this entire food production and distribution industry move very dramatically from a commodity orientation and a supply chain mentality to a differentiated product orientation and a demand-driven system. Those are very dramatic shifts in terms of what people have to do and how they do it, and the technology is increasingly available to get that done. Consumers are not buying food products. They want food consumption experiences, and that's a really different perspective on this industry than what we’ve had with the traditional producer commodity and what I sometimes refer to as the “produce and peddle mentality”: If I produce it, they will come. That is not the industry of tomorrow.

Tom:                Karl Dawson, thoughts on this?

Karl:                 Well, I guess I would agree with the whole concept here, but there is still a large change needed. I've been involved with programs for the last 15 years producing high-quality beef products with very specific attributes that we felt were of interest to the consumer and receiving good reviews from the consumer. But from a commercialization point of view, to date, those have been failures. We are not getting the story across in a way that allows us to get the feedback from the consumer and get the middleman to buy into the concepts we're making at the producer level or in the production. Alltech Angus was an example of a meat product: Succulent, very good reviews, and, quite frankly, we never could make that go because there was a barrier there between us and the consumer.

                        I see where that's coming from and the potential for doing that, but there's still a big hole in the middle in that commercialization chain that we have to take advantage of. Believe me, I'd love to see it go, because if you tell me what attributes you want in your beef, we can work on those things with our tools today.

The existing system is set up to be more commodity push, and that includes the processing sector. But we see now the advent of these nontraditional actors here: the investors.

Mary:              I might just come back to that because I think that's the same resistance that I was talking about there: Why we can't sell soybeans based on oil content rather than something else? The existing system is set up to be more commodity push, and that includes the processing sector. But we see now the advent of these nontraditional actors here: the investors. You have Bill Gates basically investing in Beyond Meat — alternate protein sources. You have Sergey Brin, founder of Google, investing in tissue culture beef. You have Jeff Bezos of Amazon now completely disrupting everybody's thought pattern by buying Whole Foods. So, hopefully, Karl, I think we're just at the breakthrough point on getting through. There are people in the system now that look at this and say our traditional food system is broken. Now, that's a rough thing, but they're coming with very innovative ideas, very disruptive ideas, and see a new future. And I think we're talking about what that new future is. Hopefully we're close to getting past that.

Tom:                Okay, we have just a few minutes remaining. What I'd like to do to conclude is to go around the panel and ask you to give us your closing thoughts on what viewers of today's discussion might want to consider their main takeaways from what they have heard. We'll begin with you, Dr. Boehlje.

Michael:          We’re certainly talking about an industry that's in a major transformation. In fact, we do programs called “Disruption” and “Chaos,” and that's where we are in this industry. It's been pretty tradition-bound in many cases. As just indicated in the previous conversation, parts of it are still tradition-bound. But there will be a profound transformation from outside the traditional players in the industry when we start doing more — putting together the pharmaceutical and the health industry within the nutrition industry. Maybe we're going to find that what happens is outside forces are going to be shaping up more than they have. When we put sensing technology out there, when IBM decides, which it has, that agriculture is the space where they ought to be spending some time and energy, not just at production, but across the value chain, that makes a big difference in this industry.

                        We’re going to see a lot of both big and small firms and organizations outside the traditional sources or the traditional players in the industry have a very disruptive impact on this industry.

Tom:                Dr. Dawson.

If I had to sum it up in one sentence: It's not your daddy's farm anymore.

Karl:                 Well, I think it's obvious from the conversation today that technology is going to drive a lot of different things. If you look at how we refer to the farmer today, I would change that to “agricultural technologist” rather than “farmer.” We're going to be bucking tradition, and that's one of the things that is a huge problem for a very conservative industry as we're moving forward. But if I had to sum it up in one sentence: It's not your daddy's farm anymore.

Tom:                Mary Shelman, takeaways?

Mary:             I think it's been a great discussion. In particular, the consumer has a much stronger vote today than ever before about what's happening on the farm. Therefore, you have to be market-oriented, and market-oriented not just in terms of thinking about the price of soybeans or the price of beef, but about the fundamental segments that can meet with the different value propositions around it.

                        So that's one piece, and the talent piece is absolutely essential. There are tremendous challenges, but even more importantly, there are tremendous opportunities in the next few years, and I think it's incredibly exciting time. But you have to be a little bit patient because, as Karl said, you can come up with a great product and a great proposition, but time might not be quite right yet. So how do you navigate this transformation that we're in and actually be able to balance looking toward the future while remaining very grounded today and having a successful business?

Innovators are the ones who are going to be successful — they're the ones who are going to survive and thrive. That's the farming of the future for me — innovation.

Aidan:              I think farmers of the future will be innovators. Until now, farmers have been good at learning from others, embracing technologies that others have, learning what methods they use and doing so successfully. In the future, my recommendation to farmers would be to buy yourself a passport, go travel the world, read as much as you can, learn as much as you can, and when you see innovations within reason, embrace them as quickly as possible. I think innovators are the ones who are going to be successful — they're the ones who are going to survive and thrive. That's the farming of the future for me — innovation.

Tom:                Aidan Connolly, Mary Shelman, Karl Dawson, Dr. Michael Boehlje, thank you all for joining us. It's been a fascinating conversation. We appreciate it very much and thank you for joining us.

Farming the Future was a live video panel discussion. To watch the recorded video and learn more about our panelists, click below:

For some areas of South Dakota, a hot and dry summer was followed by a wet fall and a hard freeze has yet to set in for the winter months. These factors have created the perfect storm for molds to grow in the state's corn fields, and experts warning livestock producers to test first before feeding corn silage to gestating cows. "Mycotoxins are an issue in South Dakota this year due a lot to the weather issues the state has experienced," said Max Hawkins, Alltech mycotoxin management team nutritionist.

A 20th century vision that was ahead of its time remains so today, some 30 years after its conception: The Alltech ACE principle is a corporate “North Star,” serving as a guide to a more sustainable, healthier world.

The “A” in ACE is all about the animal and innovating ways to balance highly efficient and profitable livestock production with the seemingly conflicting imperatives of environmental stewardship and consumer demand.

A focus on precision nutrition

Alltech’s animal health and nutrition business revolves around the science of nutrigenomics — how diet impacts genetics — and a quest for a better understanding of how to feed an animal to its specific genetic potential.

An Alltech researcher reviews markers of gene expression, which provide a better understanding of how changes in the diet affect animals at the genetic level.

“The more efficient that we can make these animals, the better off we are because we can get more meat, milk or eggs per pound of feed,” noted Dr. Kristen Brennan, a research project manager at the Alltech Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition. “The focus of the nutrigenomics that we do is to understand how nutrition influences animals on a molecular level and how that can lead to changes that we see in production, health and well-being.”

Good for the animal, producer, environment and us

Intensive livestock operations produce large quantities of animal waste, which can include high levels of ammonia, nitrogen, phosphate and trace minerals. However, proper animal nutrition can minimize the levels and impacts of these pollutants.

Alltech scientists are working to develop products that reduce methane emissions while improving the efficiency of the animal.

“These products must reduce methane emissions from the rumen without negatively impacting rumen fermentation and negatively impacting either the milk production or growth of beef animals,” said Dr. Amanda Gehman, Alltech research project director.

Finding that balance is also a focus at Alltech-owned KEENAN, the Ireland-based manufacturer of advanced diet feeders and software products.

“What we’re all trying to do is to increase feed conversion efficiency (FCE) on the farm,” said Conan Condon, director of KEENAN's InTouch live review and support service. “We want to increase production while decreasing the intake of the animals. By doing that, you will increase your FCE and reduce your carbon footprint.”

For Alltech Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Karl Dawson, a significant and all-encompassing ACE milestone was reached when the company introduced Optigen®, a non-protein nitrogen source for ruminants.

“That had a tremendous impact in terms of what it would do for animal feeds,” said Dawson. “It not only improved animal performance, it changed the way nitrogen is utilized in cattle. It made nitrogen efficiency much greater, and you have less nitrogen in waste.

“Nitrogen in waste is the precursor to one of the major greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide, which is a stronger greenhouse gas than methane,” he continued. “You can reduce greenhouses gases using that technology.”

Healthy animals, healthy humans

Dawson is equally focused on addressing today’s widely held consumer concerns about the use of antibiotics in livestock production as a growth promotant. Alternative solutions are being found in enzyme technologies that are becoming the backbone of Alltech nutritional programs and technologies.

“We have systems that can induce the same types of changes that antimicrobials have induced using these enzymes and manipulating what’s going on in the digestion process,” he said. “As time goes on, that is going to be a real game-changer.”

The potential for using low levels of these enzymes as additions to feed can be as powerful as any of today’s antimicrobials, according to Alltech researchers.

“We’re producing alternatives to antibiotics in the diet that satisfy both the needs of the farmer and the production needs of the animal and also make the consumer happy because those compounds are omitted from the diet,” noted Brennan.

Environment and economics — must they be at odds?

Environmental sustainability has appeared to be at cross purposes with economic growth and development. Achieving high efficiency has been thought to come at the expense of the food-producing animal and the environment.

“In general business, those two things can be at odds, but in cattle — and in animal agriculture, in general — efficiency really is the name of the game as far as producing less waste, less environmental pollutants per unit of milk, beef or eggs,” said Gehman. “But it’s also the same efficiency that can be applied to profitability.

“In cattle, methane is an indicator of waste, not just to the animal but also to profitability, so if that animal is burning off energy as a waste product and we can make the animal more efficient so that she retains more of that energy, that can be environmentally sustainable as well as profitable for the farm,” she continued.

Dr. Amanda Gehman, Alltech research project director, evaluates a total mixed ration using the Alltech® In Vitro Fermentation Model, or IFM. Improving digestibility of the diet can have a significant effect on producer profitability and environmental sustainability.

Gehman is now investigating in vitro testing (using the Alltech® In Vitro Fermentation Model, or IFM) as a means of evaluating the digestibility of various forages.

“We’re making that a regular test in order to fine-tune the rations, to address problems as they come and also address any opportunities to use an undervalued feed,” she said.

Minerally minded

While Gehman and her colleagues study ways to optimize ruminant digestion, other Alltech researchers have been focusing on how producers can feed substantially fewer organic trace minerals than inorganic trace minerals and get similar, if not better, performance.

Dr. Karl Dawson, vice president and chief scientific officer at Alltech, works with ICP-MS, instrumentation used to measure the proportion of minerals in feed or food samples and their distribution in biological matrices, animal tissues or human biological fluids. Methods such as ICP-MS are routinely used by Alltech researchers as they seek to define the true mineral requirements of animals.

The company’s mineral management program, Total Replacement Technology™ (TRT), has been at the forefront of a transition from inorganic trace minerals that are not efficiently digested — and even banned in some countries — to feeding reduced levels of organic minerals that animals can better utilize, reducing environmental pollution.

Steve Elliott, global director of the Alltech® Mineral Management team, said the company’s scientists are also looking at the interaction of trace minerals with other components in the diet, such as enzymes, vitamins and antioxidants.

“We’ve found that trace minerals can have a very negative impact on those other diet components,” said Elliott. “Research has now shown that, by using organic trace minerals, we avoid some of that conflict or interaction, thus allowing those other components to do what they’re put into the diet to do.”

Ending the reliance on fish oil and fish meal

Some methods of aquaculture have a very high environmental impact. A common sustainability problem in animal and aquaculture diets is the nutritional requirement of fish oil or fish meal, which is typically from wild fish.

The problem with fish oil — and this really goes to sustainability and the ACE principle — is that fish oil and fish meal demand have been increasing. Fisheries around the world are at capacity, and fishing more out of them risks collapsing them. The alternative is aquaculture, but in that case, there is not enough algae in the spaces that the fish occupy. You’re feeding the fish, and at this point, the ratio of conversion is that you have to 'squeeze' one fish to get enough fish oil to feed one fish. With demand increasing, that’s not sustainable, long-term.

Dr. Jorge Arias, Alltech’s global director for aquaculture, is optimistic about algae as an answer.

“We believe we have a real solution in our algae that will reduce reliance on fish oil while increasing the amount of DHA available to farmed fish and, ultimately, to consumers,” he said.

Sustainable seafood

To further address issues of fish farming, the Alltech Coppens Aqua Centre recently opened in Valkenswaard, the Netherlands.

“This is a brand-new knowledge hub for the development of innovative fish nutrition solutions to tackle both the present and future challenges facing the aquaculture industry,” said John Sweetman, Alltech's European technical manager for aquaculture.

Those methods include products derived from microalgae that are fully safe, sustainable and traceable, while providing the nutritious DHA previously supplied by fish oils.

ACE-ing animal health and nutrition

Alltech takes a holistic approach to animal health and nutrition, mindful of what is best not only for the producer, but also the ruminant, fowl or fish that feed a growing population and the planet they all call home. This article has touched on but a few of the many products, programs and concepts provided by the global Alltech research and development community to live out its ACE principle commitment

Next in our series will be the “C” in ACE: the consumer. We’ll look at the many ways Alltech strives to respond to the expectations of the information-seeking “prosumer” of the 21st century.

Read ACE-ing sustainability: Part I, the environment.

High levels of deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEA) present in grain and forage samples across Canada

[GUELPH, Ontario] – The 2017 growing season was a variable and challenging one across Canada. From drought conditions on the prairies to above-average rainfall in Ontario, weather conditions can not only reduce yield, but can also increase plant stress and lead to challenges with mycotoxins. Results from samples submitted for the Alltech 2017 Canadian Harvest Analysis show that grains and forages from across Canada are at risk of mycotoxin contamination.

Samples submitted between Sept. 1 and Oct. 15, 2017, show that grains contained mixtures of mycotoxins, including deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEA). Forages such as corn silage, barlage and haylage samples also contained multiple mycotoxins in 2017, particularly from mycotoxins produced by Fusarium species of moulds, such as DON, ZEA and T-2/HT-2 toxins.

As a result of the late-season rains in many provinces, especially following the dry conditions during the summer in the prairies, there is additional potential for mycotoxins such as fumonisins.

Mycotoxins are a regular concern for producers, as they influence feed quality and animal safety. They are produced by certain species of moulds and can have toxic properties that impact animal health and performance.

“Farmers should carefully consider if and how feed with mycotoxins is used,” said Dr. Alexandra Weaver, Alltech® Mycotoxin Management technical specialist. “Even minimal changes in feed quality can have a big impact on an animal’s production over time.”

Mycotoxins are seldom found in isolation, and when multiple mycotoxins are consumed, they may have additive, or even synergistic, interactions that increase the overall risk to performance and health. As a result, an animal may have a stronger response than what would be expected if it was only experiencing a single mycotoxin challenge.

For feedstuffs harvested in 2017 and currently being fed, it is important to conduct a mycotoxin analysis that identifies storage mycotoxins, including the Penicillium and Aspergillus mycotoxin groups, as there is added potential for additional mycotoxins to develop during storage. Proper mycotoxin management techniques can reduce the risk of mycotoxins coming from feed materials as well as help to prevent the negative effects mycotoxins can have on animal health and performance.

Alltech Canada will be hosting two webinars to review the 2017 harvest analysis results with Weaver on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2017. The Western Canada webinar will take place at 9:00 a.m. MT, and an Eastern Canada webinar will take place at 2:00 p.m. ET. Reserve a spot for the Western Canada webinar via this link and for the Eastern Canada webinar via this link.

For more information on mycotoxin management, visit knowmycotoxins.com.

Brad Rortvedt, regional sales manager for Alltech, speaks about the upcoming 2017 Alltech Wisconsin Dairy School to take place Nov. 30 in Green Bay, WI. The 15th annual event will focus on integrating tradition with technologies and helps dairy producers discover their competitive advantage and prepare for the future of the farm.

To register for the event, please contact the Alltech Wisconsin office at 920-386-9651 or email AlltechWisconsin@alltech.com.

Ashley Irvin from Tennessee, Hans Greisen from Wisconsin, and Mary Van Rossum from Wisconsin, were selected by a live, random draw during the 2017 World Dairy Expo to win a trip for two to Ireland for the week of St. Patrick’s Day 2018

[LEXINGTON, Ky.] – For three U.S. dairy producers, the luck of the Irish was on their side when their names were selected in a live, random draw for The Great Green Getaway sweepstakes as the 2017 World Dairy Expo wrapped up in Madison, Wisconsin. In March 2018, Ashley Irvin from Tennessee, Hans Greisen from Wisconsin, and Mary Van Rossum also from Wisconsin, will embark on a journey to the Emerald Isle for a “how it’s made” tour of the KEENAN production facility in Borris, County Carlow, Ireland, a guided VIP experience at the new Pearse Lyons Distillery At St. James, visits to a number of high-performance Irish dairy farms and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Dublin City Centre.

KEENAN, the maker of the “Green Machine” mixer wagon, became part of the Alltech family of companies in April 2016. KEENAN machines are unique in the proven nutritional benefits they deliver, and they provide producers with control, accuracy and real-time feeding advice. The mixers are designed to improve rumen health, resulting in increased feed efficiency and livestock production.

“We are looking forward to hosting The Great Green Getaway sweepstakes winners in Ireland and sharing the Alltech and KEENAN Irish heritage,” said Dan Gard, sales manager for KEENAN USA. “Our customers trust our KEENAN mixers for their durability, flexibility and longevity, and these winners will get to see them in the factory as well as on-farm in Ireland.”

The sweepstakes opened June 28, 2017, during National Dairy Month, and the winners were announced on Oct. 7, 2017, at World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. The sweepstakes was open to U.S. dairy farmers who have 50 cows or more and are over 18 years of age. For more details about The Great Green Getaway sweepstakes, visit http://go.alltech.com/greatgreengetaway.

Fumonisin is commonly found in corn at levels of 2 parts per million (ppm) or less, but in recent years, testing has confirmed levels well above 30 ppm, and some even above 100 ppm. Livestock producers should be aware of the fumonisin contamination when purchasing grain because, when consumed by animals, fumonisin toxicity affects several of their biological systems, leading to reduced feed intake and efficiency and liver damage. Understanding the effects of these mycotoxins in cattle feed is key to maintaining animal health and productivity.

Mycotoxins in contaminated feeds have differing effects on animals. 

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of molds and fungi that infect plants. More than 500 mycotoxins have been identified, and most animal feedstuffs are likely to be contaminated with multiple mycotoxins. The effects of mycotoxins vary, as each mycotoxin has its own specific impact on the animals consuming the contaminated feeds.

The Fusarium species are the predominant types of mold that contaminate crops and, eventually, animal feed. Ranging from white to pink or red in color, these molds are associated with wet conditions and moderate temperatures, especially following insect or hail damage. They are found worldwide, largely in corn. Fusarium molds produce several mycotoxins, including fumonisin, deoxynivalenol (vomitoxin) and zearalenone, with higher concentrations in the stalks and cobs than in the grain.

Signs of fumonisin in cattle

While cattle are generally resistant to many of the negative effects of mycotoxins, thanks to the degradation of the compounds by rumen microbes, high levels of mycotoxins in feeds can significantly impact animals. Fumonisin, in addition to not being significantly degraded in the rumen, is also not well-absorbed. The majority of fumonisins consumed by cattle are passed out in the feces. However, fumonisins can overwhelm the gut and cause significant issues in cattle.

The presence of fumonisin in the feed reduces palatability and, as a result, slows intake. Cattle may stand off a bunk contaminated with high levels of fumonisin. Calves without fully developed rumens and animals that are dealing with stressful situations, such as weaning or transportation, have an increased sensitivity to fumonisin due to reduced rumen fermentation and weakened immune functions.

Fumonisin can negatively impact animal health:

Even low levels of fumonisin affect gut health.

The gastrointestinal tract is impaired when cattle consume mycotoxins. Gut epithelial cells need protection from direct interaction with microbes and the gut environment. Specialized cells in the epithelium provide this protection. One example of these specialized cells is goblet cells, which produce mucus, coating the epithelial cells to lubricate and protect them from the contents of the gut. Intestinal cells also have specialized structures to form tight junctions, limiting the passage of molecules between cells. These mechanisms and others work in concert to prevent pathogen colonization and systemic access by toxins and pathogens.

Although fumonisin is poorly absorbed and metabolized by cattle, it induces disturbances in the gastrointestinal tract. Rumen motility can slow down, resulting in the increased exposure of the intestinal epithelium to the effects of fumonisin and other mycotoxins. Even low amounts of mycotoxins in cattle feed can impair intestinal health and immune function, resulting in altered host-pathogen interactions and an increased susceptibility to disease. The epithelial cells in the gastrointestinal tract are damaged by fumonisins, reducing the mucin layer thickness, tight junction strength and cell proliferation and, ultimately, increasing the opportunity for pathogen invasion.

Fumonisin has toxic effects on the liver and kidneys.

An analysis of tissues from cattle fed Fusarium in high doses indicated that the majority of fumonisin absorbed is retained in the liver, with lesser amounts retained in the muscles and kidneys. This accumulation is concerning, as fumonisin is toxic to the liver and kidneys and causes apoptosis, followed by the proliferation of regenerative cells in the affected tissues. Fumonisin also reduces the antioxidant levels in the liver, decreasing the animal’s defense mechanisms. This leads to liver lesions and elevated enzymes that are indicative of liver damage.

Fumonisins interrupt sphingolipid synthesis and metabolism.

The disruption of sphingolipid metabolism is the mechanism underlying much of fumonisin’s negative impact in the body. Sphingolipids are specific types of fats that protect cells from environmental damage by forming a stable, chemically resistant layer on the cell membrane. Fumonisins disrupt cell signaling by inhibiting ceramide synthase, interrupting sphingolipid synthesis and metabolism, and can alter the morphology of affected cells. This reduces cellular stability and protection, leading to cell death and significant alterations to cellular metabolism and cell-to-cell communication. 

Mycotoxins can increase susceptibility to diseases.

Calves that consume fumonisin experience decreased immune function, due in part to the impairment of lymphocyte development. Sphingolipid metabolism in immune cells is involved in the signaling pathways that control lymphocyte development, differentiation, activation and proliferation. Lymphocytes are the white blood cells that are important for maintaining a strong antigen response. These lymphocyte-related problems mean that consuming Fusarium molds can increase an animal’s susceptibility to diseases and reduce vaccine efficacy.

Handling contaminated feed in your beef cattle operation

Unfortunately, once mycotoxins are formed in the plant, there is no commercial method of removing them from contaminated feeds. Harvesting and storing contaminated crops at low moisture levels (i.e., less than 15%), along with the separation of highly contaminated feeds, is important in order to reduce the risk of mold growth and mycotoxin production in uncontaminated grain.

While the European Commission recommends that adult cattle can tolerate fumonisin levels of up to 50 ppm in diets, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s guidance for fumonisins recommends a maximum concentration of 30 ppm in the diet of feedlot cattle, 15 ppm for breeding stock and 10 ppm for calves. Furthermore, contaminated corn or corn byproducts should contribute no more than 50% of the diet. It is crucial to check the level of fumonisin in the complete diet, as it can be three times more concentrated in corn byproducts, such as distillers grains and corn gluten feed, and 10 times more concentrated in corn screenings.

If contaminated feeds must be used to feed cattle, elevators may blend the corn to reduce the fumonisin concentration to acceptable levels, or producers can include feed additives to mitigate the risk of mycotoxins. As fumonisin is associated with reduced feed consumption, there is a concern that low levels of fumonisin can interact with other mycotoxins, reducing the growth of calves and slowing the weight gain of feedlot cattle. Fumonisin contamination can be especially detrimental to newly received cattle and calves, preventing them from getting off to a healthy start.

Testing services like Alltech® 37+ and Alltech® RAPIREAD® can help producers and feed mills assess their mycotoxin risk so that the appropriate management and nutritional measures can be put in place.

I want to learn more about nutrition for my beef cattle.

The following is an edited transcript of Luther Andal's interview with Dr. Aman Sayed, managing director of Alltech India and regional director of Alltech South Asia.

Click below to hear the full interview:

Luther: Dr. Aman Sayed is managing director of Alltech India and the company’s regional director for South Asia. Welcome.

Aman: Thank you.

Luther: Give us an overview of India as a country, as a culture and as a people.

Aman: Well, let me start with saying that India is going through a big transformation at this point in time. What is there in India, and why should the world look at India today? The biggest strategic asset that India has is the population today. After independence, for a few decades, people were considered a liability or burden. However, now, people are considered an asset and human capital. There are about 1.33 billion people in India. Over the next five to six years, we will be the most populated country in the world.

Looking at the demographics of the population, we are a young India today. The median age is 28, which is much lower compared to the rest of the world. This poses a great opportunity, I believe, to the rest of the world and is why they need to look at India. In a very short period, I would say that India will become a sought-after country for business because there is a readily available workforce of talented, educated people.

Luther: India is very diverse as a culture and in terms of language, and religion, and states — union territories. Can you just give us a little overview of that diversity?

Aman: We have about 29 states in India and seven union territories. There are 22 official languages, but there are more than 1,000 dialects and more than seven religions. But we live together in great harmony. It’s important to understand that every state, in a way, acts like a different country. So, understanding the Indian culture for an outsider is quite important.

We live together all in harmony, despite being of different religions and different languages. But, again, the country brings everybody together. Though the national language is Hindu, most of the people speak English, which is another great asset for us. I have no doubt in a decade, India will be the number one English-speaking country in the world.

Luther: Right now, they’re number two.

Aman: They are. Yeah.

Luther: Tell us a little bit about the Indian economy. How fast is it growing? Maybe give us the breakdown of gross domestic product (GDP) at a high level.

Aman: Since gaining independence, we have grown at a rate of about 3 and 3.5 percent for about 40 to 50 years. But since a transformation in 2002, we have started growing at 78 percent, and we are now the fastest-growing country in the world in terms of economy. As far as the GDP, we are about $8.7 trillion today — third in the world. So, we have a significant contribution from the services sector, followed by the agriculture and the industrial sectors. We have surpassed China in GDP growth. And that’s one of the reasons why the world is looking at us today.

Luther: One of the fascinating things that you brought up was the new way that India looks at its people as a resource and as capital. That’s a big transformation, and it’s been part of the growth of the economy. Correct?

Aman: That’s right. And people are educated now. People are talented and they are readily available for the rest of the world. I believe that with the changes to immigration laws across the world, it will be time for the other countries to operate within India and export products, rather than the Indian workforce.

The number of talented people keeps growing, and the rest of the world will have to confront the fact that, in the future, their top management team is likely to come from India. The growth is coming from India — a generation in India — and they are really talented.

Luther: So, in terms of that resource capital, since around 2002, as you said, a lot of that has been some outsourcing IT, but you’re talking also about the development inside of India — of companies, startups and other areas. Correct?

Aman: That’s right. India is the number three country in the world in terms of startups. There are more than 4,200 startup companies in India. And they are all looking for help. And that’s something that the rest of the world needs to look at and consider investing in and trying to help. We know that more than 90 percent of startup companies fail — but why not look at those remaining 10 percent in terms of how we could assist in bringing their innovation and disruption to the world?

Luther: When we talk about the Indian economy — we’ve talked about trends toward education, toward technology — and diversity is obviously a part of it. What about the trends toward urbanization in India?

Aman: Today in India, there are about 630,000 villages. Seventy percent of India is rural, and there is constant migration from the rural villages to larger cities in India. Two out of every five Indians are migrants. So, that brings a significant opportunity for those companies that are a part of the rural economy, as well as those who consider the cities. This migration will continue until 2050. Why is this migration there? There’s migration because of education; to get better work. This is going to continue for a few decades, and it’s something one should consider in terms of the opportunities and where the human capital is.

Luther: We’ve seen a lot of changes in India. What about food? Have there been changes in preferences or taste palate in India as these changes have occurred?

Aman: Well, as you know, they say that Indian food is probably the best-tasting food in the world. During the last fiscal year, we produced record food gains. But it would still be fair to say that we are a hungry India, even today. There are a lot of reforms required, whether they’re for the prevention of wastage, better processing technologies and so on. We have a big population that is anemic. We have a very big population that is underweight and undernourished. So, there is an opportunity for companies in the food sector to come to India and explore which part of the supply chain they could help and assist and at the same time do business.

Luther: Well, following up on that point of agriculture, what’s going on with agriculture in India today?

Aman: Well, let me start by saying that, for an agriculture farmer today, the land holding is quite low compared to other countries. Each farmer holds a plot size of about 1.2 hectares. So, that poses challenges. But having said that, the Indian farmer is going digital. That digitization has transformed — and continues to transform — the agriculture industry.

Today, we have a situation in which, because of smartphones — even though the farmer’s literacy rate is very low — they are able to use the smartphones effectively. They are able to buy seeds through WhatsApp, for example. They are able to see the market price for their produce, whereas previously they would have taken produce to market to be sold for the going rate that day. Now they know the market price beforehand.

So, the digitalization in agriculture is increasing and improving. There are primary banks that have now gone into rural India. Financial literacy is also improving for the farmers, which is great. Indian farmers were previously prey to money lenders, who charged 40 to 50 percent interest rates. Now that has changed. So, it’s a great opportunity, I think, for agri-finance companies that are into improving the yield or into processing. There are significant foreign direct investment benefits provided to foreign companies by the Indian government, particularly in the food retail side of things.

Luther: How important is the dairy industry to India?

Aman: India is the number one milk producer in the world. We have lots of cows — about 300 million. You may say the yield is low, but we are getting better. We are improving our genetics. We are improving our nutrition. It’s a great opportunity, even for countries outside India.

In another decade, we will need about 200 million metric tons of milk. Is that milk going to come from India? Probably not. We may have to import milk in India from other parts of the world. The only question is: Are the countries outside India willing to export milk to India in that situation? We are going to need a lot of milk. Coming back to your question on the dairy sector, there is about 4 percent total growth every year. The milk products are growing at a rate of 20 to 25 percent, whether it’s cheese, butter, ghee — all of those. So, it’s a big transformation happening in the dairy sector as well.

Luther: We’ve covered the fact that India has an educated workforce, that they have a lot of experience with technology, certifications that are necessary for outsourcing, but also the fact that they are growing startup-wise and have a lot to offer. What other advantages do they offer the world?

Aman: Well, I think the biggest advantage is the talent and the IT sector, which is growing at a rate of 14 percent. You see, there is a lot of high-information technology and the business process outsourcing (BPO) side of things, which is growing and significantly contributing to the Indian GDP. Indians have a 67 percent market share of IT revenue. So, in the “Silicon Valley of India” — which is Bangalore — you have a lot of IT. And, as I said earlier, with the changes in immigration laws, I think it is important for countries to go to India and hire those talented people, and work with them, and get the best out of it. So, I see that as a significant impact.

Luther: Can you give us a little history on Alltech in India?

Aman: You know, Dr. Pearse Lyons had the dream to go to India. It was in the late 1990s. And in 2001, when we set up Alltech India, we disrupted the technology and the traditional method of feeding trace minerals in India, whether it was within the poultry, dairy or aquaculture industries. Today, Alltech has 30 percent of the market share in terms of the minerals. On the dairy front, we have disrupted the traditional method of testing the feedstuff by introducing the Alltech® In Vitro Fermentation Model (IFM).

Now, the dairy producers look to Alltech India to help redefine the nutrition and provide better nutrition and improve the efficiency for the cows. Overall, it’s a profitable situation for the farmer. And now, after having registered Alltech Crop Science, we are looking at disrupting the fertilizer market as India moves toward organic farming. So, I think that’s what we contribute to the industry — what Alltech contributes to the industry — that’s quite significant.

Luther: The term “rising billions” has been widely discussed. It is the emergence of markets in India and people in India, China, Africa and other areas of Asia that are moving up and coming into a middle class, coming into a workforce, becoming urbanized. Can you just discuss with us, as Alltech does their work in India, how important it is for the future of India in terms of feeding the country themselves and in general meeting the demands of the future?

Aman: You pointed out, very rightly, the rising billions. In the first 50 years of independence, our economy grew at just about 3 percent. We had the spike of 5 percent once or twice, but it wasn’t stable. So, it took almost 45 years or so for India to double its per capita income. Now there is a 7 percent growth in the economy — which is likely to reach double digits, growth in population of about 1.5 percent, and every Indian will double their per capita income in about eight to nine years — in even less time — four to five years — in urban areas So, you are right. A billion people are growing through prosperity. The only question is for the rest of the world: Would you like to be a part of this prosperity?

India today is at a stage of fast forward. The question to the rest of the world is: Would you like to be a part of this journey? And Alltech India is strategically placed to work with those farmers. When you said, “the middle class,” more than 50 percent of Indians belong to this segment today. And many of them have the desire and the dream to prosper in their life through dairy farming, through fish farming, through aquaculture —fish farming and shrimp farming. So, we are rightly placed at Alltech India to work with those farmers and be a part of their prosperity.

Luther: So, what does the future hold for India? Can you summarize that? What do you see? Where are we going?

Aman: I have no doubt that in 2040, India will be a superpower. The only question for the rest of the world is: Would you like to be a part of this successful ship named India?

Luther: What do you enjoy most about your job?

Aman: I love to meet people. I love traveling. The most enjoyable part for me is interaction with my team, which is great. Let me also tell you, that is quite unusual in the marketplace. The attrition rate in India today is about 20 percent in most workforce segments, including IT. However, in Alltech India, you will be surprised to know that for the sales team, our attrition rate has been zero for the last 18 months — quite unusual.

Luther: Dr. Aman Sayed is managing director of Alltech India and the company’s regional director for South Asia. Thank you for joining me.

Aman: Thank you very much.

Aman Sayed spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17). To hear more talks from the conference, sign up for the Alltech Idea Lab.