There's no average cow, says Jay Johnston of Fermentrics Technologies, so it's time for us to marry today's science to old-fashioned cow sense and observation.

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Gijs Rutjes, technical sales support manager at Coppens International, an Alltech company. 

Gijs Rutjes is technical sales support manager at Coppens International, an Alltech company, in Helmond, the Netherlands. He joined Tom Martin to discuss recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). The technology dramatically reduces the amount of water and space required to intensively produce seafood products.

Tom:                   Let's begin by asking you to give us a brief history of RAS farming. Why did we start growing fish on land in the first place?

Gijs:                     One of the main reasons is that this offers the opportunity to farm, for example, tropical species in cold conditions. One big example is the African catfish in Holland. This is a fish that requires about 26 degrees Celsius (78 degrees Fahrenheit). In Holland, it could never survive. Still, it's a well-valued fish in Holland. So, we have to use RAS with heated water and purification systems to farm this fish. 

                            Another reason is that you are close to the market. You can position the farm close to the market where you want to be and lower  transportation costs.  

                            It also offers you the possibility to choose a great water supply in an area where you know the borehole water to be really good.

                            Another thing is that you control the conditions for the fish. You can look after optimal conditions all the time. In the case of any     diseases, you have much more control.

                            Finally, you can prevent escapees. In cage farming, sometimes fish unfortunately do escape and can mingle with wild stocks, but  this is near impossible in a RAS farm.

Tom:                   How is this technology being received by the industry? What position does RAS farming hold in the world of modern agriculture?

Gijs:                     I think its importance is increasing. It was a rather local affair in some countries. Holland was one of the first. Denmark also had a leading position. It spread first among the expensive species, but it has become more of a mainstay across the industry because of all the advantages that it has. It has modernized aquaculture, and I'm sure it will continue to modernize because we can still improve certain purification methods and reduce the amount of water needed to produce a kilo of fish.

Tom:                   What are the key challenges for farmers who produce fish in these recirculating aquaculture systems?

Gijs:                     One of the most important things is that you keep constant optimal conditions. For example, as you feed your fish, you will always have a certain fluctuation in the feed level. As you harvest the large fish, you also put in new young fish. Therefore, the feed rates tend to fluctuate. But the biology in the filter, the response to this can be a reason for fluctuating water quality. So, it's very important for the farmer to keep his conditions optimal and constant all the time because then the fish has no reason to feel uncomfortable and it will always eat well and grow well.

Tom:                   Let's say that I'm in the business. I have a fish farm. I have a RAS system. What are three things that I'm looking for in a RAS feed supplier?

Gijs:                     That’s a very good question. I think if you would ask me for one thing, it would be consistency. I think one thing people look for is that it gives a high feed intake and consequently a good growth.

                            Assume that you can have a really good FCR. So, feed intake is one of the first things that people will mention in line with growth. The second would be a low waste load, or low in organic matter — feces, you could say — and also low ammonium production. By changing or regulating the DPDE — that’s the ratio between digestible energy over digestible protein — you can reduce the amount of ammonium produced. Therefore, you can feed more.

                            But as I said, the first important one would be the consistency. You need a consistent feed that is the same in taste and flavor and composition all the time because, otherwise, the filters will react. It's not so bad for the fish, but the filters will react, and that's not what you want.

Tom:                   What are the key challenges to achieving optimal gut health in RAS farmed fish?

Gijs:                     I think it starts with choosing high-quality ingredients that have a high digestibility and also that have a low level of antinutrients because you don't have to fix anything that you haven't damaged. Antinutrients are not good for gut health. So, that’s what we reduce in our RAS feeds.

Tom:                   Gijs, what are the benefits of RAS-produced fish over ocean-based fish farming?

Gijs:                     That’s a good question. I think the difference doesn’t have to be that big. You can produce good fish in either system. While RAS feeds need to fulfill higher requirements — you normally have a higher quality feed, perhaps with higher EPA or DHA. This could make for a higher quality fish considering the consumer demands. But you could have the same feed in a cage and produce similar fish. So, I think on the quality side, it doesn’t have to be a big difference.

Tom:                   You may have touched on this earlier in the conversation, but in recent years, there's been an issue with the occurrence of off-flavoring microorganisms in RAS systems. Has this been addressed and overcome?

Gijs:                     Yes and no. I think it's good to first outline that farms can have off-flavor because the two types of microorganisms that produce this off-flavor, geosmin and isoborneol, can live anywhere. They can live in filters — that’s where they like to live. RAS farms usually have them, but you have them in pond farms as well. So, a lot of RAS farms these days use moving bed bioreactors. That’s a place where these microorganisms do not like to live because they need a sort of fixed structure to attach themselves to. If you do have a moving bed bioreactor, by nature, they cannot attach. So, these systems normally have a very low amount of these microorganisms and often have no off-flavor at all.

                            I think it’s important to purge the fish from a pond farm, as well as from a RAS farm, and taste your fish. Just make sure that there's not even a hint of an off-flavor because that is not a nice taste, and it would really spoil the quality of your fish.

Tom:                  So, you really have to stay on top of it.

Gijs:                     Yes, always. Even if you don't have it in your farm. We have several customers that, mainly due to the moving bed bioreactors, do not have off-flavor issues, but they will still purge, even if it's for a few days, and test the fish before they sell to the market. Then the quality is always spot on. It takes only one farmer to spoil the market for all.

Tom:                   What does the future look like for RAS farming methods and aquaculture?

Gijs:                     I think RAS farming will increase and continue to improve the whole aquaculture industry. There's a very big movement toward keeping smolts onshore. It offers much more control and no issues with sea lice. So, this industry has seen that this is a big benefit to them. I think there will be more types of aquaculture that will use the RAS system.

                            RAS farming by nature is also very sustainable. You can reach a lower carbon footprint. You can use less water. You have less pollution. I think that the number of liters we require to produce a kilo of fish will reduce in the coming years.

Tom:                   Gijs Rutjes is technical sales support manager at Coppens International in Helmond, the Netherlands. Thank you for joining us.

Gijs:                     You’re welcome. Thank you very much.

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech.

Click below to hear the entire interview:

Now in its seventh year of analysis, the Global Feed Survey continues to provide valuable insights into the feed industry, serves as a barometer for agriculture as a whole, and demonstrates the economic strength of the countries surveyed. What can we learn from the 1.068 billion tons of feed produced globally?        

Aidan Connolly is chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech. He joined Tom Martin to highlight what has been learned from the seventh annual Alltech Global Feed Survey. New to the survey this year is information gathered from the Asia-Pacific region, including countries such as Cambodia and Laos, for a total of 144 countries representing more than 30,000 feed mills.

Tom:                            The 2017 survey documented world feed production topping 1 billion metric tons, an all-time high for a single year. How does that compare with the findings for the 2018 survey?

Aidan:                          In the previous year, we had also seen production exceeding 1 billion tons, but this one was a larger number, finishing at almost 1.07 billion tons. That confirmed that those numbers are correct.  Of course, the way that we calculate these numbers is through estimates. We ask people to estimate how much feed is produced in each of their countries, and then we collect all that information from our own managers in those 140 plus countries. So, the first year, to see it was over 1 billion tons, was great. To see it again at a bigger number just makes us very sure that we have the right number.

Tom:                            There had been a 7 percent reduction in feed mills from 2015 to 2016. Obviously, that trend has not continued.

Aidan:                          Actually, that's not quite true. I believe that the numbers of feed mills are continuing to consolidate and to drop, but we've reclassified quite a number of feed mills that were on farms, smaller scale, in places like Russia, in particular Eastern Europe, by changing our methodology. So, we actually ended up with a larger number of feed mills overall, even though the number of feed mills, I think, continues to drop.

Tom:                            You have identified seven key findings in the 2018 Alltech Global Feed Survey. Let's take them one by one and begin with what the data reveals about China.

Aidan:                          Yes. The Chinese feed production was down a little bit. And, in particular, some of the species did see a reduction. Specifically, aquaculture continues to drop. However, we saw a rebound in terms of the feed production for pigs, and that was quite significant. Of course, China is in the process of consolidating its pig farming. We did see a number of the smaller farms being closed over the last two to three years. That has led to a reduction in the number of breeding animals, sows. And overall, there was a reduction in pork production the previous years of about 7 percent. However, this year, feed production went back up. And overall, that had the effect that China in general was about flat.

Tom:                            These reductions are happening at a time when the Chinese population is going the other direction — is increasing, expanding. Is that cause for concern?

Aidan:                          No. Feed production is affected by many factors. It's affected by consumption of meat, milk and eggs, but it's also being reduced by the fact that we are genetically selecting animals to be more efficient. And in the Chinese case, they have had a lot of farms that were very inefficient. So, when we talk about closing small chicken farms — in particular, small pig farms, but also ducks, geese, fish farming, etcetera — typically we’re moving toward farms that are much more efficient in how they convert feed into food.

Tom:                            Russia has registered noteworthy increases in feed production. What's happening in Russia?

Aidan:                          Russia is a really interesting story. Of course, Mr. Putin, the president, wants to make Russia a strong country, bring it back to some of its glory days and, in particular, is focused on food production. Self-sufficiency of food production is a critical part of that. Russia has been importing a lot of food from the United States, was importing from Europe, and was also importing from Brazil, but it's been exerting its soft power in its ability to restrict the importation, in particular, of chicken and, more recently, of pork and is looking for its own farms to replace that, so they become, if not necessarily self-sufficient, less dependent on imports.

Tom:                            What is the significance of that independence?

Aidan:                          The significance for the feed industry is that feed production numbers grew quite significantly this year, by about 14 percent.

                                    That is being seen specifically in terms of pig farms, dairy farms and, to a lesser degree, chicken farms. But in general, it probably will mean for the Russian population more expensive food. But, obviously, that's a decision being taken at the government level in terms of the strategic desires of the government to not be reliant upon people who they often have arguments with.

Tom:                            Also noted in this year's survey coming on strong is India. Where do you see growth occurring in India's feed production?

Aidan:                           India’s species are much more restricted because, from a religious and cultural perspective, they don't consume beef. They are relatively limited in their consumption of pork, and even a certain percentage of the population doesn't want to consume chicken. So, eggs have continued to grow. Broiler meat is growing and did grow this year very strongly as well. But milk, in particular, continues to grow. So, those three species are very strong.

                                       India has become a significant exporter of shrimp. We have seen a growth in aqua feeds as well from India. There are some concerns over the use of antibiotics. India is relatively light in terms of its consumption of protein per capita. And if that grows, that will lead to growth in eggs, of chicken meat and, to a lesser degree, of milk.

Tom:                            Going back to aquaculture, India has more or less defied a global decline in aqua production. What are the country’s strengths in this area?

Aidan:                          Primarily, it's coming from a relatively low position to start with. It is a low- cost producer. But, specifically in the area of shrimp, a number of viral diseases have afflicted areas such as Ecuador and Thailand. Much of this comes from the desire to grow aquaculture in areas with either rivers or estuaries where the water can quite often move from one farm to another, passing disease from one farm to another. India has not had those diseases to the same degree as other countries, so far. If it continues to remain disease-free, then it can continue to be a very large producer of aquaculture, particularly for export.

Tom:                            What are the trends in aquaculture feed production, and in what parts of the world is growth strong right now? Where is it lagging?

Aid an:                          We had a lot of controversy in this survey about the aquaculture numbers, particularly following last year, when we also saw that the aqua production was flat. Much of the discussion about aquaculture is about the fact that we are consuming more and more farmed fish, and that undoubtedly is true, and that is displacing our part of the requirement for replacing the fish from the sea. What we are seeing, however, is that the largest producers of fish in the world — typically China represents about 50 percent of the world's production of fish, Asia represents overall about 65 to 70 percent — in those parts of the world, we are seeing a reduction in the feed production for farmed fish, for aquaculture.

                                    We believe that in the case of China, it’s being driven very much by government policies and, to a lesser degree, by the economics of larger, more efficient farms. We are seeing some changes from a cultural perspective: people consuming less fish at banquets, etcetera. In the rest of Asia, many of the numbers we saw related to disease.

                                      Globally, however, aquaculture did grow. So, if you look at salmon, trout, sea bass, seabream, if you look at tilapia in countries — Europe, in particular — we do see a continued growth. What you have is the drop in Asia being offset by strong growth in other parts of the world. I would also continue to underline that, as aquaculture becomes more efficient, as it's become more modern, it has required less feed to produce the same amount of weight. 

Tom:                            For a number of years now, the survey has tracked a pretty steady growth curve in the African feed market. What accounts for this?

Aidan:                          African economic growth continues to be strong. It's coming from quite a low level, though the economic growth is also spread across many countries. It's not coming from any particular country. So, on a yearly basis, we are seeing that the African continent is growing by, in excess of global averages, probably somewhere between 5 and 7 percent in terms of GDP, and that is widespread.

                                       In particular, we saw a very strong year in Nigeria. Of course, Nigeria is expected to be the world's third-largest population by 2050, exceeding the United States, exceeding Indonesia, exceeding other countries in the world, just following China and India. So, it's not surprising that we will continue to see an increase in protein consumption there. However, the cost of protein continues to be very expensive in Africa. Nigeria in particular, but also many of other countries, did report extremely high feed prices. And high feed prices mean high prices for eggs, meat and milk.

Tom:                            As mentioned in the introduction, new to the 2018 survey is information gathered from the Asia-Pacific region. What did you find?

Aidan:                          Really, we’ve just been digging in every year deeper and deeper into establishing which countries produce feeds. Now, not surprisingly, we continue to skip a few: Andorra, for argument’s sake; Monaco is just famous mainly for gambling; Vatican City, which is mainly famous as a city-state for the Vatican.

                                    Nonetheless, of those 200 plus countries in the world, we think we've gotten to almost every single country that's producing feed in any significant, or even less significant, manner. We added in a few more countries this year. Those were in Asia, but they don't add to anything more than just creating a database of information, which is stronger and more robust.

Tom:                            There seems to have been steady growth in the equine industry, and it looks like it's happening nearly everywhere. What's going on there?

Aidan:                          The consumption of horse feed, of course, is driven primarily by the economics of the world, and last year was a good year. I know some of our listeners may feel that maybe their pockets didn't feel quite as full in terms of cash. But globally, it was a good year for the world economy. And in fact, for this coming year, the Economist magazine is predicting that only four countries in the world will not grow, and two of those were Venezuela and North Korea. So, you can see that we are in a period of general global economic growth that is leading to a larger middle class. It's leading to more people moving to a city, so more urbanization. And those typically are favorable trends for horse production.

                                       It has been quite hard to capture data relating to horses — not entirely sure why this is. People seem to be quite secretive, even in the United States, about how much horse feed they produce. So, we have struggled to be accurate in our estimates. I think this year's estimates were more accurate than previous years. I know the American Feed Industry Association issued a number that was much larger than ours but included forages, included other forms of feeds that of course don't go through feed mills. But, in general, I would say economic growth is lifting the tide and is helping the horse feed industry.

Tom:                            And you mentioned money in pockets. What does the survey reveal about feed costs?

Aidan:                          Feed costs, thankfully, have remained low, and I say “thankfully” because feed represents about 70 percent of the cost of the production for chickens, pigs, also for eggs, milk and aquaculture. So, effectively, for every protein that we consume, feed represents most of the life cost of that. And of course, when you further process it, it still continues to be a very significant contributor.

                                       Feed costs were low last year and remained low this year, by historic standards. Of course, in real terms, that means that they continue to drop, and that is directly correlated to the price of corn, soybeans, to a lesser degree, other forms of cereals such as wheat and barley, and other forms of protein such as canola, etcetera. That relates to the fact that we've had tremendous harvests. And even in years that we've got droughts, when it appears that we haven't done as well in the middle of the growth cycle as we expect, we still seem to take a lot out of the field, which has been good for farmers. It’s been good for feed. And, eventually, that means it's good for consumers.

Tom:                            As you keep your eye on current trends, do you have any early forecasting of what we'll see in the 2019 survey?

Aidan:                          If you look at some of these economic forecasts, it looks like consumers will continue to see their affluence grow. Certainly, we will see economic growth, which we hope will translate into consumer benefits. If that means that feed costs are low, food costs are low, and we can expect that harvests continue to contribute more and more to the silos of the world, I think it could be an excellent year for the feed industry.

Tom:                            Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech. Thank you for joining us, Aidan.

Aidan:                          Thank you, Tom.

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The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin's interview with Dr. Jorge Arias, global director of aquaculture and country manager for Chile and Argentina at Alltech, and Avelyne Saint Hilaire, the local administrator of the Alltech Sustainable Haiti Project in Ouanaminthe, Haiti.

Click below to hear the full interview:

What's happening in Haiti? Alltech is there, having arrived in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of 2010 to a nation in need of much more than immediate disaster relief. There was, and remains, a need for sustainable economic growth, jobs, agriculture and education. Joining Tom Martin for an update on the Alltech Sustainable Haiti Project are Dr. Jorge Arias, global director of aquaculture and country manager for Chile and Argentina at Alltech, and Avelyne Saint Hilaire, the project’s local administrator in Ouanaminthe, Haiti. Dr. Arias served as Ms. Saint Hilaire’s translator for this interview.

Tom:                             Let's begin, Dr. Arias, with a brief history of Alltech’s engagement and presence in Haiti. Tell us how it all began.

Jorge:                          We went to Haiti about 10 days after the earthquake. That was in January 2010. We went with Dr. Lyons (Dr. Pearse Lyons, president and founder of Alltech) and a couple of friends. We went directly to the Dominican Republic and then by helicopter to Port-au-Prince. We wanted to check on the situation there and to see what we could do.

                                       Port-au-Prince was the main area suffering from this earthquake, but actually, the whole country is in a continuous crisis situation. Dr. Lyons said, “What if we try to help Haiti through another region?” Through contacts and friends, we connected with people in the north of the island — in the Ouanaminthe area. People were arriving in Ouanaminthe from the critical area of Port-au-Prince. We found a school there, and that’s the beginning of the story.

Tom:                           This earthquake was devastating. Up to about 300,000 people were lost.

Jorge:                          Yes.

Tom:                           This struck a country that already had long been suffering from entrenched problems of all sorts. Could you carry on that description? How would you describe what you found?

Jorge:                          It was a terrible situation. All the buildings had fallen down. It was terrible. We really felt the need to start helping — not just that particular crisis, but in the long term.

Tom:                           You absorbed what you had seen and what you learned on the scene and out of that came a plan.

Jorge:                          Yes.

Tom:                           Can you tell us what that looked like in the beginning?

Jorge:                          Dr. Lyons said, “We need to make this project sustainable.” We asked what can grow in Haiti. What activity could we promote? We learned that Haiti was the first country in the Americas to produce coffee. Before Brazil, before Colombia, it was Haiti. It was also the first country to produce sugarcane. We chose coffee. Through that project, we could subsidize the rest of the activity. That was just the beginning.

Tom:                           Haiti, as I understand it, had undergone significant deforestation in the past. Did that lead to a decline in coffee production?

Jorge:                          I think it was all part of the same process. When you go to the island, you find two countries: the Dominican Republic and Haiti. One was colonized by Spain, the other by France. Haiti was trying to produce food for Europe and to export to different countries and also to produce coffee and sugarcane. On the other hand, the Dominican Republic has more sustainable beef and dairy production. What’s the difference? They didn’t deforest the area. So, they are two contrasting situations.

Tom:                           The aim of the coffee initiative was to help Haitian farmers get back on their feet. Has that been an outcome?

Jorge:                          Yes, at least in the community we’re influencing, which is the community of Dondon, a small village in the north part of the country. The original idea was to see what we can do: We find a coffee. We import the coffee to the U.S. green, as most of the coffee trading is taking place in the form of green coffee. We roast it in Kentucky, and then we sell it. With the profits, we can sustain the project. That was the original idea. We set an example for other people to follow.

Tom:                           Alltech’s involvement in Haiti extends beyond coffee production to educating and inspiring the next generation of Haiti. Tell us how the coffee connects to children.

Jorge:                          The first thing we started with was sponsoring a school. There was an elementary school in Ouanaminthe, and in one of our visits with Dr. Lyons, we knew there was another school (also in need of help). So, we took Dr. Lyons to see this second school. He immediately said, “Oh, we need to do something about this school also, Jorge.” That was the beginning of subsidizing and helping the other community. The students receive special education. We keep sending volunteers to teach the kids music, language, art and many activities.

                                       We also prepare lunch for the whole community of students. And we have some parents coming every noon to enjoy good food in both schools.

                                      We have more students now, to the point that we are planning to move to a new school in Ouanaminthe. We need to grow because we ran out of space where we are.

Tom:                           Wonderful. Let’s bring in Avelyne. Avelyne, thank you for waiting.

(Interpreted by Jorge)

Avelyne:                      Thank you, Tom. How are you?

Tom:                           Take us back to the beginning of your engagement in this project with Alltech. What was that like?

Avelyne:                      This is an experience where I’m growing every day because Alltech gave me the opportunity, not only to work with the community, but also the possibility to help the needy people in my area. The kids and the parents are enjoying and learning. They are evolving.

Tom:                           Avelyne, can you tell us about some of the ways that the school projects have made differences in people's lives — children in particular?

Avelyne:                      In the last seven years, the parents have received significant help. We started with 150 students in Ouanaminthe. In Dondon, we had fewer than 100 kids. Right now, between the two schools, we have 652 students. There are around 500 families that receive help and this education. That’s not only helping the students at the school, but also beyond school. And the kids are receiving quality education.

Tom:                           Avelyne, do you see this kind of educational experience and opportunity changing Haiti’s future?

Avelyne:                      That’s the main goal. We need to start from the beginning in order to change the country, and we need to start with the kids. I believe this was a real intention of Dr. Lyons’.

Tom:                           Thank you, Avelyne. Turning back to you, Jorge, let’s talk about water — clean, potable water. Tell us about Alltech’s water purification efforts in Haiti.

Jorge:                          The First Presbyterian Church in Lexington is associating with the effort that we started in 2010. They started buying the coffee first. That was the first activity. They did it for more reasons than to simply transfer the profits back to Alltech in order for us to sustain the project. They decided to use that money to go to Haiti and do some work with us. So, they have taken two or three trips to Haiti in these last few years, and one of those projects was to set up a water purification system for the whole community.

                                       We bought a piece of land where we are setting up this purification system. We can sell the water at a reasonable price and that, in turn, will also subsidize the growth of the project and help us to build a new school.

Tom:                           And why was the water project necessary to begin with?

Jorge:                          Water quality is an issue in Haiti — in the whole region. We can decrease the influence of different diseases and we can guarantee the quality of the water we use for our kids, but also for the community. We don't know how far we can get with the (water) project. We know from experience that in Dondon it became the water well of the whole community. It’s interesting to see all the community getting involved. Sometimes what the community needs is for somebody to kick off a project and people will follow.

Tom:                           You mentioned disease. Have doctor visits also been a part of this project?

Jorge:                          Yes. On one of my trips, I met a group of doctors visiting the Ouanaminthe area, and I had been told that they were coming from Lexington. I met them and we became very good friends, and remain so today. They’re going to Haiti every year to work on another project with Southland Christian Church. We basically formed a “joint effort” with these guys. They’re still going every year, and they are visiting our kids at the school. One of the doctors created a foundation to sponsor kids coming from Haiti to study at the University of Kentucky.

                                       We are trying to educate those guys and send them back to Haiti to work in their communities. We have one good example in James Blanq. He’s actually producing chickens now in Ouanaminthe, and he came through this program.

Tom:                           Another part of this project has been the important recognition of the healing and enriching power of the arts. What sort of connections have been made, and how have they developed?

Jorge:                          Dr. Everett McCorvey (University of Kentucky professor of voice and director and executive producer for UK Opera Theater) helped us, not only through the UK School of Music, but Everett is also a member of the community of First Presbyterian Church. We’re taking their volunteers to teach our kids music. We also invited a person that was giving a lesson in painting.

                                       Every time that somebody approaches Alltech and our group of people working on the project and they say, “I know how to do this, I know how to do that,” they are more than welcome to come along and join us in the effort.

Tom:                           If somebody would like to join in the effort, how would they do that? Who will they contact?

Jorge:                          They have to contact our people at Alltech, and they can do it through me or anybody in the Alltech community, the Alltech family. We’ll be more than happy to find a way for them to participate in this project.

Tom:                           I have one question for each of you: I’ll start with you, Avelyne, and ask what positive changes have you seen occurring as a result of the efforts of the Alltech Sustainable Haiti Project?

(Interpreted by Jorge)

Avelyne:                      Now the parents are much more involved in the education of their kids, and they're more conscious about the importance of education. As an example, Mondays and Fridays are marketing (shopping) days in Ouanaminthe. There is marketing on the border between the city of Dajabon in the Dominican Republic and the city of Ouanaminthe in Haiti. In the past, parents directly involved in the trading process were taking their kids. So, on Mondays and Fridays, the school was empty. The big change now is that the kids are going to school from Monday to Friday and their parents are doing their thing in the market.

                                    I have noticed that the government is aware of the project and is approaching the school to look at what we are doing, and they are getting more involved in all this process. That didn’t happen before.

Tom:                           Thank you very much, Avelyne. Dr. Arias, your response to that question too: What are the positive changes that you’ve witnessed?

Jorge:                          It’s just amazing. Dr. Lyons once told me, “Jorge, we need to bring different people every time we come to Haiti. We need to bring different people of our Alltech family or people from the Kentucky community simply because it won’t necessarily just change their lives, but it’s also changing our lives.” If you go there and see what’s going on, it really changes your perspective on your life; you see what you have, and what those people don’t have.

                                    So, we’ve been doing that through Dr. Lyons. We are taking different people to visit the project. Those people are getting more involved in the project some way or another. I took part of my family on my last trip. I took my son and he wants to go back.

Tom:                           Dr. Jorge Arias, Avelyne Saint Hilaire, thank you both for spending time with us.

Jorge:                          Thank you, Tom.

Avelyne:                      Thank you, Tom.

The following is an edited transcript of Luther Andal’s interview with Dr. Kyle McKinney, development manager for Alltech Crop Science’s Central America and Caribbean regions.

Luther:                        Dr. Kyle McKinney joins us for a conversation about new ideas in sustainability. Dr. McKinney is now working in Costa Rica as Alltech Crop Science’s development manager for Central America and the Caribbean. Thank you for joining us.

Kyle:                            Thank you for having me.

Luther:                        Kyle, you moved to Costa Rica recently. Why?

Kyle:                            Yes. I moved nearly two years ago. We had a specific project in mind focused on disease in bananas. Bananas are the number one fruit consumed globally and the number four crop grown globally. And there’s a disease that will wipe out 50 percent of bananas worldwide if left untreated.

                                    So, our approach in our crop science — Alltech Crop Science — is to look at using natural alternatives to pesticides or natural alternatives for plant nutrition. So, we develop technology that would complement synthetic chemicals (fungicides and pesticides), allowing us to reduce those chemicals and slow the disease spread in bananas in Costa Rica.

Luther:                        Can you tell us more about what’s going on in Costa Rica?

Kyle:                            Sure. Costa Rica, in general, is the fourth- or fifth-largest producer of bananas and the number one exporter of pineapples. The climate is perfect for disease: disease in the soil, disease in the air. And Costa Rica gets hit hard sometimes on their use of chemical pesticides. But, due to the disease opportunities, they have to fight these diseases to maintain their fruit production and exports. So, they’re looking for help and they’re reaching out.

                                    One of the great things is that Costa Rica’s producers want to look at alternatives and they want to look into the future. They know the use of chemical pesticides as used today and as used in the past will not be part of our future. Producers in Costa Rica are very interested in new technology, what we have to offer and the idea that a company would send someone to help. In addition to myself, we have another colleague who came from Kentucky to Costa Rica to work on his Ph.D. at the University of Costa Rica. We also built a microbiology laboratory.

So, when we talk about this Costa Rica project, there’s often a joke that I packed my suitcases with fermenters and took those down to Costa Rica, but it’s a unique setup that we have. By having that lab there, we can respond quickly to the producers. They appreciate that, and it’s a good working partnership.

Luther:                        You referenced the disease that is endangering the banana crop there. Can you give us a little more information? What its name is, how does it affect the banana crop? Is it a danger to the bananas around the world?

Kyle:                            Sure. It’s called black sigatoka. It’s a fungal disease. It’s spread in the air. The climate of Costa Rica keeps cultivating this fungus and it spreads. It gets onto the leaves and causes the leaves to rot away — cell death of the leaves. When you buy the banana, a third of that cost is coming from the treatment of this disease. It’s made it difficult for small banana producers to stay in business because of the cost of keeping the disease away. We would lose 50 percent of the plants if we did not have the constant application of these chemicals to keep the disease from spreading.

                                    So, it can be maintained, but the question is: How do we maintain it in a more naturalway using alternatives? That’s really the goal — not just in Costa Rica, but across the world: utilizing more natural resources. Microbes, for example. That’s a big part of what we do in crop science: utilizing microbes in the soil and microbes being applied to plants to stimulate growth, for example.

                                    Costa Rica has been fighting this particular banana disease for 30 to 40 years, and they do the job of maintaining and holding the disease from spreading. They do that by monitoring constant application —

Luther:                        Given the fact that black sigatoka is costly to maintain — meaning, to hold back — because of pesticides, what are you researching that could offer hope for the future?

Kyle:                            We’re looking at some of our technologies that have favorable enzymes produced from a bacteria fermentation. So, these enzymes, once applied to the soil or applied to the leaves, will attack the fungi from the disease and break that fungi cell wall down, and we see a reduction of the disease.

                                    It’s working in the same sense that pesticides work. Pesticides have been engineered to break down the cell wall of the fungi. We also see opportunities to induce this plant to produce its own self-defenses. For example, when the plant has the fungi on it, it’s releasing compounds as it tries to remove the disease. What if we look at ways to cause these compounds to be released prior to this disease arriving or the fungi arriving?

We know we’re not at a point where we can eliminate pesticide usage completely. One day it will happen with technology, and we’re not there yet, but we can reduce it, and we’re showing that currently in Costa Rica.

Luther:                        Given the fact that you are reducing pesticide use through using these new treatments, one of the terms I’ve seen is “induced resistance.” How is that being used, and what is the result of using induced resistance?

Kyle:                            When we induce resistance, for example, we’re causing that plant to produce compounds that fight off disease. These are enzymes, a lot of times. So, when we induce resistance in that plant, we cause the plant to produce these enzymes and begin fighting before the disease hits. It’s really like a vaccine when taken to prevent disease: You create resistance inside your body for when it may hit. So, it’s the same idea in crops as well.

Luther:                        What kind of results are we seeing from the application of induced resistance?

Kyle:                            What we’ve seen so far — and we’re very happy with this — is nearly a 20 percent reduction in the use of pesticides with the producers who were applying our technology.

Luther:                        When you say a 20 percent reduction, do you mean a 20 percent reduction of the disease or 20 percent reduction of pesticides?

Kyle:                            We’re talking 20 percent reduction of the pesticides. So, it’s a big deal, and it’s something we’re happy about. It’s something that the producers are happy about because they’re selling the bananas to people who want a clean, healthy crop, whether it’s a fruit or any other food source. So, we’re all working together to fight this disease using the expertise, from the growers/producers to our people in microbiology on the fermentation side. It’s a partnership that’s come together to solve a problem in bananas.

Luther:                        So, that’s a 20 percent reduction when they’re applying those pesticides sometimes two to three times a month, you said, to be able to hold back the sigatoka disease.

Kyle:                            Correct. Exactly.

Luther:                        Would you say that the biggest challenge for the future of food production is crop protection — or one of the biggest challenges?

Kyle:                            Absolutely, it’s one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest. It’s what we’ve seen over the years: The application of pesticides, whether that’s a fungicide, herbicide or others, has increased each decade since the `50s, `60s. That’s also allowed us to double food production along with other parameters of agriculture. But, the continued growth of pesticides in our crops is not going to be sustainable.

                                    People don’t want that in their food. No one does. As people become more aware, it puts pressure on growers worldwide to reduce pesticides. It puts pressure on grocery stores not to stock fruits with high chemical levels. So, it’s a major concern. What we’re happy to see is that producers want alternatives, and that has allowed for a nice partnership, to work together and to find solutions to crop protection.

Luther:                        So, we have this kind of dichotomy going on where you have diseases like sigatoka that are decimating the crop if not treated with pesticides two to three times a month. On the other side, we also need to increase the production to meet the world demand — using a term we talked about yesterday: “rising billions.” China, India, Africa and other parts of Asia all coming into a middle class, needing and demanding more food variety. We have this challenge that we’re talking about of protecting a crop but at the same time having to increase that production. So, it sounds like this is a huge need in terms of the future. Would you agree with that, that the crop protection is to protect what we have, but as we increase production, using more and more pesticides is not a viable option?

Kyle:                            You’re correct. Crop protection is number one. We understand more about plant genetics. We understand more about microbials. And as we move forward, we’re going to see combinations of natural solutions, whether it’s microbes or it’s the compounds that microbes produce. Those combinations are going to give us alternatives for crop protection. We’ll see a drastic reduction in the use of pesticides over the next decade. There’s no question. That’s the direction the industry is moving.

Luther:                        Would those then be what we referred to as biopesticides that you’re talking about?

Kyle:                            These would be referred to as biopesticides.

Luther:                        Okay. Can you give us a little more detail on what a “biopesticide” is? I think you probably have talked about it a little bit. But now that we have it, quantify what the term is.

Kyle:                            Sure. “Biopesticide” essentially encompasses this natural solution versus a synthetically produced chemical.

Luther:                        So, sometimes it may be used to make the plant healthier and stronger, and other times to combat the disease itself or the effects of the disease?

Kyle:                            That’s a good question. Our approach is to focus on the plant. Let’s make the plant healthier and the plant can then fight these diseases. Then, let’s also attack the disease as well. When you strengthen the root system of the plant by removing pathogens in the soil, it’s an interesting discussion point.

                                    If you take 1 acre of soil, there are nearly 15 tons of microbes in that soil, and we only understand about 2 percent of those microbes. We have no idea what the other 98 percent will allow us to do to improve plant health, plant nutrition and reduce disease. That’s a big component, a big focus of what we’re doing in Alltech Crop Science.

Luther:                        So, it sounds like there’s a tremendous opportunity as we research the 98 percent to find other biological organisms that can stimulate growth, increase health and combat disease.

Kyle:                            Absolutely. There’s no question the future of crop protection and the future of improving crop plant nutrition will be utilizing microbes in the soil.

Luther:                        It sounds like it’s very similar to humans in that we are using our biological antibiotic system to fight disease. So, we’re making ourselves healthy, and at the same time, we also have other biological elements that fight the disease. So, it equates well to a diet for a human being: not necessarily using antibiotics that are artificially created in a lab, but using foods that maybe have natural built-in compounds that fight disease. That’s kind of equivalent to what you’re attempting to do with crop protection.

Kyle:                            Exactly. We’re allowing that plant to fight the disease, which is what it was designed to do. We’re encouraging that plant to start fighting the disease maybe before the disease arrives. But when the disease arrives, it can maintain and sustain itself much better. We’re not changing any genetics. We’re just promoting what that plant has already been designed to be able to do for itself.

Luther:                        There is a lot of discussion on the human use of biostimulants — natural substances that help the development of the human body from birth through adulthood and maintaining healthy bones, vision and mental aptitude. Can you tell us what biostimulants are and how they apply to a plant? It sounds like there are some similarities in what you’re trying to achieve.

Kyle:                            Right.

                                    When we promote using a biostimulant, we’re promoting the plant to grow better and grow faster. A lot of times, we see better quality fruits and we see more uniform fruits. When consumers are buying from a visual standpoint, it’s a benefit for the producer.

Luther:                        I know that you’ve been working with pineapple in Costa Rica, with some biostimulants. What are the results of that?

Kyle:                            Correct. We’re focused on pineapple as well as banana. What we’ve seen in pineapple is a stronger root development. When the root develops in a pineapple, the uptake of nutrients changes, so we see a faster rate of growth and we see more uniformity of the pineapples, which is important for export. We’re quite excited about what we’re seeing in pineapple. We really started in the banana and now we’re shifting to this pineapple area, and we’re seeing some opportunities that make us excited.

Luther:                        What about corn? I believe in Iowa you’ve been working with corn.

Kyle:                            Exactly. So, when we look at our biostimulant work, we’ve really focused on corn as we worked and developed this program. In corn, we see increased root base, and that leads to a faster development, to more uniform corn kernels. The biostimulant aspect in corn is something we’ve been working on for a decade or more.

Luther:                        What do you see on the horizon for biological technologies?

Kyle:                            I think we’re going see a dramatic change over the next five to 10 years in this area of biologicals. Many people are taking notice. Universities are doing research. It’s in a lot of discussions on harnessing the power of microbes.

                                    We’ve seen a dramatic shift over the last five years. The biopesticide biological market is expected to go from about $2 billion in global sales currently to $8 billion in four years. So, you’re going to see a tripling of this market. I think the biopesticide market is currently growing at about 15 percent per year compared to 3 percent for synthetic chemicals. So, you’re seeing this change. As we understand more about soil microbes and how they can be beneficial, you’re going to see a dramatic growth over the next five years to a decade.

Luther:                        That’s substantial. What about for microalgae? What specifically do you see for the future?

Kyle:                            Microalgae are something we’ve taken notice of, and we know that there are biostimulant aspects of microalgae. Seaweed, for example, has been utilized for many years to promote growth as a biostimulant. It’s one of our expertise areas — growing microalgae. So, we’re really going to start pushing into that area for biostimulants.

Luther:                        What about in the area of solid state fermentation? Are some advancements being made there?

Kyle:                            I like solid state fermentation because I did my Ph.D. in that area. Solid state fermentation has been around for a thousand years. You see it often, like when you see fungi growing on a log, for example. What it’s doing is breaking down fibers, releasing nutrients. Solid state fermentation offers the same idea of producing beneficial fungi, which will help break down nutrients, which will help develop the root base and resist disease in the soil. It helps increase water uptake as an extension of the roots. So, solid state fermentation offers a lot of promise moving forward on production of beneficial fungi and bacteria.

Luther:                        Overall, how do you think farmers are doing, and growers, in terms of sustainability?

Kyle:                            I think sustainability is starting to take off. In the past five to 10 years, people started to understand the idea of sustainability. As consumers become aware that crops and animals can be raised without the use of heavy levels of pesticides, chemicals or other inputs, sustainability is going to be the future of crop protection. It’s going come quicker than most people think.

                                    Many farmers want alternatives. They’re excited about the future of alternatives. They seek out companies like Alltech and say, “Hey, can you help us? What can we work on together?” So, the future of sustainable agriculture, and this whole new technology wave we’re seeing in agriculture is really going to change. We have to change in order to produce the food to feed another 2 to 3 billion people over the next 15, 20, 30 years. So, all this technology is going to come together, which includes microbes to produce the food that we require.

Luther:                        So, how does this affect the average consumer’s kitchen table? I’ve heard you talk about how much cost goes into pesticide use, for instance. Beyond that, what other ways will it affect an average consumer?

Kyle:                            Maybe at the moment the idea and the understanding that they’re eating healthy food is more significant than the financial impact on consumers. We can incorporate programs using alternatives such as biopesticides and not impact the cost for the producer. I think when consumers can sit down to eat and not fear that what they’re eating is unhealthy or may have some chemical inputs, I think that this leads to a better understanding and people are more excited about the area of agriculture.

Luther:                        Well, that leads right into what you enjoy most about your job.  

Kyle:                            You know, Alltech, in general, is always changing. There are always new opportunities. There are always new paths to take. If you’re bored in this company, then you’re not seeking out the opportunities that come around the corner.

                                    I’m excited every day to get up and look at the challenges that we’re facing in Costa Rica and work with producers to offer them alternatives. They’re seeking these alternatives, and we have the technologies and expertise to work together and make a difference.

Luther:                        Dr. McKinney is Alltech Crop Science’s development manager for Central America and the Caribbean. Thank you very much for joining us.

Kyle:                            Thank you for having me.

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

The poultry industry is seeing a 50-gram increase in weight for a 42-day-old bird every year. By using perinatal nutrition to guide epigenetic responses, we can improve the quality, immunity and adaptability of these rapidly growing birds before they even hatch.

Tom:                            Dr. Peter Ferket is a professor of nutrition and biotechnology in the department of poultry science at North Carolina State University and the author of more than 500 publications and seven patents. He is known for his work on perinatal nutrition and development and other nutritional factors that affect the yield and quality of meat, nutritional value of food, industry coproducts and nutrient management. He’s here to talk to us about improving the quality of chickens and turkeys before they hatch.  Thank you for joining us.

Peter:                          Thank you, Tom.

Tom:                            First, let’s take a look in the rearview mirror. How far have we come in poultry?

Peter:                          When you consider what the poultry industry has done over the past 60 years or so, it’s been nothing short of amazing. Sixty years ago, to get to our consumer-size market, it took 12 weeks. It was just a small, scrawny, little bird. But that same 4-pound broiler chicken today can do this in almost 30 days.

                                       When you think about the genetic potential for growth for these amazing animals, we are seeing about a 1 percent improvement in live performance every single year. That’s a 50-gram increase in weight for a 42-day-old bird or market bird every year.

                                      This is quite an amazing challenge as well. With the genetic potential of these birds, it’s actually more difficult to understand how to feed and to meet the nutritional requirements for that rapidly growing animal.

Tom:                            Do you attribute this to genetic science? 

Peter:                          Yes. We have learned a lot about not only selecting and understanding variability and selecting animals for certain growth, but now, because of the genetic science and being able to understand the gene and blueprints that are associated with it, being able to measure certain traits and select for those, this is still a natural selection kind of science.

                                       But because we have the tools, we can rapidly meet those needs and get traits that are desirable for not only the welfare of the animal, but their growth performance, meat quality, et cetera.

Tom:                            What’s the difference between genetics and epigenetics?

Peter:                          Epigenetics is the expression of the genes. So, genes are like the blueprint. Epigenetics is like taking a part of that gene or that blueprint and actually creating something, like going to work and building a house. You start with a blueprint, but the “carpenters” go to work and take that blueprint and begin to produce a product.

                                       Epigenetics takes a certain part of that gene and now says, “Okay. I need to express that part and turn it into proteins, turn it into something that can now create what you’re really meaning to create.” It’s the phenotypic type of response. What we call “phenotype” is creating what the bird looks like, behaves like and grows like.

Tom:                            Does the genetic technology CRISPR come into play?

Peter:                          That is a technique of trying to now modify that gene and how that expresses. So, we’re still starting to learn how to do that with animals. We’re using it with lots of plants now. This is a very new technique that allows us to now modify the gene. So, you’re not actually doing a gene modification. The CRISPR just says, “Let’s take out a piece that’s not functioning well and make it work better.”

Tom:                            Interesting. What kind of impact can nutrition have especially in the early life of a bird?

Peter:                          You’ve heard the saying, “You are what your mama ate.” And very often, when we are young — it doesn’t matter if it’s a human, a chicken or even a plant as it’s just beginning to grow — we need to sense what the environment is like and then adapt by epigenetic responses to the environment so that we’re adapted to the life we’re going to be in.

                                    With early nutrition, we can do certain things like provide nutrients at critical periods of time so the genes are expressed in a way that we’d like — more adapted to the environment that that animal is going to grow in.

                                      For example, if we want — I’m talking physiological kinds of response — if we want an animal to be more adapted to hot weather, you expose it to hot weather for a short period of time when it’s young. If we want to now create something where an animal is more efficient in a specific nutrient, we can actually reduce the nutrient, make that animal work a little bit harder for that, and it up-regulates parts of its genome or its gene expression and machinery so that it’s more efficient to get those nutrients, and that very often lasts for the rest of their life.

                                      So, with early nutrition, we have an opportunity to manipulate the nutrition, the physiology and those kinds of things in a way that they are better adapted for life later.

Tom:                            I want to get to something that I mentioned in the introduction. Can we begin getting that bird off to a good start even before it hatches?

Peter:                          Yes. That’s the amazing thing that we’ve been working on for the past almost 10 years. What we first found out is that the chicken’s first meal is not its first mouthful of food when it hatched. Like all of us when we’re embryos, we’re surrounded by amniotic fluid. It’s that fluid that surrounds that embryo. The chick, as well as humans and others, swallow that amniotic food just before they’re either hatched or born. That amniotic fluid contains nutrients that the mother or the dam provides. But, sometimes it’s deficient in certain things or doesn’t have the certain trace minerals or nutrients required to turn on the “machinery” so that the animal develops well. So, we now supplement that first meal — the amniotic fluid. When that chick consumes it, it gets a better complement of the nutrients that it needs to grow.

Tom:                            What is the outcome? What is the difference that you see?

Peter:                          We use nutrigenomics to test metabolism, and we found that if we want an animal to have better immunity, we know there are certain kinds of components that we can put in the diet — or in that amniotic in ovo feed, as we call it — that would up-regulate some aspects and balance nutrition or immunity. We got development to be better.

                                      We can add in certain nutrients that will help the growth of those enterocytes — the gut cells. Or if we want better breast muscle development, or better behavior in some ways, or have animals be more alert, there are certain critical nutrients that we know that play an important role in the metabolism that influences those traits.

Tom:                            What is nutritional imprinting, and what kind of an impact does that have on the bird?

Peter:                          Nutritional imprinting is much like the epigenetics story. Imprinting is an adaptive conditioning using nutrition to allow it to adapt to what we would like. So, for example, I would like to imprint an animal that’s more efficient in phosphorus utilization. That’s a good thing because dietary phosphorus is expensive. If you can improve phosphorus utilization, you have less going into the environment.

                                       Imprinting would be for a short period of time when they’re very young. You feed a diet that is very low in phosphorus, and that allows the animal’s system to say, “I need more phosphorus. I’m going to up-regulate my systems to be more efficient for phosphorus utilization.” That imprints them for the rest of their life.

                                       Imprinting is something that’s biologically very conserved in nature — like imprinting, let’s say, a child on a mother. That occurs very young. Same thing whether it’s imprinting to some sort of an environmental temperature. We can do the same thing with nutrition. We can imprint animals for certain nutritional things that we would like to make things more efficient later in life.

Tom:                            How do these genetic and nutritional technologies affect the average consumer’s dinner table?

Peter:                          I think people are, first of all, concerned that we’re manipulating genes. No, these are just natural genes that you and I all have.

                                    But now we’re starting to understand what turns on a gene for the good and what turns on a gene for the bad. By doing that, we can feed an animal in a way that they will be better adapted for the life that they’re going to be in. That’s good because you can now make sure that the animal has better welfare, that the food, for instance, would be healthier and that the animal is more resistant to diseases.

                                       There are a number of things that, in the end, turn out being very good for the consumer. A big active part of my work is trying to find techniques and ways to enhance the animal’s resistance to enteropathogens so that we don’t have to put antibiotics in feed. We can use natural compounds in the diet together with the animal’s own system to be able to maintain health without having to rely on things like we have in the past, like antibiotics and drugs.

Tom:                            It sounds like really interesting work. What do you enjoy most about it?

Peter:                          You know, the most enjoyable thing is the research. Yes, those are exciting things. But the most exciting thing about my work is that I’m a teacher. I’m a professor. It’s about instilling dreams into our students’ minds, the creativity, what’s possible, taking something that we know in science and letting them loose to create an opportunity. I think that’s the thing that just makes me go to work every day with tremendous joy. I can see my students and those around me use some of the information that we learn in science to create and do better things. I always tell my students, “Take this and go save the world.”

Tom:                            Dr. Peter Ferket, professor of nutrition and biotechnology in the department of poultry science at North Carolina State University. Thank you so much for joining us.

Peter:                          You’re welcome, Tom.

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

There is significant pressure on the beef industry to eliminate or reduce the use of antibiotics. Producers have to balance those efforts with protecting animal welfare. Does the concept of programmed nutrition offer a solution?

Luther:                        We’re talking with Dr. Vaughn Holder, research project manager at Alltech, where he heads global nutritional research in beef species. Also with us is professor Maurice Boland, European research director at Alltech. Dr. Holder, let’s start with you: Give me your thoughts on programmed nutrition. Can you tell us more about this idea?

Vaughn:                      Programmed nutrition is a nutritional concept that came out of our nutrigenomics and epigenetics laboratory — which we set up about 10 or 12 years ago — that basically looks at the interaction between genes and nutrition, and the effect that nutrition has on gene expression. Rather than the traditional concept of changing gene sequences by either breeding or artificial means, programmed nutrition was a program set up to evaluate the effects of nutrition on the expression of those genes without changing the gene sequences.

                                    When you have the power to evaluate the effect of nutrition on every gene in the body simultaneously, it really gives you a powerful tool to fast-track research in the nutrition of both animals and people.

Luther:                        How do we apply this concept to animal nutrition?

Vaughn:                      That’s a very important question to ask because a lot of the technologies that we use in terms of the epigenetics — the gene chip technologies — are somewhat difficult to understand, very difficult to put your hands on. It’s very important that, down the line from that nutritional work that you do, that you put together programs that are fed to animals. So, that’s a very important part of the program.

Luther:                        Does that mean that nurture wins out versus nature in the nurture-versus-nature debate?

Vaughn:                      That is also a very interesting question, and you can’t say one over the other because you need both. Quite frankly, you do need a set of genes to start off with. That’s the nature part. Gene sequence is obviously very important because that’s the blueprint for what can be done within the body. The nurture part tells you how what happens to the animal affects what will actually happen. A very simple example of that is all of us may have the potential to be a super athlete, but unless you work out every day and practice those things, you won’t be an athlete. And (that part) lets you nurture those genes.

Luther:                        You say that “you are what your mother ate.” Tell us what you mean by that.

Vaughn:                      “You are what your mother ate” means that whatever the diet your mother ate when you were in utero will affect, eventually, what you become. A great example of that is, after World War II, the famine that occurred in the Netherlands. The caloric intake of most of those folks was reduced to about 400 to 800 calories (per day), whereas usually you would be eating about 2,500 calories. The women who were pregnant during that time, the offspring of those women ended up being much more likely to develop diabetes, to have metabolic syndrome and to be obese by the time they were in their 50s.

                                    That just showed that, even though the diet of those people wasn’t any different from any of their compatriots, the fact that the mother was nutrient-restricted when they were in utero affected the person that their offspring became. So, we start to understand these really powerful effects of multigenerational nutrition and what the nutrition of even successive previous generations — of your ancestors — might do to what you actually become.

Luther:                        Can we overcome our genetic issues through nutrition?

Vaughn:                      In certain circumstances, yes. I think that there are obviously a lot of severe genetic mutations that cannot be overcome by nutrition, but certainly nutrition can play a very important role in modulating what types of genetics you actually have at the end of the day. If we listen to Ronan Power's talk in the main session as well, you’ll see some pretty profound things that you can do with nutrition in some disease models.

Luther:                        Do we need to rethink the process of taking beef products to the marketplace?

Vaughn:                      It seems clear that we’re not going to have a choice in that matter. The pressure from consumers to do things like remove hormones and antibiotics from beef rations is quite strong right now. There’s also quite a lot of financial incentive for producers to do those things. That being said, we need to find ways to do that without sacrificing the welfare of the animals themselves. This is a very critical part of the story.

                                    Everyone wants us to remove antibiotics from animal rations, but if an animal gets sick, you need to treat that animal with antibiotics. That’s pretty clear. The same as if your child got sick. You would send them for antibiotics. But certainly, with the power of nutrigenomics and being able to select a blueprint for that animal, we can do things with nutrition that upgrade immunity, that improve performance the same way that traditional technologies can but that might not be looked upon so favorably. You can do that with specialized nutrition processes.

Luther:                        Given the rising billions from China, from other areas of Asia, India and Africa growing into a middle class, is programmed nutrition the key to meeting the demand of the future?

Vaughn:                      I heard a statistic the other day: The middle class of China has the same estimated population size as the entire population of the U.S. That’s expected to increase with countries getting richer, like India and probably eventually Africa; there certainly need to be means to increase the production of all protein sources. Beef is an important one because a large part of the lifecycle of the animal consumes feedstuffs that no other agricultural species uses in terms of grasses. Beef will remain an important protein source in these places, and finding ways to produce it without having any of the other negative effects, whether on the environment or people themselves, is very important.

Luther:                        You talk about the importance of blueprinting. What do you mean by that?

Vaughn:                      Blueprinting is a concept that came about when we developed this programmed nutrition concept. I do like the comparison to the blueprint because you can have several different blueprints for different parts of a building and you may not actually end up using all of them. So, the blueprint is the genetics of the animal, and then what you end up expressing — or building — becomes what you see in reality. The blueprint is very important and an expression of that blueprint.

Luther:                        Can you discuss bypassing conventional pharmaceutical and antibiotic practices? How is that accomplished?

Vaughn:                      We have to be quite careful about how we phrase that, and a lot of people will talk about whether we’re talking about replacements for antibiotics or substitutes for antibiotics. That’s not necessarily the case. I think that most of the time, when we are designing programs that allow for the removal of those types of technologies, we’re just promoting another process within the animal. Oftentimes, with antibiotics, it’s about promoting immunity naturally and then reducing the actual need for the use of antibiotics, at the end of the day. So, usually the mechanism by which that happens is completely different. Our technology is focused more on prevention rather than coming around afterward and talking about treatment.

Luther:                        How does Alltech’s EPNIX® program fit within that?

Vaughn:                      I would say Alltech’s EPNIX program is one of the first true mainstream commercial successes that have come out of the programmed nutrition program. It was originally a programmed nutrition program designed from nutrigenomics, but we have since gone through some pretty largescale commercial work as well.

                                    Like I said earlier, it’s important that you can use this stuff out in the field and get results in the animals themselves. And that’s always going to be the natural progression of these types of programs. They start as theoretical programs in the laboratory, and you do need to carry those through all the way to commercial success. That’s what EPNIX has done at the moment.

Luther:                        Professor Boland, there is a claim being advanced by some that cattle have reached maximum efficiency and that carcass weight cannot be increased. What are your thoughts on that?

Maurice:                     My thoughts are that that is certainly not the case. If we look at the work rate — or the metabolic work rate — of a steer, and compare that with a dairy cow, which is, again, part of the cattle population, it’s not nearly as efficient or as productive as the dairy cow. I believe that we can achieve an awful lot more. We need to understand a little bit more about the mechanisms that contribute to that and, as Dr. Vaughn has said, the epigenetic effects are going to be crucial.

                                    We know that you can modify the lifetime performance of an animal, whether in terms of reproduction or in terms of growth, by what happens either very early during the pregnancy period or later on in the last trimester of pregnancy. There’s still a lot that we can do to enhance the overall efficiency of the beef animal. One of the things that we need to be very careful about is to ensure that we have those animals in the optimum health condition.

                                    If we can get the animals into the right health status, then everything else in terms of their productivity will be enhanced and will be more efficient than we have at the moment.

Luther:                        Alltech conducted a two-year experiment at Cactus Feeders, where they investigated this. What were their findings?

Maurice:                     Their findings were very clear that they got healthier animals, that they got more productive animals and that they got better weight gain. They got better carcass weights at the end of that trial period. It’s very clear that the program that Dr. Vaughn has spoken about already, the EPNIX program, can deliver benefits to the producer.

                                    If we can deliver benefits to the producer, then ultimately we’re going to deliver better benefits to the consumer. Hopefully we will be producing a healthier animal, and a healthier animal should then lead to healthier meat. We’re going to be looking at better health benefits for the consumer. I think there is a big effort now in relation to human health to look at how the whole nutritional program can influence that, or be of benefit to the consumer.

Luther:                        Is this experiment continuing, perhaps even being expanded into new directions?

Maurice:                     We will be building on the information. In fact, it was Dr. Holder who set up that program. We will be building on that to expand into more areas in the world. We’re looking for opportunities using natural products to enhance the health and the productivity of the animals. So, obviously, we will be taking that out on a wider scale.

Luther:                        What are the implications for the industry from these studies?

Maurice:                     The implications for the industry are, number one, that it can become more efficient in various parts of the world. The beef industry is under significant financial pressure. If we can make those animals healthier, if we can make those animals more productive, if we can get higher carcass weights, then that’s going to be of benefit to the producer. I think that we can also look at how we can modify the composition of the diet to ensure that we have got a product that is of more health benefit to the consumer. So, what we’re striving for all of the time is to look at what does the consumer want and how can we deliver the product for that consumer.

Luther:                        What do you think the future holds for the industry?

Maurice:                     I think the future for the industry is bright. I think there will be challenges. I think there will be a lot of technology coming into that industry over the next five to 10 years that will revolutionize, in many ways, the production efficiency.

                                    One of the things that we’re always interested in is, not only the composition of the diet, but the structure, the makeup of the diet that will go into both the beef and the dairy industry. With our KEENAN technology, we can enhance the output from those animals, make the utilization of the raw materials, whether it’s fiber or protein or whatever, more efficient and therefore more beneficial for the animal.

                                    Again, I come back all the time to that healthy animal. A healthy animal is a productive animal and will be of tremendous benefit to the consumer.

Luther:                        You just mentioned the use of KEENAN to analyze that. Can you give us some background on that?

Maurice:                     Yes. The KEENAN technology was purchased by Alltech just over a year ago, and we have made, again, a lot of progress during that period. But one of the things that we have is called InTouch. That is a piece of equipment on the side of the mixer wagon. It will not only tell the farmer what ingredients should be mixed, the rate at which they’re being mixed and what goes into the diet, whether it’s of the dairy cow or the beef cow, but more importantly, we will get feedback at our headquarters, such as output on milk production and how the animals are performing. We can then go back and modify, or interact with the farmer, to ensure that he is getting the optimum performance from that system.

Luther:                        Dr. Vaughn Holder, research project manager at Alltech, and professor Maurice Boland, who is the Alltech European research director. Thanks for joining us.

Maurice:                     Thank you.

Dr. Vaughn Holder and professor Maurice Boland spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17). To hear more talks from the conference, sign up for the Alltech Idea Lab.

The following is an edited transcript of Luther Andal's interview with Randy Lamontagne, general manager of Cowtown, a retail chain aquired by Alltech. 

Luther:                       Alltech is in the animal feed business, crop business, beverage business, and now, Western wear business. Yes, that’s right: When Alltech acquired Masterfeeds in Canada in 2016, a small retail chain called Cowtown was included. Here to tell us his story, and the Cowtown story, is general manager Randy Lamontagne. Welcome.

Randy:                        Thank you.

Luther:                       Tell us more about Cowtown.

Randy:                         I’d start by saying Cowtown is about a 20,000-square-foot retail store in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. We sell Western wear, tack, saddlery, animal health, feed supplies, and pet food and pet supplies.

Luther:                       That’s quite a bit of diversity there. What is the history?

Randy:                         In about 1994, a fellow named Ray Haykel built a feed mill in Regina and started tacking on an office. He decided as he was building the office — he was in construction ­­­­— to expand it a little bit and put in a pet food retail store. Sometime during construction, which I suppose lasted maybe six months or so, he was down in Texas and ran into a big Western wear store. He called home and said, “You know what? Halt the construction. I want to build up a second level and put a Western wear store on top.” He was an entrepreneur with some big dreams, and he just kept dreaming bigger and building as he went. That’s how it started.

Luther:                       Some people may know Cowtown as a Western wear retailer. But, as you’ve pointed out, it didn’t start that way — it’s more diverse than that. Can you give us an idea of products and how they’re used?

Randy:                         I think the biggest thing that makes us successful is the diversity. We’ve got quite a lot of consumables, and when you consider the pet food and the feed for livestock — I use the term “consumables” because it’s something that people need on a frequent basis — and that helps drive Western wear sales. Consumables help drive sales of all the other products that we carry. You might see a typical Western wear customer once every two to three months, for example. But, if they’re buying pet food or feed from you, you can increase the repetition. You increase the frequency of visits to your store, and maybe you’re seeing that same customer two to three times per month instead of once every two to three months. By having that consumable, you also expose them to your clothing lines and some of your other soft-good lines on a more frequent basis. They’ll buy because they see something they like — not so much because they need it, but because they’re buying based on emotion. They may see something they like or see a staff member wearing something they like.

Luther:                       Tell us a little bit about your background — I know it’s an interesting story ­because of where you came from and how you came to be general manager at Cowtown.

Randy:                         It’s a very long story, and I won’t go through it all, but I grew up on a family farm in southeastern Saskatchewan. We had land spread out over two separate areas. We farmed grain, cattle, pigs, chickens and horses. We’re a mixed farming operation.

                                    In the mid-`70s, we bought a service station in our small town — a community of 600 people — right between our two farm areas. We started operating that service station, and my dad decided that we could get more customer traffic if we built onto it. So, we built a grocery store, and then a sporting goods and guns and ammo store was added. Later, we added farm-ag belts and bearings. We just kept building and expanding with opportunities and needs.

                                    So, I kind of grew up in retail. I also worked oil rigs after high school. At one point, I owned a bar and restaurant and a hotel. I’ve sold cars. I took an engineering class and got my power engineering tickets. Just when I was starting a new job in the power engineering career, I happen to meet Ray Haykel in an auto body shop and —  like the old “The Godfather” quote, “I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse” — he got me to manage his Western wear store. That was about 21 years ago. I started that, and I found my niche. I really found that what I enjoy is just dealing with people. I find this industry to be down-to-earth. I have a lot of fun with the customers, the staff, everybody. It’s been a great experience.

Luther:                       Let’s bring it back to Cowtown. What’s the breakdown of sales look like with all these different groups?

Randy:                         I would say about 35 percent of the business is on the pet side, about 30 percent is on the Western wear side and the rest is animal health and feed.

Luther:                       Do you tailor the products that you offer in each store based on the location and the community that they’re serving?

Randy:                         Absolutely. You have to get to know your customer and get to know the area you’re in. Any time we start a new store in a new area, we do a little homework, a little research. But then you’re constantly changing and you’re constantly evolving. Your customer, to a certain degree, dictates that. I always ask our staff to keep a notepad by the till. If a customer asks you for something — whether you have it or not is immaterial at that time — write it down. Offer the service or advice. If you don’t have the product that they’re looking for, recommend another option, even if it’s for a competitor. Recommend where they can get it, because you’re still helping that customer. You’re still providing them a service, even if it’s just an answer for where they can get it and even if it’s not from you at the time.

                                    As you make those customer notes on a daily basis, you’ll start to see trends. I’ll pull those notepads from the till every once in a while and check through them myself. When I start seeing the same thing written down two to three times, I think, okay, here’s an opportunity — here’s something our customers are asking for.

Luther:                       It sounds like customer service is a big aspect of Cowtown.

Randy:                         Absolutely. You know what? It’s almost cliché: Everybody says, “Customer service. The customer is number one. The customer is first.” But unless you really believe it and are passionate about it, it’s meaningless. You really have to focus on it. I think in these days, with competition being so fierce for everyone’s hard-earned dollar, shopping to me is almost a form of entertainment.

                                    There are two types of shoppers: There’s the guy that needs something. He knows exactly what he needs. He just wants to get in your store, get his product and get out with no hassle. For the other type of customer, shopping becomes a form of entertainment. They’re looking around, and they’re taking their time. That’s not me. I’m not that guy. I’m more the guy who wants to get in and out and get what I want. But you have to provide an experience for customers.

                                    I’ve always said if you can put a smile on somebody’s face, they’ll remember you. If you can accomplish that, then you get that customer talking about you — talking to his friends and neighbors and recommending you.

Luther:                       It’s becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to compete against big-box stores. You’ve highlighted the customer service and entertainment aspects. Are those key strategies in competing against the big-box stores? How does Cowtown do it?

Randy:                         In a sense, they are key strategies. You use the term “big-box,” and I like to think outside that box — get outside the box and do things that are creative. I use the term “shock and awe.” I like to look for things that create a little shock and awe. There’s an area in the brain called Broca’s area. It’s about the size of your thumbnail, and it’s kind of the gatekeeper to what makes sense to you or what you’re going to pay attention to or listen to.

                                    I use radio ads heavily. That’s 90 percent of my advertising campaign. It’s intrusive if it’s done right. If you have creative ads that are catchy, and there’s something about the ad that makes you pay attention, that’s shocking the Broca. You can use that in radio ads. You can use that in displays. You can use that all kinds of ways.

                                    For example, a customer asked me one day if I could deliver some product to him. He had bought some Hi-Hog gates — panels for a horse penning he was making. I said, “Sure, I can deliver them. Where do you live?”

                                    He said, “Well, if you’re in west Regina and driving down Highway 11, once you see Exit C, turn right and pull into my lane.” I wasn’t sure where Exit C was. He said, “You live out that way, don’t you?” I did — I lived in Regina Beach at that time. He said, “Well, you’re passing Exit C twice a day, then. There’s a sign: Exit C.”

                                    I drove by that sign every day for probably seven or eight years and never realized there was an Exit C. There’s also an Exit A and an Exit B, but I never paid any attention because I really didn’t care. I had no interest in that. But if I’d seen a deer out in the field, I would take notice of that, and I could tell you where I had seen that deer two days later. That’s shocking the Broca. That deer was not supposed to be there. He’s not there every day.

Luther:                       In terms of bringing that home to maybe a Cowtown ad —  I’m not going to ask you to sing a jingle or anything like that — how do you apply that to a Cowtown ad to make it stand out if it’s a radio ad, for instance?

Randy:                         The biggest thing is that our ad campaign is based on a long-term branding campaign, which is how I like to brand or advertise our products. We don’t advertise sale prices so much — the “our manager is going away” sale or the “Boxing Day” sale — all those phony sales, because that becomes background noise on your radio. It’s no different than the commercial on television when, while you’re watching something you’re interested in, a commercial comes on that doesn’t pique your interest. That’s usually the time you’re taking a washroom break or getting up to grab another beverage, and you just don’t pay attention to it. Radio is no different.

                                    A commercial becomes background noise if it’s like everybody else’s. So, in our campaign, we actually use our mascot —  our spokesperson. It’s a cow. It’s a male. I guess it’s a bull, but his name is actually Cow. He has his own personality, and then there’s a “straight-and-narrow man” that has his own personality. If you’re familiar with hockey in Canada, you know the Don Cherry and Ron MacLean duo, who has one guy who is “out there” and another guy who is more on the straight-and-narrow keeping him in check.

                                    We just have fun with their commercials —  we make people laugh and put a smile on their faces, but all the time you’re branding your business. I always use the example of, if I wanted to put a saddle on sale, I could put an ad in the newspaper and say my saddles are $100 off today. The only guy who is going to see that is the guy who’s actually in the market for a saddle that day. So, I can spend $1,000 on a newspaper ad to try and sell a saddle, but if I’m the customer and I’m flipping through the newspaper, I’ll only stop and look at that ad if I’m interested now. If I’m not interested in it today, I flip right over that page.

                                    Radio is planting the seed on a consistent daily basis with their messages. Consistency is very important — you’re planting the seed for the future so that when that rancher wakes up one morning and decides today is the day to get a new saddle, he says, “I have to go to Cowtown.” That seed has been planted so many times that when he decides he needs a saddle, or a pair of boots, or a pair of jeans, whatever products that we sell, his first thought should be: I have to stop at Cowtown.

Luther:                        So, it sounds to me like what you’re saying with your ads is that you’re entertaining rather than informing.

Randy:                         Yes. Actually, both. I guess you’re informing by entertaining, if that makes sense.

Luther:                       What advice would you give to smaller businesses that are more localized retailers and they’re attempting to compete with the big-box stores out there?

Randy:                         To me, passion is the key. If you’re not passionate about the business, get out of it. Don’t fool yourself. You also need a proper business plan. You need to be committed going into it. We have a bit of a unique store. When people are around it, people come and see our store and they get involved a little bit. There’s a draw and a little bit of a love of the industry. We’ll have people actually come to us and say, “Hey, I’d like to do a Cowtown franchise” or “I’d like to start a store.”

                                    Okay. What’s making them think that? They’ll say, “Well, I see you guys selling lots of stuff at these trade shows.” Or, “I come into your store, and it’s busy, and everybody is happy and things are fun, and you have Western wear.” And, “I know people that have horses. We have friends who have horses, and we’d like to start a store.”

                                    Well, that’s not a real business plan, you know? It’s not that easy. You have to live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it and think it nonstop. You have those people who are passionate about it in that way.

Luther:                       How is Cowtown responding to the move to digital for many retailers out there? Customers are online, shopping from mobile devices, researching through mobile devices. How is Cowtown responding to that, or do you see your customers moving to digital, or are they still preferring that in-store experience that you offer?

Randy:                         I think there’s probably some of both (preference for digital and in-store experiences) going on in the industry, and there’s room for both. I think customers are getting more savvy as far as researching products online, but I feel like they still want the experience of coming into the store and dealing with a person — not a website or someone on the phone. They like the personal contact.

                                    If you’re coming in to buy a saddle or a pair of boots, you want to make sure they fit. Yes, you can order them over the internet, but there’s a good chance that they’re not going fit properly when you get them and then you’re going to send them back. Or, you can come into our store and get personal attention and have someone fit a boot to your foot properly.

                                    So, I think there’s room for both (digital and in-store experiences) in our industry. We’re starting to use Facebook, Twitter and our website for more interaction with the customer. It still boils down to interaction with the customer. Ultimately, we hope that (digital) leads the customer to visit our store because that’s where we can make the biggest impression: one-on-one with the customer.

Luther:                        How many locations is Cowtown in currently?

Randy:                         We’re in seven right now. We’ve been growing in the last few years. We started with the one store in Regina when Masterfeeds bought us in 2001. We weren’t part of the core business for Masterfeeds. They were a 75-year-old feed company at the time of the acquisition. I don’t think it was originally in the plans for Masterfeeds to have a retail store. So, we needed to prove ourselves, and they gave us that opportunity and that chance. When I first came to Cowtown, I remember looking at that business, and to me, it was like seeing opportunity in blinking Vegas lights. That’s how I see this business —  there was so much opportunity to grow this. We got a couple years under our belts with Masterfeeds, and they gave us that chance to grow, and now we’re seven stores and growing. Now with Alltech behind us, I see huge opportunity for growth again.

Luther:                       Well, speaking of growth, what other things do you think the future holds for Cowtown? Is it just growth? Is it different products? Is it digital?

Randy:                         Yeah. I suppose all of the above. I really do see opportunities for everything there.

                                    Just in our own area, we have plans for stores in other markets where we think we can really serve the markets we know well. Overseas, I think there’s huge opportunity for growth in stores. We’ve sold overseas for a number of years now. We’ve sold to people in Australia, for example. And usually, it starts with, again, that personal contact. You get some young guys visiting from Australia on the rodeo circuit. At some point, they get to our store and they buy jeans or boots. When they get home, they start telling people in Australia about us, about our store. Then we get calls and we end up shipping stuff to Australia. Again, it was from that original personal contact — making that first impression with the customer. So, I think there’s opportunity to grow overseas, possibly down here in the States and definitely back home in Canada. The website will, of course, become a bigger tool. Digital media is going to become bigger for us in the future. This is my first kick at a podcast. I’ve heard about them but never knew what one was until today.

Luther:                        Well, welcome to the podcast.

Randy:                         There you go. Yeah!

Luther:                        What’s something that you wish customers knew about Cowtown?

Randy:                         I just hope to instill in every customer who comes in the door that we’re passionate about our business and we’re passionate about our customers. We look to make relationships with our customers — relational sales versus transactional sales. There’s always going be that transactional sale for the customer who comes in and just buys a pair of jeans because they happen to be there. But long-term relationships are what keep customers coming back and what keeps customers coming to your store rather than the next store.

                                    If I look at our pet food category — that’s one that everybody is in. You can buy pet food from a big-box pet store, from a grocery store, service station, Walmart, Costco or Canadian Tire. Everybody is in that market, yet it’s our fastest-growing sector of the business at Cowtown. I firmly believe it’s because we go the extra mile, we pay attention to our customers and we try to get to know our customers to the point of getting to know their dogs or their cats. When that customer walks in and he’s got Sparky on a leash and you acknowledge the dog and give the dog a treat, it’s like picking their kid up and giving them a hug. That pet is part of the family, and it really becomes personal.

Luther:                        Randy Lamontagne is the general manager of Cowtown, a retailer with seven locations in southern Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, Canada.

The following is an edited transcript of Tom Martin’s interview with Dr. Karina Horgan, associate research director for Alltech Life Sciences in Dunboyne, Ireland.

Tom:                        Editing genes to produce designer chickens. We’re talking about it with Dr. Karina Horgan, head of Alltech Life Sciences research in Europe, based in Dunboyne, Ireland. Thank you for being with us.

Karina:                       It’s a pleasure to be here.

Tom:                          Dr. Horgan, we’re going to be talking about CRISPR chicken. And to be clear for our listeners, not “crispy” chicken, but the new technology that enables us to create better chickens genetically. Give us some background on this gene-editing technology that’s making a mark in agriculture and poultry, in particular.

Karina:                       To begin with, we in molecular biology seem to like our acronyms. CRISPR means “clustered regular interspaced short palindromic repeats.” That doesn’t really make it any clearer for anybody, but this technology was discovered initially in bacteria. When viruses invaded bacteria, scientists took some of the DNA that the viruses shot into the bacterial cells, incorporated it into their genome in these short repeat sequences and then they store it as a memory. So, when the same virus attacks the bacteria again, they had to produce what they call guide RNAs, which directed a protein that cuts DNA to the invading viral DNA and just literally chopped it up.

I think in 2013, scientists began to use this in mammalian cells to edit genomes and create mutations within cells. It’s only been recently — I think last year (2016) — that the first publication of using CRISPR in poultry was actually published by a group in Japan.

Tom:                          Would you say the implications of this technology for agriculture are profound?

Karina:                       Absolutely, but it has its challenges as well, and people’s perception of genetically modified organisms or plants hasn’t been very good in the past. It’s on us, the ag scientists, to create more awareness of what we’re doing. In some jurisdictions, the perception of GMs or GMOs is that they’re only considered GMOs if you’re taking DNA from one species and putting it into a different species. Whereas if you’re creating a mutation within a species or taking DNA from that species into the same species, they’re not considered GMs or GMOs. In fact, the USDA has recently approved the use of CRISPR — they don’t consider it to be a GMO in non-browning mushrooms.

Tom:                          What changes are brought about by these genetic modifications?

Karina:                       They can vary vastly. You can create just a single mutation to stop a gene being expressed.  I think this is probably significant for the beef industry in that they’ll be able to change the expression level of a particular gene that stops increases in muscle mass. The other area — which I think is fascinating in terms of safer food and reducing infection in animals — you’ll be able to introduce a CRISPR system into poultry so that, for example with the bird flu virus, this CRISPR complex will be able to recognize the DNA from this virus and destroy it before it infects the bird. So, if you think in terms of the impact that bird flu is having on the poultry industry, to be able to deal with that almost straightaway will have a huge effect in terms of profitability for poultry producers.

Tom:                          Of course, there’s a great deal of concern these days about antibiotics. Does it have an implication there?

Karina:                       It potentially does in that if you have a bird that’s more resistant to disease, particularly salmonella or an E. coli infection, you won’t need to use antibiotics to treat those types of diseases. So, yes, definitely it would.

Tom:                          What would be the benefits to producers?

Karina:                       To producers, you would have healthier birds that wouldn’t be susceptible to disease.

 The other area that I find fascinating in this is the concept of using hens as bioreactors. Hens produce something like 300 eggs per year. I think there are 4 grams of egg white in every egg. Because there are so few proteins in the egg white, it’s easy to purify genetically modified protein in there. So, if you think in terms of the costs of some of the immunotherapies that people need at the moment, if you can get a hen to produce potentially 300 grams of this every year, the cost savings for humans and the medical industry is quite dramatic.  

Tom:                          Taking this from the coop to the kitchen table, what are the implications for human consumption?

Karina:                       Potentially, you’re looking at less fatty, healthier meat. Reducing issues with food safety in terms of the impact of Salmonella or Campylobacter. So, there’s less risk of food poisoning for people.

 If you’re able to produce a bird with less input — less water, less feed — you potentially have 10 percent more meat protein for people. Jack Bobo spoke about 9 million people dying annually from starvation. So, by increasing production or increasing chicken protein by 10 percent, that means 900,000 people who, potentially, wouldn’t starve.

Tom:                          A reduction in the waste of water is also critical, right? How has this CRISPR technology impacted the field of biology?

Karina:                       In terms of publication and the amount of funding that is going into CRISPR technology, it has risen dramatically in the last 12 to 24 months. What I see as exciting is that currently a lot of the animal models used to test drugs are mice-based. Mice are genetically quite different from humans. If you could create a model animal that was more similar to humans, where you could test new drug developments on diseases like Alzheimer’s, models that were more humanized, the success rate for development of new drugs should increase. At the moment, I don’t think there is any successful treatment for Alzheimer’s disease on the market, so these types of technologies and development of better disease models would help drug manufacturers to develop a more successful drug more quickly.

Tom:                          Fascinating. What kinds of market disruptions can we anticipate?

Karina:                       Another area I think is fascinating is the treatment of malaria and HIV. The hope with this technology is that you’d be able to alter immune cells so they wouldn’t be infected by HIV virus. If you think about the number of people who are killed every year by malaria, could we engineer a mosquito that doesn’t produce malaria or that doesn’t infect people with malaria? And in terms of illness of people in a population, that will be quite a shift in terms of how an insect, mosquitoes as one example, would affect that whole population. 

Tom:                          Those are some incredibly important diseases. What is the likelihood of reaching that level?

Karina:                       I think it’s very, very likely. From the reading and research I’ve done, the most difficult of the animals to engineer were actually the avian genome. A lot of the work has been done with insects in the past, and Drosophila, the fruit fly, would have been one of the model organisms for a lot of the genetic engineering. So, I think it’s definitely a strong possibility. 

Tom:                          Are you working with this technology in your labs in Dunboyne?

Karina:                       No. We don’t use it in Dunboyne. I guess the ethos of Alltech is “Alltech, naturally.” So, we try to steer clear of genetic modification of organisms, but it’s very important for us to keep abreast of what technology is out there and what’s happening in the poultry industry in particular. Why are we interested in CRISPR, then? Birds may be less resistant to disease, but they’ll still have to reach a market weight so that there is profitability for producers. That’s the nutrition aspect, and what Alltech specializes in, and it will still be important.

Tom:                          What ag-tech trends most excite you these days?

Karina:                       A lot of the work I do is looking at gut health in animals, and a lot of those are impacted by diseases like salmonella, E. coli, Campylobactersand some viruses.

Two years ago, a group here in the U.S. had developed a pig that was resistant to the PRRSV (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome) virus. I find it fascinating that they have done that much work with immunology to be able to identify what exactly is being affected by the viruses, what genes and tissues they target and whether you can alter the genome of the pig so that it doesn’t get infected by it. I think it’s absolutely fascinating.

Tom:                          It is fascinating. What about your work do you enjoy most?

Karina:                       No two days are the same. That’s the beauty of research and in working at Alltech, too — you’ve heard (Alltech president and founder) Dr. Pearse Lyons say they move fast with everything they do. At the moment, I’m working on gut health, but I also do some work with yeast. I’m also starting a project with nematodes. It’s quite diverse. You never get to sit still with any one project — it’s constantly moving. That’s one of the beauties of working in Alltech for sure.

Tom:                          Dr. Karina Horgan, head of Alltech Life Sciences research in Europe. Thank you so much.

Karina:                       Oh, you’re very welcome. It’s a pleasure.

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

An interview with Ramez Naam

The following is an edited transcript of our interview with Ramez Naam, co-chair for energy and environment at Singularity University.

To listen to our entire conversation with Ramez, click on the player below:

I don’t want to dwell on the fact that you are a science fiction writer, but I think that’s kind of cool that science fiction predicts science sometimes, and I wonder if maybe that was an inspiration for you? If, like, some of the things you thought about as a science fiction writer, you are now working to try to make reality?

I wish I had that story. Science fiction is amazing and it’s amazingly fun. It does provoke things. My science fiction and my speaking and writing on energy and food are actually pretty distinct, to be honest. But, they both come from the same thing, which is a deep curiosity about the future.

Here we are in the coal state of Kentucky, and there are definitely still some myths here about solar energy and how expensive it is and how doable it is to replace fossil fuels. I think that is probably true throughout a lot of the U.S. still. Can you comment on what the actual state of affairs is and what the potential is for solar energy?

I can’t blame people for doubting what solar or wind can do because the world has changed so fast. When I was born, a solar panel cost $100 per watt of power. Now, it’s less than 50 cents per watt of power, so that plunge in price is really the big story.

A new coal plant costs about seven-and-a-half cents per kilo-watt hour. In Los Angeles, they now have a new solar plant at three-and-a-half cents per kilowatt hour. In Dubai, oil capital of the world, they signed a deal for solar at less than three cents per kilo-watt hour. Those are all sunny places, sunnier than Kentucky is, but the changes are coming.

The price of technology always comes down. Just like your iPhone is so much cheaper than the mainframe computer that has the same power, solar follows that same trajectory, so it’s now kind of inevitable.

Since technology has ramped up so fast and prices have come down, there still seems to be a thought by some people that we need some sort of silver bullet technology. Do you feel like we have everything we need, or we have all the tools we need now, or we just need to start implementing them faster?

That’s what Bill Gates, who I used to work for, talks about — the need for an energy miracle or energy breakthroughs — but I would say the cost of solar has come down by a factor of five in the last five years, an 80 percent price decline. That’s a miracle already, that’s a breakthrough, but it’s not any one scientific breakthrough. It’s just the continual progress of technology.

If there is one area we want more of that, it’s in energy storage. With batteries, you can use them overnight, but batteries have dropped in price by a factor of five in the last five years, too, and they are going to keep on dropping. I wouldn’t say we are going to deploy a lot of technology that we have now, or rather we are going to, and that’s going to lead to more research and further dropping of prices.

Another big area of study for you is agriculture and land use; can you tell us a little bit about what you think our goals should be there?

If you look at how we, humanity, have changed the planet, the number one way we have changed the planet is through agriculture and fishing. Half of the world’s forests are gone, and almost all of that is for agriculture. A third of the land area of the planet is used to grow food or graze animals.

We have to almost double the amount of food we produce in the next 40 years or so. It’s all about more yield. It’s about growing more food on the same land or less land. That’s the only way we can make it through the challenge of the next century of more people eating richer diets, eating more meat without chopping down all the world for us. That’s what it’s all about to me: higher intensity agriculture and more food out of that same acre.

What are some of the key technologies that you think will help us do that?

There is every sort of technology. We have better seeds, we have high-tech equipment that allows us to plant better, more precise irrigation, better applications of fertilizer and technology that scans the field and tells you where you need to apply fertilizer. Alltech has done an awful lot with animal feed that allows you to grow healthier animals that have better nutrition, so all of those play a role.

Can you tell me a little bit about Singularity University and the program there and your role in it?

I am the co-chair for energy and environment at Singularity University. Singularity University is really a think tank that does continuing education. We take executives and people in government and we give them a week of bombarding them with information about the cutting edge of technology. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics — and I talk about energy.

That sounds like a fantastic program. It’s great that you are trying to reach some of the people that need that information the most and that can put it to the best use. Are they all willing, or do you have to go out and draft them sometimes?

We are oversubscribed. There is a waiting list for every one of our programs because people see that technology is changing fast and if they want to survive and thrive in their company and in their government, they need to be abreast as to what’s going on.

Ramez Naam spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference 2016.To hear more talks from the conference, sign up for the Alltech Ideas Lab. For access, click on the button below.