Feed crops for Feed or Fuel?

Feed crops for Feed or Fuel?

Sky-high prices Low availability Large amount of by-products

How to deal with an unpredictable market?

Text by Jean Broers, production manager BESTMIX

Unpredictable market: Today’s energy market forces feed compounders to be creative. Prices of available resources change rapidly while the availability of quality feed crops is unstable. Feed companies have to evaluate alternative sources to replace traditional feed crops. Large amounts of low price by-products come available on the market. How do feed companies deal with this situation? And how does the farmer react?
Now, more than ever, feed compounders and farmers are forced to close co-operation to deal with this new era.

Available tools for the compounder: The compounder needs a tool to rapidly evaluate and adapt alternative ingredients when he runs short of traditional feed crops. The BESTMIX ‘Multiblend ingredient allocator’ provides a quick and clear answer. It immediately shows the change in the ingredient consumption in one single plant or multiple distributed plants when prices or availability of resources change. Moreover, this tool guarantees the most efficient use of the available stock quantities. The parametrics give a direct insight in the complex relations between the scarce ingredients and their alternatives, regardless of the physical locations of the available resources.

Figure 1

The all in one view of the multi-site ingredient allocator gives very detailed information; the overall usage, the breakdown per plant and even the break down per individual compound.

This tool helps you find alternatives when there is a shortage of ingredients. In this example this is maize. The details show the consequences in every single compound. Based on the comparison with the production, it is possible to detect new logistical problems.

Figure 2

The global parametrics give a direct insight in the ingredient allocation of competitive ingredients. See figure 2. The effect of the price change of maize on the alternative ingredients is immediately clear.

Available tools for the advisor: In this current market situation, the salesman needs more than just a product catalogue, a pricelist and his order book. There are no more standard situations anymore. The farmer could reside on a place where quite some feed crops are moved to the bio fuel.

It is possible that he disposes of a big lot of by-products in his area. Perhaps he considers to sell his cereals and to buy by-products or other alternatives instead. What is the optimal situation for the farmer? What are the needs of his herd? What are the requirements for the different production groups? A lot of questions to answer!

In this case, Adifo’s ‘Ration balancer and optimization’ is the best tool for the advisor. Based on the selected intake model, the nutritional requirements and the available roughages and cereals, the ‘Ration balancer and optimization’ gives the optimal ration for every production unit.

The “Ration balancer and optimizer” tool makes it possible to evaluate every alternative farmer ingredient. Whether the herd is fed with concentrate feeders or TMR, the balancer and optimizer finds the best solution for every production level.

Join forces to get the best out of the market: The best possible solution is only possible when farmer and compounder work together as real partners. In this case they fully benefit from our ‘Integrated Feed and Ration Optimization’ tool. This approach guarantees the most optimal solution for the farmer. He gets the cheapest possible ration that fulfills all the physical and biological requirements of his herd. The compounder delivers the concentrate that fits this specific situation. This way, the farmer maximizes his profits by using the cheaper by-products and the compounder delivers the high-quality concentrate, based on the availability of the alternative resources.

The compounds or concentrates that are used in the ration balancer can be offered as a standard or a special mix.

In this case, the composition of the special mix will be optimized, using the requirements and the ingredients of the ration and the local constraints of the concentrate at the same time. This way the result will be the most optimal solution for both parties: the farmer and the compounder.

BESTMIX is based on modern, proven technology and more than 30 years of experience in feed formulation software.

Adifo is a specialized software company, guiding global feed companies through the competitive market.

If you want to know more, please check www.feedformulation.com

Or contact us.

Author: Bea Van Deynse Updated: 11.07.2007 11:38