French farmers: In control of whole production chain

The summer holidays are over and I have left the great region Gers en Gasconge in France - a region that plays an important role in French agricultural production of cattle, corn, sunflowers but especially Foie Gras.
06 Sep 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

SPACE: French animal production, trends and 2010 forecasts

The annual French agricultural show SPACE is coming up in September. This is why AllAboutFeed zooms in on the situation in France. Except for sheep, production prices in France for all animals have decreased in 2009. On average, agricultural incomes dropped by 30.4% for French professional farms, the worst situation being registered for dairy farmers (-49.5% income).
27 Aug 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

Technology obsolescence – Are you at risk?

Look at your critical business applications and the hardware that they reside on. Are you using the latest version of your ERP system? Are your servers and workstations up to date? What operating systems and databases are you running? What happens if your system goes down?
17 Aug 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

Blame the wheat speculators

Many environmental factors can reduce agriculture productivity, but drought is by far the most damaging. It is also a great tool for speculators to disturb natural supply and demand mechanisms by trying to manipulate prices.
11 Aug 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

Plankton for sustainable aquaculture

The world is full of challenges. And maybe that’s what makes it so interesting. One that continually faces my industry – aquaculture – is one of sustainability.
04 Aug 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

South Africa's BSE-free rating steps still not implemented

Sad to say that more than 7 years after the first constructive debates took place to implement firm steps to have South Africa rated a BSE-free country, industry partners of the Livestock and Animal Feed Industry Forum (LAFIF) under the auspices of the SA Animal Feed Manufacturers’ Association (AFMA) once again had to get together at a recent BSE workshop to debate the exact same issues as in 2003.
12 Jul 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

Break down the information barriers

Are the Information Systems in your organization compartmentalized? Are nutritionists the only people using formulation and nutrient data? Are the grain merchandisers the only ones using the commodity trading and tracking system and are the mill operators the only users with access to the automated batching system data?
12 May 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

No antibiotics: Back to the Middle Ages

The rise of bacterial resistance is threatening because hardly any new antibiotic is being developed nowadays. The era of infectious diseases is behind us and no further efforts in tracing new bactericidal drugs are being made.
27 Apr 2010 - 2 comment(s) - Read more »

“Can that satellite look into your barn…”

Reading the weekly update of Allaboutfeed, an article about the EU Harvest 2010 caught my attention.
26 Apr 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

Cartagena Protocol - effect on trade and maize price

There are diverging views among people, industries and Governments of the actual or potential risks and benefits that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and products thereof can bring about.
07 Apr 2010 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »