Popular Panga

We have a great food programme on the Dutch television - "The food diggers CIA". The tv hosts go on a hunt to find out w here a certain product comes from, what is in it and what the claims on the labels mean? During the last episode, they delved into the next big thing in aquaculture: Pangasius!
25 Aug 2008 - 0 comment(s) - Read more »

Organic or Inorganic – does it really matter

Over the last two centuries, increased scientific understanding, technological innovations, and social mobility changed the face of global agriculture. This made larger scale farming more efficient although not everyone seems to have accepted the societal changes, and there were calls for a return to the less efficient preindustrial farming methods.
05 Aug 2008 - 19 comment(s) - Read more »

Uruguay, country for sale

Changing to soybeans transforms a landscape from fields with a large number of different crops into a monoculture. Also the political landscape in a country can alter and even the ownership of a country can be threatened through the cultivation of soybeans. Such a scenario is happening in Uruguay at this very moment.
24 Jul 2008 - 1 comment(s) - Read more »

Animal friendly feeding

Today's animal production is changing. Consumers are increasingly aware of the process of food production, which is directly reflected back in the policies that are formulated by the agricultural ministers. Animal welfare is one of those topics that are of high public concern and political relevance.
08 Jul 2008 - 8 comment(s) - Read more »

Automation kills product quality

Wow!! Did I get generate some conversation from my first automation blog,  or what? I was especially glad to see a K-Stater (Go Wildcats!!!) launch into the fray!
26 Jun 2008 - 10 comment(s) - Read more »

"Yes, we beat France and Italy. What happened with Orange?"

It is not the individual skills that determine the quality of the final outcome, but the collaboration and skilled use each individual that leads to an optimum result. It is like with soccer. One can have fantastic players that perform outstanding on the international platform, but if they cannot perform together as a team the results will be likewise. A similar move is to be developed in the feed industry on the information technology level, but is the industry ready?
16 Jun 2008 - 4 comment(s) - Read more »

Resistance against performance enhancers

Developing nations cannot afford a total ban against traditional animal performance enhancers. For livestock producers in developing countries to stay competitive, their production of animal derived food products needs to stay competitive, especially since cheaper and often-subsidised imported products are becoming more of an economic threat to these producers.
03 Jun 2008 - 3 comment(s) - Read more »

Collaboration / Supply Chains / Optimization

Recently I sat with a gentleman who drew an agriculture value chain having to do with optimizing profits for every contributor. Fascinating! The information required to do this however, was incredibly expensive to develop, coordinate, and put into a model. As you can imagine, the accuracy, the amount of data, and the assumptions also make the model somewhat suspect.
19 May 2008 - 1 comment(s) - Read more »

Focus on sustainable agriculture

My previous blog "Going organic is a dead-end street" received a lot of comments, mostly telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. However, the FAO backs my conclusion.
29 Apr 2008 - 7 comment(s) - Read more »

Getting more out of feed!!

With the pressure of elevated feed prices, the search is on to remain profitable in the animal production industry. This all has to do with being more efficient! We can look at the animal itself, and focus on animals that are able to get more animal protein out of feed, have a higher feed intake, can better digest the feed etc. But it is better to focus on the feed itself by making the ingredients more efficient and work better in the animal.
17 Apr 2008 - 8 comment(s) - Read more »