Feed supplement trends changing
ADM, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors and food ingredient providers, is selling a range of its products to Taranaki dairy farmers.
‘‘This season, golden dried distillers’ grain and corn gluten feed pellets, both of which are sourced from the USA, have proven popular,’’ says Ross Bowmar, the general manager of ADM New Zealand.
Product, he says, is either shipped to the region through Port Taranaki or trucked by road from Tauranga.
ADM also has a national product offering with stores in Tauranga, Timaru and Bluff.
Over the last six years the company has been importing an extensive range of products to New Zealand, which besides those already mentioned, include palm kernel, tapioca, canola meal, soy hull pellets and soybean meal.
ADM, an acronym for Archer Daniels Midland Company, has its global headquarters in Chicago, USA, and has been operating for more than a century.
‘‘Today, ADM is one of the world’s largest agricultural processors and food ingredient providers with approximately 40,000 employees serving customers in nearly 200 companies,’’ says Bowmar.
‘‘The company has a global value chain which includes approximately 450 crop procurement locations; more than 330 food and feed ingredient manufacturing facilities and 62 innovation centres.’’
With Fonterra carefully monitoring farm fat evaluation index (FEI) levels, there has been a tendency for many dairy farmers, including those in Taranaki, to move to blended feed and reduce the usage of straight PKE, says Bowmar.
‘‘FEI is a measure of the fatty acid profile of milk, and palm kernel can influence that profile. As such, this has limited the use of PKE for some farmers.’’
ADM’s product range is sourced world-wide from countries which include Malaysia, Indonesia, USA, Thailand, Australia, and South America.
In Taranaki, as elsewhere, they are often blended with other supplementary feed products.
Commenting on changing trends within the dairy industry, Bowmar says there is an increasing focus among farmer clients on marginal revenue versus the marginal cost of supplementary feeding.
‘‘This leads to a focus on the nutritional requirements of cows as opposed to bulk feeding.
‘‘This in turn leads to the use of more blends and a greater understanding around the benefits of supplementary feed to farming systems,’’ he says.
‘Today, ADM is one of the world’s largest agricultural processors and food ingredient providers with approximately 40,000 employees serving customers in nearly 200 companies.’