By United Soyabean Board
Swine nutritionist points to amino acids, energy as opportunities
Animals – primarily poultry and swine – eat nearly 97 percent of the meal from your soybeans. What is it about the primary component in your soybeans that keeps the animal agriculture industry’s demand so high? In this Q&A with Ken Bryant, swine nutritionist with Cargill Animal Nutrition, learn about why soybean meal provides so many benefits to animals and how their demand brings value back to you.
Q: Why is soybean meal such a good feed ingredients for animal agriculture?
A: It’s a highly concentrated, very digestible amino acid source for monogastric animals. It contains 46 to 48 percent protein and a very nice balance of amino acids as related to the requirements of non-ruminant animals.
Q: Why are amino acids important?
A: Amino acids all play a part in the end product being produced, such as making muscle for meat. But the final usage and final value from a formulator’s standpoint would be the balance of the key amino acids.
Q: What plays into your decision-making process on which feed ingredients to use in a ration?
A: Economics is a driver. We set the amino-acid specifications for the diet, then look at the various feedstuffs available and how they would meet that requirement. Amino acids and energy are our key ones. The cost of the soy product relative to its nutrient content would determine how it would rank in the formulation. If you could have a higher-energy soybean meal, it would give it more value in the computer matrix. Or if you could have a soybean product higher in one of those key amino acids.
Q: What’s the relationship between soybean quality and value?
A: We understand that soybean meal is not soybean meal is not soybean meal. It can vary, and a number of different factors cause the composition to change. But our quality-control programs are designed around understanding and identifying what we’re buying to make sure we use it correctly in the formulas and that we’re purchasing it at the right value.
Q: Are higher-quality soybeans worth more to the farmer?
A: Absolutely it would be. But we have to be able to identify that it has those characteristics, we have to be able to follow it through the chain and we’ve got to get it documented to the end user. But, yes, if the farmer could produce a bean that results in a better, denser end product, it would be of higher value to them. It would be of higher value to us and therefore I would speculate that it would be of higher value to the farmer.
Q: Against which other feed ingredients is soybean meal competing for space in rations?
A: Even though DDGS is between 24 and 27 percent protein, it lacks some of the key amino acids we look for. But DDGS have still hurt soybean meal demand because even if they’re deficient in a certain amino acid, we can add a synthetic amino acid and still pay less than soybean meal. But soybean meal offers a better balance of amino acids than most any protein. When you look at a pig, corn and soy combined give us the most ideal balance.
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