Newsletter No. 41 – August, 2006
1. Web Site Changes
2. New Director
3. Optimising Nutrients
4. Daryl Holle
5. South African Avian Influenza Update
6. Contributions
Supplement: Nutrient recycling on humanity's menu
1. Web Site Changes
The time your directors spend to maintain the WOA is all donated time. Your directors spend this time because we are aware of the challenges facing our industry and the requirement of members for information and communication.
Daryl Holle has carried out the maintenance of our web site for the past few years and has asked to be relieved of the duty, as he is simply too busy. Can we all thank Daryl for maintaining the site for so long?
This provides an opportunity for making changes. Using the members email list, can we invite thoughts from our members and develop discussion on content that our members would find helpful or believe would be beneficial to attracting new members and increased communication.
2. New Director
There have been no nominations for directors. However, you directors have invited Bert Rayner to become a director to replace Dessi Daskalova who resigned last year, as she was unable to devote the time required. We would all like to thank Dessi for her hard work during her time serving as a director and welcome Bert.
3. Optimising Nutrients
Bert Rayner has submitted an article entitled “Nutrient Recycling on Humanity’s Menu”. The article was written by Julian Cribb, adjunct professor of science communication at the University of Technology, Sydney. Julian discusses the challenges ahead to feed the increasing populations in our throw away society and focusing particularly on Nutrients that are wasted. The article is talking about Australia in particular, the points he raises are common in many countries. Examples given are:
The writer calculates that if those estimates are sound, in theory it is possible to feed an extra 30 million to 60 million people on an Australian diet with the nutrients they presently chuck into landfills and the ocean.
He highlights the fact that recent drought has made Australians more conscious of the need to be sparing in the use of water, but there is hardly public discussion of reusing that which supports all life: nutrients. The full article is published as a supplement to this newsletter.
We will discuss the issues of optimising nutrients as it affects livestock production, with particular focus on Ostrich.
Recent developments in livestock production nutrition have changed from simply defining nutritional adequacy “as freedom from disease”. Increased understanding of the role of micronutrients in livestock rations has enabled livestock to utilise the nutrients in their rations far more efficiently. This optimisation has enabled the animals to grow faster, increase egg, meat or milk production for the same weight of feed intake. In the case of meat production, reduced feed intake is possible through the improved conversion rate of feed to meat and the ability to slaughter at significantly younger ages, therefore requiring fewer ingredients to achieve increased production.
This technology has enabled livestock producers to become increasingly efficient, reduce their costs and increase their profits. The result is better use of the available nutrients in rations and low cost food.
Quote: By defining adequacy simply as freedom from clinical deficiency signs, this approach sets its sights dangerously low. It can be likened to a producer who concentrates on a breakeven return when real profits are possible. …..
Vitamins are nutrients that regulate the biochemical reactions by which energy and protein are used for health, growth, feed conversion and reproduction. Without vitamins, these biochemical reactions will not occur, and the nutrients present in the feed will not be properly utilized. If the amount of any vitamin in the diet is inadequate to meet the daily requirements of an animal, clinical deficiency signs or disorders due to impairment of these biochemical reactions may occur. The effects of marginal inadequacies will be less obvious, but will include less than optimum health and performance. end quote
[source: Optimum Vitamin Nutrition for Optimum Animal Health and Performance http://www.dsm.com/en_US/html/dnpus/an_opt_vit_nutrition.htm]
Past newsletters have discussed the potential of ostrich to become as efficient as pig and poultry as a provider of low cost meat protein. In the light of the discussion on making better use of available nutrients, our industry needs to be adopting these techniques on a global scale. Ostrich have the ability to improve significantly the utilisation of available nutrients than is currently the norm.
Optimisation of available nutrients brings about increased production, reproduction and profitability. In the light of this particular discussion, should the industry continue down the route of inefficient production and low profitability?
4. Daryl Holle
Improved nutrient efficiencies bring about increased egg production, improved meat yields and younger slaughter.
The International ostrich industry first became aware of the work of Daryl Holle at the end of 1996 with the introduction of the Internet. Early in 1997, we were reading the farmer benchmark trials that reported bird weights of 95kgs at 7 months (213 days) and feed conversion at 2.56:1. Those same birds averaged 145kgs Liveweight with feed conversion from day old to 12 months (365 days) of 3.94:1, see table 1.
Table 1 - Blue Mountain Farmer Benchmark Weight Gain Trial 1996/1997
[Source: Potential Meat Yield of Ostrich – Blue Mountain Bulletin No. 81
http://www.blue-mountain.net/bulletin/bull81.htm]
The important factor here is that in 1997 very little meaningful information was available. In that environment a key factor that excited me to this particular trial was the fact that each month reported with a clear confidence that the outcome was a forgone conclusion and the field trial was simply a process to document the results and provide our industry with meaningful benchmark figures.
Another study shortly after compared birds fed exactly the same rations, but one was pelleted and the other was fed ground, Figure 1. Note the liveweights of 131kgs and 124kgs and the age of just 300 days.
Figure 1 - Blue Mountain Ground vs Pelleted Field Trial - 1997
[Source: “Ground v Pelleted Field Trial - http://www.blue-mountain.net/feed/p0001987.htm]
As a small producer operating in South Africa I have personally proven and documented (Influences of Ostrich Skin Quality . . . Age or Nutrition? – Blue Mountain Bulletin No. 79) that skins produced from birds perceived as too young are very acceptable when the birds are produced according to the systems developed by Daryl Holle. Those same birds immediately recorded 50% average increase in meat yield over current industry averages and that was before any genetic development program had been put in place.
This proves the excellent feed efficiency of ostrich when raised under the right management conditions, with tremendous improvements achievable as the industry develops the genetic base through natural selection. Daryl Holle has proven Ostrich to have the potential to be as feed efficient or better than Pigs and Poultry.
This type of livestock production technology is required to enable Ostrich to develop into a viable industry. Without it, each country continues to struggle trying to build a viable industry and most will never reach that goal as profitable productivity is missing from the equation.
5. South African Avian Influenza Update
The most recent news reports infection on a neighbouring farm to the initial outbreak and more than 8,000 birds culled. This farm is the farm that supplied the chick breeder that had the initial outbreak. The cull included birds of all ages including 700 breeders. It emphasises again the importance of very strict bio-security.
This has not affected the current meat export ban, which remains in place for just the two zones.
The most recent posting by the OIE can be found at http://www.oie.int/eng/info/hebdo/AIS_10.HTM#Sec2 . This report also has links to the previous outbreak.
6. Contributions
As always, we ask for contributions. Please let us know what activity is happening in your area or any interesting articles that are published in your region.
Any comments or suggestions, please post either to the members list [email protected] or Craig at [email protected]
Ask not only what the WOA can do for you but also what you can do for the WOA.
Supplement:
Nutrient recycling on humanity's menu
THE ability of humanity to feed itself through the steepest increase in food demand in history lies in something most communities throw away: nutrients.
In the next 40 years, according to the UN Environment Program, world food output must rise 110 per cent to meet the demands of population growth and improving diets in places such as China, India and Latin America.
This will require more food yearly than has so far been produced in the whole of history. Yet ponder the following of Australia's situation:
* Of all the nutrients applied on our farms, up to half are wasted, in that they do not go to crops or pastures but are lost to soil lock-up, weeds, erosion, leaching or run-off.
* The industry that processes our food spends $750 million a year just to dispose of its waste.
* One-third to one-half of all the food that enters our shops, supermarkets, restaurants and homes is thrown away.
* Our cities waste 97 per cent of their sewage effluent and its nutrients.
If these estimates are sound, in theory it is possible to feed an extra 30 million to 60 million people on an Australian diet with the nutrients we presently chuck into landfills and the ocean.
Recent drought has made Australians more conscious of the need to be sparing in our use of water, but there is hardly public discussion of reusing that which supports all life: nutrients.
We are the most prodigal generation there has been. Our great-grandparents, who carefully forked their compost heaps and manured their fields, would consider a society that buys new nutrients each year, then throws them away, to have lost its reason.
The world supply of nutrients is not yet critical, so why worry? In the past 30 years, the price of fertiliser has risen by an average 1000 per cent: about twice the rate of oil price increases.
What's going to happen in the next 40 years when world food output has to more than double?
Nutrients may become expensive and even scarce commodities, especially as some of them are being used to grow transport fuels and therefore replace oil.
Australia has an excellent record in learning to manage nutrients on farms. The dairy industry in particular has done much pioneering work on the nutrient cycle to minimise the loss of nutrients down the creek.
CSIRO has done good work on the reuse of sewage nutrients to grow things, and Melbourne Water likewise, yet most of our nutrients are still trashed.
Work on recycling food waste from processing, retailing or end consumers has hardly begun.
US environmental scientist Peter Raven recently remarked that humans use or destroy 45 per cent of all terrestrial bioproductivity.
If he's even close to right, there is going to be colossal demand for nutrients in the coming decades.
Australia, a lean and hungry continent, could distinguish itself by becoming the first nation to seriously attempt to close the nutrient loop, to reuse our nutrients again and again before they finally make their way to the deep ocean.
Some ways we could do this:
* A national strategy for capturing and recycling nutrients in urban sewage treatment plants into fertilisers and soil amendments.
* A campaign to recycle or compost waste food in the catering industry and homes and a ban on sending food to landfill.
* The development of algae farms and other advanced bioprocessing techniques for reprocessing waste into fertilisers, biofuels, stockfeed, fine chemicals, bioplastics and so on.
* Wider on-farm use of perennial crops, deep-rooted crops, agroforestry and strip-farming techniques to intercept nutrients in groundwater and recycle them into timber, particle board, fruit, charcoal, flowers, bio-pharmaceuticals, fodder and stockfeed, electricity and biofuels.
* Use of instream aquaculture and algae culture to harvest nutrients in rivers, reservoirs and lagoons.
* The creation of farmable wetlands to harvest nutrients from surface run-off and convert them to aquatic crops of economic value.
* Design standards for farms, roads, buildings, urban developments and so on that minimise nutrient losses and allow for capture and reuse.
* Strategies for remobilising or phyto-mining nutrients trapped in aquatic sediments.
* Bio-farming using tailored suites of soil micro-flora and micro-fauna to mobilise trapped nutrients and increase their availability to crops and pastures.
* Harvesting of algal blooms in lagoons and estuaries and reprocessing them.
* Breeding of less nutrient-dependent crop and pasture cultivars.
* Research into organic farming methods to identify those with proven potential to conserve, recycle and mobilise nutrients.
* Development of extensive marine grazing systems that enable sustainable wild harvest of fish, shellfish and algae inshore to recapture nutrients.
* Public education on the importance of nutrient conservation.
Above all, we need a national scientific plan and an attitudinal shift from our culture of waste. We recycle aluminium cans, steel cars, plastic containers, glass and paper. Why do we hardly reuse nutrients? To do so would undoubtedly save and make money. The additional food exports alone could earn an extra $25 billion to $50 billion a year.
There is an epic scientific challenge in this and Australian scientists - strong in agriculture, soil science, biotechnology and natural resource management - are well equipped to tackle it.
Solve the challenge of nutrient reuse and Australia may just help humanity pass the population peak into a managed decline instead of the catastrophic collapse that is the usual fate of species whose populations have outrun their resources.
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