28 April 2022 – Animal agriculture has quite the sustainability challenge on its hands. The industry is being tasked with lessening its environmental impact, while, at the same time, boosting production to feed a growing global population and maintain profitability.
Finding ways to do more with less is key to navigating this challenge. This means extracting as much value as possible from every input in the livestock production process and identifying and replacing wasteful ones with more efficient and sustainable alternatives.
According to Adriano Marcon, the President of Cargill Animal Nutrition, his organization understands the enormity of this task very well and has now further sharpened its sustainability strategy to help the industry take it on successfully. From the use of more sustainable ingredients in animal feed to employing digital technologies to unlock production efficiencies, the company is leveraging its presence in various areas of the animal and feed production chains to provide customers with a comprehensive toolbox of solutions that can further their sustainability goals.
In the following Industry Perspectives interview, Mr. Marcon talks to us about what Cargill Animal Nutrition’s renewed focus on sustainability entails and dives a little deeper into the company’s ambitions in precision nutrition and digital farming in the accompanying episode of Feedinfo’s Feed for Thought podcast.
Click play below to listen or download the episode.
[Feedinfo] Cargill Animal Nutrition already has a number of solutions out there that can help farmers advance their sustainability initiatives. So, why the renewed focus on this topic? What has changed in the way that that you are now approaching your sustainability strategy?
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Adriano Marcon |
[Adriano Marcon] Cargill Animal Nutrition views sustainability as both a responsibility and an opportunity, which is why it remains a top priority for us. We are looking at sustainability in a more holistic manner, however, leveraging interconnected distinctive capabilities, such as sustainable ingredients, precision animal nutrition, and digital farming, to enable our customer’s sustainability goals. For example, Cargill Animal Nutrition plays an important role in helping farmer-customers reduce their animal protein production’s carbon intensity. We look at this challenge holistically: improving feed conversion rates, optimizing animal health, and innovating new additives and nutrition solutions that reduce methane and nitrogen emissions. |
By improving feed conversion rates and by seeking zero nutrient waste with our nutrition technologies, Cargill Animal Nutrition is helping producers do more with less as they become more sustainable and resilient in the face of climate change.
Cargill sits at the heart of the supply chain which allows us to deeply understand sustainability value chain issues and uniquely shapes our holistic approach and ability to solve sustainability challenges for our customers.
[Feedinfo] How are you planning on leveraging your relationships with partners to deliver on this renewed strategy?
[Adriano Marcon] We partner closely with customers to provide advice and offer solutions that will lower greenhouse gas emissions, protect land and water, enhance farmer livelihoods, and make food more affordable for all, while increasing animal productivity and welfare. Partnerships are key to helping us deliver on this strategy.
For example, we have a strategic partnership with InnovaFeed to bring sustainable, novel feed options to the animal nutrition industry, starting with the use of oil derived from insects in swine feed. This was initiated three years ago, and it aims to scale up the use of insect ingredients in animal feed to build more sustainable and effective value chains.
Also, last June, Cargill and ZELP (Zero Emission Livestock Project) announced a partnership to bring an innovative solution in Western Europe to reduce methane emissions, combining technology in methane oxidation and data processing to minimize the environmental impact of dairy production while improving animal welfare. Using smart technology, ZELP developed a cattle wearable, which easily attaches to regular halters, and acts outside of the cow to capture the methane as it is released from the nose and mouth of the animal and oxidizes the methane to carbon dioxide and water.
And then in October 2021 we announced an extended partnership with BASF to develop and market innovative enzyme-based solutions for the animal feed industry. By combining our scientific excellence and animal nutrition expertise, we will more quickly advance the feed industry efforts around greater nutrient absorption through enzymes that promote animal wellbeing and environmental protection.
Lastly, we have teamed up with digital technology enablement firm, Knex, to develop ‘Birdoo,’ which combines hands-free, real-time flock insights with predictive modeled data using artificial intelligence (AI). This helps producers make informed decisions quicker while supporting their bottom lines through better animal health and well-being and better uniformity and performance of their flocks. Through use of this technology, broiler producers are better able to control nutrition and predict outputs, which will reduce processing downtime, saving labor costs and energy. With real-time bird bodyweight tracking, we can positively impact animal and human welfare as the safety risks associated with manual weighing are eliminated.
[Feedinfo] Looking at the work with InnovaFeed and BASF, do you think nutrition’s role in realizing animal agriculture’s sustainability efforts is well understood by the industry? Where do you think more education needs to be done?
[Adriano Marcon] Today, there is not a good understanding of how nutrition is integral to sustainability, as well as food affordability. In Cargill Animal Nutrition we challenge ourselves every day to make sustainable ingredients practical and affordable in our formulations. By sourcing new raw materials and creating new, innovative feeds, we are continually working to do more with fewer resources. We leverage our deep nutritional knowledge to maximize nutrient absorption and utilization of raw materials and ingredients matching nutrient supply with animal requirements for the best economic output. We recognize that sustainability is a critical part of customer operations, and our customers face increased complexity as they balance animal health and welfare, performance, and business economics while reducing their environmental footprint. It is our mission to partner with customers to uncover nutrition’s power to do more with less to feed the world and protect the planet.
[Feedinfo] Talking about sustainability and business economics, feed raw material prices are inching higher and higher, presenting quite the challenge for farmers. How is Cargill Animal Nutrition helping them keep their operations profitable and, at the same time, sustainable?
[Adriano Marcon] Customer success is at the forefront of everything we do at Cargill Animal Nutrition. In this volatile market, as trusted business partners we are working with our customers to help mitigate risk and identify tailored solutions that may result in changes in feed formulation using alternative ingredients. Leveraging Cargill’s core nutritional knowledge and livestock nutrition digital scenario planning tools, such as Panorama and MAXTM, we want to empower customers to manage their operation and design feed to optimize margins and minimize loss while providing stability and consistency as we protect the feed supply chain.
As ingredient disruptions occur, Cargill nutritionists are advising on the use of enzymes and additives to adjust formulas to optimize cost. Enzymes are known to increase digestibility which results in fewer excretions of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen into the environment. This is a key factor to improve animal production using less resources therefore reducing the carbon footprint. Furthermore, enzymes are known to have positive implications on gut health, litter quality and animal welfare in general.
As more alternative ingredients come into play, dynamic nutrition, or dynamic formulation, is critical in allowing us to understand and quantify the nutrient profile of an ingredient in the face of other ingredients in a diet. The interaction of ingredients can alter nutrient availability. The understanding of these interactions and incorporating/compensating for changes (interference, augmentation) in formulation in an iterative way is requisite for zero waste. At Cargill, we target zero nutrient waste and help customers identify new feed ingredients with high energy sources, leveraging Cargill’s Nutrition System, to deliver solutions that address critical sustainability and productivity challenges for our customers.
Sustainable ingredients that drive a circular economy are also key, whereby a waste stream in one industry is used by another. In our North America business for example, we are sourcing a bakery by-product to replace vegetable oil in animal feed. This enables doing more with fewer resources.
[Feedinfo] Let’s zoom in on this zero nutrient waste target. Do you think 100% nutrient utilization in animal nutrition is achievable? What role is Cargill Animal Nutrition playing here to make this a reality?
[Adriano Marcon] Through precision animal nutrition, we are driving towards 100% nutrient utilization. Is 100% nutrient utilization possible? Maybe not, but we are passionate about leveraging our deep nutritional knowledge to deliver solutions and provide customized formulations, maximize nutrient absorption and utilization of raw materials and ingredients, and minimize waste – keeping cleaner air, soil, and water top of mind.
Cargill’s Nutrition System (CNS), which I mentioned earlier, combines our ingredient and raw materials nutrient supply knowledge with our deep understanding of an animal’s nutrient demands to offer customers real-time nutrient analysis of feed ingredients and global ingredient sourcing data. CNS allows for precise feed formulations tailored to variables like species, climate, geography, business goals, nutrient requirements, and local ingredient costs, resulting in improved performance predictability and consistent economic returns.
Cargill Animal Nutrition has been developing and expanding CNS for over 15 years. We run over 3 million samples per year on ingredients to balance nutrient supply with animal nutrient demand. This drives maximum bio-efficacy of our ingredients with a goal of 100% nutrient utilization – and zero nutrient waste. We do extensive research to understand how this works with different animals at different life stages as demonstrated by the nearly 225 research animal trials conducted last year.
[Feedinfo] I think this leads nicely into digital farming technologies and where they fall in your plans to further animal ag’s sustainability efforts. Where is the industry currently in the adoption of these tools, like Birdoo that you mentioned earlier? And how is Cargill fostering trust in these technologies amongst its customers?
[Adriano Marcon] Indeed, Birdoo is a great example where digital farming technologies are enabling farm management excellence and improved productivity. Cargill is using AI in many ways to improve animal health and welfare – from poultry farms to dairy farms to shrimp farms – by providing predictive analytics that drive on-farm decisions. Our digital solutions give farmers a market advantage by allowing for better decision-making throughout the value chain.
GalleonTM, Cargill’s patent-pending tool that enables broiler producers to decide how changes, such as in raw materials, diet, additives, vaccine programs, and farm management practices, influence the microbiome of their flock, is another offering that uses AI to give poultry producers actionable insights. Agriness, a data management and analysis tool, focuses on increasing farm productivity by providing an information management platform in swine farming and processing operations that enables farmers and integrators to make proactive decisions to improve efficiencies that enhance animal well-being and increase farmer profitability.
And while Cargill Animal Nutrition offers a broad portfolio of solutions and leading-edge technologies in our digital solutions portfolio, the animal nutrition and livestock production industries are slower to adopt digital technologies in comparison to other industries. That is why through our trusted partner relationships, alliances, and global solutions, we are committed to providing a full-service approach – software, nutritional expertise, technical knowledge, and support – to help farmers use digital tools that analyze their data to efficiently make better, more informed decisions timed perfectly to improve productivity, animal well-being and sustainability.
[Feedinfo] Finally, how has Cargill Animal Nutrition committed itself to improving its own sustainability score? What internal structures have been put in place to lessen its impact on the planet and how successful have they been so far?
[Adriano Marcon] Cargill’s purpose is to be the leader in nourishing the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. We have set science-based targets and invested in bold actions to deliver on our ambition, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our operations and supply chains that are in line with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. We are committed to reporting progress against those goals, and to expanding transparency about the impacts of our operations, products and services, and supply chains around the world.
Cargill Animal Nutrition is dedicated to manufacturing excellence for animal health and efficiency by reducing our environmental footprint through carbon, water, and energy savings. This includes tracking our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (scope 1 covers direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling consumed, and scope 3 covers all other indirect emissions that occur in the value chain). To ensure science-based decisions, we are integrating sustainability metrics in our systems and tools and have implemented Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a methodology for determining the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a commercial product, process, or service’s life cycle. With LCA, we gain powerful insights into the animal performance, formulation, and environmental impact. Furthermore, we are focused on carbon credit management to monetize sustainability offerings.
By leveraging these interconnected distinctive capabilities, including sourcing sustainable ingredients, driving 100% nutrient utilization with precision animal nutrition, and enabling farm management excellence and improved productivity through digital farming for livestock solutions, Cargill Animal Nutrition partners with our customers to uncover nutrition’s power to do more with less to feed the world and protect the planet.
Published in association with Cargill Animal Nutrition
