Feasibility of an Indigenous feed production model for Southern Africa

Upward feed cost pressure caused by surges of maize and soya prices, driven by droughts, increased grain competition between human, the animal and bio-fuel industries and meat price depression caused by softening meat markets in Southern Africa have eroded margins of poultry producers. On the other hand the use of fish meal in poultry and fish feed continues to exacerbate an already bad situation of depletion of wild fish stocks caused by overfishing. This has also caused fish meal to become too expensive. Obviously the viability of the poultry industry is now in a life-support situation, with the impact already felt in the whole value chain, upstream and downstream, resulting in company closures, job losses and more households failing to make ends meet.

Due to above challenges facing poultry farmers, current feed production models face increasing interrogation with a view to design more sustainable feeding programmes that suit the farmer’s market environment. Therefore it cannot be better said that donor funds and private companies can contribute to the resuscitation of the poultry industry through funding of feeding programmes developed using cost-effective and ubiquitous indigenous resource-based supply chain models. This can allow the farmers greater market resilience under a wide range of market scenarios. As feed costs constitute 70% of poultry production costs, even the least feed innovation will lead to a large improvement in profitability. Therefore, cheaper indigenous feedstuffs have recently caught the attention of animal nutritionists as possible alternatives.

The potential of cassava as a replacement for maize in poultry feeds is too large for us to ignore. Opportunity cost favours the use of cassava roots as replacement for maize in livestock feeds during the dry season when the price of maize rises considerably. Increasing cassava utilization by the feed industry will stimulate cassava production by maintaining a high demand for cassava products. However, like other indigenous feedstuffs, anti-nutritional factors and nutrient variability in it have limited its use in poultry feeds. However, I have managed to innovate, a proprietary margins of safety technique- to ensure the animal nutrient requirements are met with a high degree of predictability.

Food waste derived insect protein is another potential cost alternative to fish and soya meal. In order to eliminate the anti-nutritional factors and achieve nutridensification in the final feed, one can steam condition cassava-insect powder at high temperature and pressure, and pellet it and sprayed exogenous multi-enzymes. More than 80% maize and 100% fish meal can be replaced in a nutridensified pelleted broiler diet without depressing animal performance. Donors should assist such innovations to acquire resources that are needed to achieve product-market fit alignment and lean commercialization of the product to reduce chances of start up failure.