Barley, canola meal | Canadian experts educate buyers on use and benefits
Can barley be fed to cattle all the way through the feeding process?
It’s a question almost no Canadian cattle feeders would ask because they do it all the time.
However, Asian livestock feeders asked the question repeatedly during a trip that Alberta Agriculture and the Alberta Barley Commission recently made to Japan and South Korea.
“They use barley as a finishing ration because they like nice, white fat,” said Rex Newkirk of the Canadian International Grains Institute, who along with Tim McAllister of Agriculture Canada went on the trip as technical feed experts.
Read Also
No special crop fireworks expected
farmers should not expect fireworks in the special crops market due to ample supplies.
“But they’re not sure they can use it earlier in the process.”
So they don’t.
This was just one of many questions or misperceptions of Canadian feedgrains that the Alberta mission found on its March 5-16 trip. Trip participants, who included feedgrain marketers, met with Asian feedgrain importers, processors and livestock feeders.
The mission also discovered that many Japanese and Korean livestock feeders believe barley has to be steamrolled like corn. Newkirk said the mission was able to explain that barley is better fed cracked rather than steamrolled and is actually better nutrition that way. It also makes it cheaper than corn to process.
Many feeders also avoid canola meal because they think it’s the same as rapeseed meal. Some buy cheap rapeseed meal from China and India.
They don’t realize that canola meal is non-bitter and easily digestible, not at all like rapeseed, which is harder to digest and bitter.
“We had a number of people that mentioned the bitter taste,” said Newkirk. “They see it as second rate.”
Newkirk said Japan and South Korea have high value livestock industries that require imported feedgrains.
However, they mostly import U.S. corn and soybeans, and displacing that is where the potential lies.
Newkirk said the United States and Australia are more aggressive in those markets, and Canadians need to promote their crops if they want a bigger share. The markets are relatively close for farmers in Alberta.
However, the Americans and Australians won’t voluntarily relinquish their market share, he added.
“They market in there like crazy.”
Newkirk said most marketers didn’t have a clear sense of the market potential during the years of the CWB monopoly because the board conducted the relationship.
The goal of this mission, organized by one of Alberta’s overseas trade offices, was to determine the potential market demand for prairie crops and how to access it.
The next step is to develop interest from potential buyers and create a bigger market for feedgrain growers and marketers on the western Prairies. The combination of Alberta organizations and technical experts from CIGI and Agriculture Canada seemed to work well, and Newkirk hopes it shows the kind of role CIGI can play in the new open market.
“It was a really nice partnership.”
