Quaiattini is president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association based in Ottawa.
Canada, like other countries, is working to advance the development of a robust and dynamic renewable fuel industry.
Despite the recent dip in oil and gas prices, it is clear that Canada must pursue an energy diversity strategy, in part to address the fundamental trends that will see ever higher energy costs negatively impacting Canada’s overall economic performance.
Simply put, Canada must take steps to grow beyond oil.
Canada’s renewable fuels strategy will provide Canadians with choice at the fuel pump, provide tens of thousands of Canadian grains and oilseeds farmers with a new market for their product, grow rural economies and help Canada’s environment.
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Providing value-added market opportunities for Canadian grain and oilseed farmers is critical when you consider that today growers rely on having to export more than 70 percent of their grains and more than 85 percent of their oilseeds to markets outside of Canada, at the same time facing overall declines in pricing for their product despite recent commodity price spikes and input costs that have been through the roof.
Continued and increased production levels mean that new markets in food, feed and fuel are essential for agricultural growers.
Canada’s renewable fuels strategy will require an average of five percent renewable content in gasoline by 2010.
While great advances are also being made in producing ethanol from various sources of nonrecyclable waste products, these 2.5 billion litres of ethanol will consume 5.5 million tonnes of grain feedstock from corn and wheat.
This will produce about two million tonnes of Distillers’ Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS), most of which will be dried.
A modern dry-mill ethanol refinery will use one tonne of wheat to produce about 370 litres of ethanol and 0.38 tonnes of DDGS. For corn, the numbers are 400 litres and 0.32 tonnes, respectively.
The starch in the grain is used to make the alcohol (i.e. ethanol), while the DDGS as co-product maintains the vitamins, minerals, protein, fibre, fat and amino acids.
As the Department of Animal Science at the University of Saskatchewan states: “Distillers grains has a long history of being recognized as a highly nutritious animal feed ingredient” while “its outstanding features are high fibre, highly digestible protein (85 percent), concentrated grain nutrients, bypass protein and essential minerals.”
The much larger U.S. ethanol industry produced about 18 million tonnes of DDGS in 2007 and may produce 30 million tonnes by 2009, almost entirely corn-based.
Canada imported 300,000 tonnes in 2007, while we exported 200,000 tonnes. Trade between the United States and Canada is on pace to surpass $100 million in 2008.
The traditional DDGS market has been as a source of protein because the product has a high level of bypass protein, important for ruminants. They also have excellent palatability because of the yeast fermentation flavours.
DDGS is used as a source of energy for animals and can replace soy and canola meal in some rations.
The typical energy value is just above that of the original feedstock. There is also a growing use in non-traditional diets. DDGS plus low-quality forage can replace high-quality forage in beef rations.
DDGS is used in species other than cattle, including swine, poultry and aquaculture. It increases the availability of total feed, the economics are attractive and it has decades of demonstrated use.
DDGS has use-limiting factors, but the impact on composition is largely a function of feedstock quality, including fat content, amino acid profile, phosphorus and iron, sulfur and mycotoxins.
Most ethanol plants use the same grain quality as other food processors and livestock feeders, and everything except the starch ends up in the DDGS in concentrated (three-fold) form.
The other plant inputs, beyond grain and water, such as the enzymes and yeast, are all approved feed ingredients.
In the past decade, new generation DDGS of high quality has become available from fuel ethanol plants. DDGS is an important source of revenue for fuel plants, so plants have developed consistent processing techniques, better dryers and other means to increase their quality and value.
Canada has several wheat and corn ethanol facilities today, with new ones opening in the months ahead, several of which have direct farmer participation and ownership.
A smaller pioneering plant in Saskatchewan is an integrated feedlot. A few models in the U.S. are using anaerobic digesters to create closed-loop systems with feedlots and co-generation facilities.
And when you look at the macro picture, Iowa, which has less arable land than Saskatchewan, is the top U.S. producer of grains and oilseeds, ethanol and red meat.
Where a vibrant renewable fuel industry exists, the livestock sector can flourish.
