There is a lot of talk about human food miles; the distance between where food is grown/produced to where it ends up on our plate. But what about animal feed miles; the distance between where feed is grown/produced to where it ends up in the feed trough?
Kathryn Thompson :: Wednesday 26th October 2022 :: Latest Blog Posts
On-farm feed mixing: Field to Trough – The shortest greenest mile!
There is a lot of talk about human food miles; the distance between where food is grown/produced to where it ends up on our plate. But what about animal feed miles; the distance between where feed is grown/produced to where it ends up in the feed trough?
Although it is not yet practical to grow all of the raw materials required to make a balanced poultry meal in the UK, the majority can be i.e., cereals which often form over 70% of the diet.
Alternative protein sources to soya are also becoming more available in the UK including pulses and rapemeal.
Even UK-grown and manufactured rapeseed oil is becoming more available as an alternative to soya oil.
If you are a mixed farm and can grow the cereals and pulses yourselves then the transportation in of 70%+ of the diet is Zero. If not, then sourcing them from local arable farmers is a great alternative.
Perhaps the motto of "buy local" should apply to animal feed as well as human food.
Why not then reduce the feed miles even more by producing the finished feed on-site?
By home-mixing (static or mobile mill) feed is produced on-site thus no additional transportation of feed in is required.
With the ever-increasing push in the media and by the supermarkets to focus people's attention on the environmental impact of where their food comes from, surely by reducing the feed miles of the animals' feed is a crucial step in shortening the chain between farm to fork.
