Sep 28 2008
Just how much animal feed does the American ethanol industry produce each year? According to a new analysis by the Renewable Fuels Association, America’s ethanol producers delivered 23 million metric tons of livestock and poultry feed to the world last year, or nearly three times the amount of wheat, sorghum, barley and oats fed to U.S. livestock in the 2007/08 marketing year. Put another way, the amount of feed produced by the ethanol industry in 2007/08 is roughly equivalent to the combined total amount of feed consumed by cattle on feed last year in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado-the nation’s four largest feedlot states.
To read RFA’s analysis, “Feeding the Future” visit http://www.ethanolrfa.org/resource/reports/#EconomicImpacts.
An often overlooked and underreported aspect of America’s ethanol industry is the substantial volume of high protein, high energy livestock feed produced along with fuel ethanol by America’s 171 biorefineries. Only two-thirds of every bushel of grain processed by an ethanol plant is actually used for fuel production. The remaining one-third of the bushel is enhanced and returned to the animal feed market, most often in the form of distillers grains, corn gluten feed and corn gluten meal.
Produced in different forms, depending upon the technology used at each biorefinery, this nutrient-dense livestock feed is increasingly displacing grains and protein meals in feed rations for cattle, dairy cows, swine and poultry domestically and overseas. In fact, about one billion bushels of corn were displaced by ethanol feed co-products in 2007/08, an amount equivalent to roughly 15 percent of total corn use for feed.
According to RFA’s analysis of industry data, exports of distillers grains – the most common ethanol feed co-product – will increase to more than four million metric tons in 2008, or the equivalent of approximately 160 million bushels of corn.
Moreover, the return of one-third of each bushel of corn used in ethanol production to the livestock feed market directly impacts ethanol’s net corn usage. The US Department of Agriculture is estimating ethanol’s gross corn usage for the 2008/09 marketing year at 4.1 billion bushels (Based on estimated ethanol production, the RFA estimates gross corn usage closer to 3.8 billion bushels). However, when the impact of the livestock feed co-product is accounted for, net corn usage for ethanol based on USDA estimates is 2.9 billion bushels, or 23 percent of total projected corn usage – significantly less than the misleading claims of ethanol using one-third or more of the nation’s corn supply.
“The livestock feed co-products of ethanol production are the best kept secret of this industry,” said RFA President Bob Dinneen. “The focus of the public has been on the industry’s production of fuel ethanol as a renewable alternative to imported oil. But the production of a high quality livestock feed is equally important. Our industry is truly in the business of producing both feed and fuel.”
As the RFA points out in its new TV ads, in Hereford, TX, the beef capital of the world, the town’s ethanol plants are providing feed, fuel and economic development that will make Hereford the ethanol capital of Texas. View the ads at GoodFuels.