INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Dr Wolfgang Peralta, Agrosuper
Replacing fishmeal is not an easy challenge
One of South America’s largest swine producers is Agrosuper, based in Chile. The company recently started to replace as much fishmeal as they can from post-weaning diets. Dr Wolfgang Peralta, head of swine feeding and nutrition, describes the solutions they found.
BY VINCENT TER BEEK, EDITOR, PIG PROGRESS E
very year, when the global pork mega producers are an- nounced, the southernmost spot on the map is taken by Agrosuper, in Chile. Since the integrator company em- barked on swine production in 1983, it has grown to in-
clude 135,000 sows, slaughtering 3,750,000 pigs per year. To feed all these pigs, in 2019 alone Agrosuper’s own feed mills produced 1,236,000 metric tonnes of pig feed – an amount that will only rise in the years to come. With these dazzling numbers, one little adjustment in feed rations can make a huge impact. Dr Wolfgang Peralta has been working for 35 years with Agrosuper and, apart from overseeing the devel- opment of the pig genetic programme, he is responsible for feed- ing and nutrition within the company’s swine business. He says, “It is very important for us to use pig space in a more efficient man- ner today, because with the same buildings we can produce more kilogrammes of pork meat per year.”
In a nutshell – how have these 35 years at Agrosuper been for you? “I have been working there almost my entire professional life. It has been an interesting time and a continuous learning process. I was raised in the countryside in Chile and I studied veterinary sci- ence at the University of Chile. After I finished my degree, I began working at Agrosuper in 1985 as a veterinarian. I worked on health issues between 1985 and 1988, and then I was promoted and put in charge of a third of the sows. “In the meantime, the company had decided to move from natural mating to artificial insemination (AI) and gave me the responsibility of introducing AI in our company. For that, I received training in Brazil and Spain. I started in 1987 and I needed to move the whole company from natural mating to AI in ten years. It was not easy, because most of the people were
Pig production at Agrosuper
Agrosuper is Chile’s largest agricultural integrator, based in the Valparaíso, Metropolitan and O’Higgins regions in Chile. The company started out in 1955 with the production of eggs and gradually developed into other areas as well, including broil- ers, pigs, turkeys and aquaculture. The company also has its own feed production, breeding centres, distribution centres and business offices. From 1983, the company started growing pigs and selling pork under the brand “Super Cerdo”, and it currently has 135,000 commercial sows with high genetic value in produc- tion, achieving an average of 30.6 pigs/sow/year. The compa- ny has two slaughter and processing plants. Normally the ideal market weight for Agrosuper pigs is 126kg, at 168 days old. The company has achieved a feed efficiency of 2.478, using medium-energy diets. Agrosuper produces 3,490kg of pork meat per sow per year.
▶ ALL ABOUT FEED | Volume 28, No. 10, 2020 13
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