NEWS ▶▶▶ Opportunities grow for organic dairy
The global organic dairy market is anticipated to grow by over 50%, reaching US$ 28bn by 2023, with new uses for organic dairy ingredi- ents being cited as a key growth driver. This is according to the 2019 Global Organic Dairy Market Report. Worldwide consumption, distri- bution and market reach of organic dairy is in- creasing, and now represents 20% of all organ- ic food and drink sales globally. The largest segment of the organic dairy market globally is liquid milk, amounting to 24% of total dairy sales. The US is the largest organic liquid milk market, accounting for more than 50% of glob- al sales. Asia is a growing opportunity for or- ganic dairy, with the Chinese market expected to grow to US$ 1.8bn by 2023, from its current US$ 737m. China is also the largest organic in- fant formula market globally, worth US$ 200m. The area of global organic farmland and the number of organic producers are also increas- ing. The global area of organic farmland has increased by approximately 15% to 57.8m hec- tares, and there are now 2.7m organic producers globally, which is an increase of
Field peas: Not too much for cows
The global area of organic farmland has in- creased.
about 13%. The greatest areas of organic land are concentrated in Oceania, which represents almost half of the global organic land area, fol- lowed by Europe (23%) and Latin America. The reports states that the primary driver of future growth is expected to be new markets and emerging product categories, such as cheese and specialist organic dairy ingredients. Or- ganic infant formula and organic cheese are both expected to grow significantly over the next 5 to 7 years, at 12.1% and 14% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) respectively.
Factors influencing bite mass of cows
Ensuring a high feed intake in dairy cows is an important topic to make sure the high-per- forming animal ingests enough energy and protein for maintenance and production. For grazing animals, the uptake of forages like grass is difficult to measure. For this and over- all useful for practical pasture management, the bite mass (BM) has been developed as a main parameter determining intake, produc- tion level and efficiency for grazing ruminants. Bite mass is classically considered as the cen- tral variable of feeding behaviour in determin- ing the dry matter intake by grazing ruminants and used in models for predicting forage up- take and performance. The main components of BM for grazing rumi- nants are bite depth, bite area and bite vol- ume. Although many studies have been done, still some knowledge gaps exists on what the main determinants of BM are. For example: what is the effect of sward length on BM. To progress on this topic, researchers from INRA performed a meta-analysis of a large set of 96
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publications and published their findings in Animal Feed Science and Technology. They found that sward height is a key factor of BM through its strong and almost linear influence on bite depth and bite volume. The effect was less for herbage mass/ha. Herbage bulk densi- ty (HBD) is also an influencing factor, notably at low HBD. Among the animal factors consid- ered, body weight was the most important factor of bite mass variation, as already stressed in previous publications. The Incisor Arcade is another important animal factor for both bite diameter and bite mass. The re- searchers conclude that this analysis of the various factors of variation in bite mass and its components facilitates the understanding of the adaptive strategies of the animals. The re- searchers conclude by saying that the current challenge is now to develop a mechanistic model based on most of the equations proposed in this quantitative analysis by integrating effects of sward and of animal characteristics on ingestive behaviour.
▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 6, No. 2, 2019
Dairy farmers considering using field beans as a source of protein in the diet for their cows should be cautious about them reducing milk quality, say rearchers at Northern Ireland’s Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) who have completed trials including feed beans in diets. Previous research work at AFBI included feeding 4.7 kg of field beans per day in the diet of mid lactation dairy cows and no adverse effects on performance were found, so they wanted to test a higher inclusion rate. It was shown that in the diet containing 8.4 kg beans, the beans replaced all of the soya bean meal, rape seed meal and maize gluten and the dairy cows were able to consume the diet which contained 8.4 kg beans per day with no negative effect on intakes. However, AFBI found that while milk yield was not significantly affected, both milk fat and milk protein contents were reduced when of- fering the diet containing 8.4 kg of beans, and as such, milk fat plus protein yield was also reduced.
NZ$50m paid for Mycoplasma losses
So far, the New Zealand government has re- ceived 810 claims from cattle farmers that have seen their herd affected by Mycoplasma bovis. Until now, 504 claims have been completed (or with part payments). In total, NZ$ 50.3 million (approx. € 30.3 million) have been paid to com- pensate farmers for the losses. Since the out- breaks, 86,858 animals have been culled al- ready to gain control over the disease. The number of ‘active’ infected properties at 15 March 2019 was 33.
Still some farms are infected.
PHOTO: MARK PASVEER
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
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