INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Piet van der Aar
Farewell to 37 years of feed experience
Feed research is becoming less independent and social acceptance is a new challenge to face. Piet van der Aar was, until late 2019, the director of research and business development at Schothorst Feed Research in Lelystad, the Netherlands. He looks back at his extensive career and discusses the future of feed research.
BY MARIEKE PLOEGMAKERS, EDITOR ALL ABOUT FEED F
or 37 years Piet van der Aar worked at Schothorst Feed Re- search, first in the role of director and more recently as di- rector of research and business development. Schothorst Feed Research is a well-known research and advice organ-
isation for animal nutrition, based in the Netherlands. In late 2019 Van der Aar retired from Schothorst, and Pig Progress was able to catch up with him about the developments in the feed industry.
Pig Progress: Could you briefly describe your career at Schothorst Feed Research? Piet van der Aar: “In 1982, I started as a researcher in ruminant nu- trition and coordinator of pig research. In 1988 I became the direc- tor of Schothorst. At that time, Schothorst performed research ex- clusively for Dutch feed co-operatives. In 2004 Schothorst stopped working for co-operatives and started to work with international feed companies and suppliers within the feed industry. From then on I was the director of research and business development.”
Did that change in 2004 have consequences for the research conducted by Schothorst? “At that time in many European countries, governments were withdrawing from production-oriented research. Animal welfare and the environment became much more important. Also the willingness to work on the development of feed value tables and standards became less and less. We decided to formulate a pack- age of services that should actually be the basis for every com- pound feed manufacturer. In the beginning, sales were slow; people were not used to paying for knowledge. However, all that
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changed and in the last five years sales have accelerated enormously and spread over 31 countries.”
Which markets developed to become the main targets for Schothorst? “We have been concentrating on Europe and East Asia. The feed industry in East Asia is facing the same problems as Europe ten years ago, such as antibiotic reduction and zinc oxide use in pig- lets. Environmental issues are also playing a greater role in Asia. One can assume that in five years some Asian countries will be taking measures with regard to nitrogen, although it is much less of a problem than in Europe. There is still a lot of untapped knowl- edge that can contribute to emission reduction. For example, fur- ther reduction of the protein level in feed, additives that lower the pH of urine and adding fermentable fibres to feed.”
How did feed research change over the years? “When I started in this business there were more than 225 com- pound feed companies and 136 co-operatives in the Netherlands. The consolidation process has changed a number of things. Com- panies became larger, enabling them to employ nutritional spe- cialists, and they started to work outside their region. Publicly available research is becoming less and less – I think that is a real- ly negative development that inhibits the progress of the sector as a whole. Studies are mostly based on commercial motives, which means studies on basic knowledge lag behind.”
What will this mean for the future of feed research? “Research is becoming more and more product-oriented and will be much less concept-oriented. The outcome of a published
PHOTO: KOOS GROENEWOLD
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