Palm | Kelapa Sawit

While much of our focus on this blog had been aboutsustainable protein for human consumption, I came across an article relating tothe topic of sustainable protein in animal feeds and I would like to share someof what I found. 

Xingen Lei, a professor at Cornell University has beenresearching the use of algae as a sustainable protein rich feed to replace cornand soybean meal which is currently given to the majority of food producinganimals.  Professor Lei says that "Currentanimal feed directly competes against human food sources and, thus, is unsustainable;we must develop alternatives to soybean and corn for animal feeds." Algaeproduces more oil than corn and also leaves a much smaller carbon footprintthat corn.

Lei says that replacing just 10% of all traditional corn andsoybean feed with this algae feed would make drastic differences in the use ofour less sustainable crops.  Lei and hisresearchers are now working to determine what kind of algae to use for feed andalso if the differences in the feed will have large consequences in the qualityof these animals when things such as human consumption are concerned. This couldbe a huge break-through for the farming industry and could potentially make abig difference in the sustainability of certain crops that we have come to relyon. 

There are also many other sustainable uses that can come from algae, some of which are highlighted in the image below.

For more information about these topics head to:
http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/algae-as-sustainable-protein-alternative-for-animal-feed-12701.html