So, that got me thinking. When people ask me where I was
last week; why I left my kids and my husband for 5 days to attend a symposium
hosted by a global agriculture company, what will I tell them? How do I relate
what Alltech does to them and their everyday lives?
What does Alltech do to affect the average consumer?
·
DHA ~
Docosahexanoeic
acid. The most important of the omega 3 fatty acids, DHA promotes brain and
eye health in babies and small children and is important for heart health and
immunity in adults. New research is showing that kids supplemented with DHA
have greater attention spans and sleep longer (Score!).
Most DHA comes from fish oil or a
diet high in fish. The fish get the DHA through the food chain, originally from
algae. Alltech is capturing the DHA directly from the algae and working on ways
to get it into livestock feed. In addition to making the animals healthier, the
DHA will be deposited into meat, milk and eggs. Then, our everyday foods will
be naturally supplemented with DHA. No more fish oil pills or worrying about
over-fishing the oceans for DHA.
We toured the Alltech Algae plant
in Kentucky while we were there.
·
Antibiotics
~ A hot topic in animal agriculture today. Consumers worry about the overuse of
antibiotics in livestock. Alltech works with farmers to improve the health and
immunity of their livestock and help them reduce the amount of antibiotics used
on their farms.
·
Farming
technology ~ We’ve all heard about how massive amounts of data is used by
marketing companies to follow our purchases at stores, and we’ve seen stories
about the military’s use of drones and small, remote controlled aircraft. At
the symposium, we discussed how those technologies can be used by farmers to
produce food more efficiently. Imagine computers helping farmers know when to
plant and harvest crops or when a cow is getting sick. I was personally quite
impressed with the possibility of using a drone with a camera attached to it to
check cows in hard-to-reach places on our hilly farm.
The camera-mounted drone |
When farmers work more efficiently, more food is produced. That will not only affect the price of food, but the availability of food throughout the world.
·
Promote new
science ~ Alltech embraces science and the role science plays in food
production. Research discussed at the symposium explored the way nutrition can
change the genetic code of babies in the first 1000 days of life. This
Nutrigenomics research is in its infancy, but it takes support from companies
like Alltech to drive these hypotheses from ideas to real-world applications
that will make us and our children healthier.
·
Bees
~ One in three bites of food that Americans eat is directly or indirectly
affected by bees, but the bees in our country are suffering from Colony
Collapse Disorder. The bees leave the hive, never to return. Education and
awareness are the biggest factors in helping the bees, but Alltech is
conducting research to figure out how to save the bees and get them healthy again.
·
Food
safety ~ Obviously food safety is important to consumers. Food safety is
dependent on all the links in the food chain.
In a global food supply, those links may span across several countries
that have varied levels of food safety regulations. Alltech recognizes that
challenge and utilizes an all-encompassing Quality system that ensures food safety
and traceability of their products regardless of the regulations (of lack of
regulation) in the country that supplied it. This approach will reap benefits
for their products, but more importantly, it will set an example of consistent,
high quality food production worldwide.
·
Environmental
sustainability ~ Sometimes sustainability can be hard to define. At last
year’s symposium, Alltech brought together scientists from all over the world
to discuss ways to measure and improve the environmental impact of animal
agriculture. I wrote a post about our
carbon hoofprint after the meeting last year.
·
Look at
the Global Picture ~ We live in a big world and the number of mouths to
feed in it is increasing more and more each day. Because of its size and scope,
Alltech is able to focus on improving pork production in China, grain
production in Europe, and beef production in Brazil. Some of that focus is on
products that can be sold within agriculture today, some is in developing
products for tomorrow, but some is simply bringing together people in the world
that can work to solve the challenges that we are facing today and the
opportunities in the future.
Sometimes I think we forget the
benefits of having lots of interests can be. A global agriculture company like
Alltech can have a huge positive impact on consumers every day, and the
consumers may never know about it. As with all the folks involved in
agriculture, the people at Alltech are working hard to provide a safe, healthy
and abundant food supply for the entire world.
I learned so much at the symposium this year (and last). I'm really excited about my next post about what I learned about Africa!
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