Other impacts include major reductions in corn exports; reducing corn use in livestock rations by 33 percent; and a major impact on the pork and poultry industries.  The authors also discuss the expansion of ethanol production on trade, agricultural policy, and other segments of the agricultural and domestic economy.

Bottom line, we are in an exciting time and a time of potential change.  The impact of biofuels on agricultural life as we have known it is rapidly changing.  Whether the assumption used in this economic study will prove to be accurate will be somewhat dependant on governmental policy decisions.  The changes outlined in this study could be greatly impacted by the public demand for biofuels and tax policy required for their production.  The researchers conclude their paper by indicating that they are continuing to address the policy question whether the positives associated with the expansion of corn-based ethanol production are sufficient to overcome some of the negative impacts.

Amani Elobeid, Simia Tokgoz, Dermot J. Hayes, Bruce A. Babcock and Chad E. Hart.  2006.  The long-run impact of corn-based ethanol on the grain, oilseed, and livestock sectors: A preliminary assessment.  Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Briefing paper 06-BP-49.  (The paper is also available at www.card.iastate.edu ).

Importance of Aquaculture:
A new Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) report indicated that nearly half of the fish consumed are raised on farms rather than caught in the wild.  Nine percent of the fish consumed in 1980 came from aquaculture, whereas today 43 percent of the fish consumed are farm raised.  Farm-raised fish total 45.5 million metric tons while the marine fishing industry accounted for about 60 mmt annually.  Marine industries wild fish capture has been relative stable since mid-1980.  The FAO report indicated that wild catches have little chance of significantly increasing in the future.  The report indicated that world production of fish meal has also stabilized at 6-7 mmt since mid-1080.  The challenge is how do we continue to expand the world’s consumption of fish, which depends on fish farming and efficient feed formulations with a limited supply of fish meal.  The partial answer is greater use of soybean meal in diets of fish raised in captivity.  The future is indeed bright for greater use of soybean meal in highly efficient aquaculture operations.

The state of world aquaculture 2006.  A report developed by the FAO’s Sub-committee on Aquaculture and presented at the New Delhi, India meeting held September 4-8, 2006.

Soybean Compositional Studies
Degussa Corporation has developed a new database for amino acids found in feedstuffs as a service for their customers worldwide.  The company’s newsletter contains a chart showing the lysine content of 775 samples of soybean meal.  The lysine values were plotted to show the relationship of lysine to crude protein.  They reported that the percent lysine could be estimated from soybean meal’s crude protein levels with the following formula; (lysine=0.0679 x crude protein – 0.328).  The correlation coefficient for estimating lysine from crude protein is 0.85, indicating that realistic estimates of lysine can be estimated from soybean meal’s crude protein levels.

The researchers compared regression curves for lysine content in soybean meal from 2006 and 1996.  The slope of the data regression curves was similar and reflected lower levels of lysine in the 2006 soybean meal samples.  The researchers suggested that it is important to modify regression equations to take into account the changes in amino acid contents of ingredients with time.

Johann Fickler.  2006.  Feed your matrix-The new Degussa AMINODatâ 3.0.  AminoNewsä  7(2): 1-4. (July 2006).

In another paper, they reported the result of 775 samples of soybean meal collected worldwide.  Averages and standard deviations for crude protein, lysine and methionine were reported form soybean meal samples collected from Argentina, Brazil, China, India and the United States.  They reported small non-significant differences in averages for these nutrients by country of meal origin due to the relatively large standard deviations for these average values.  They found that soybean meal samples from most countries contained between 46 and 47% crude protein.  Meal samples from Brazil and U.S. contained 47.6 and 47.3%, respectively.  Whereas, meal samples from Argentina were found to contain below 45% crude protein.  Lysine and methionine levels of soybean meals produced in the U.S. were higher than meals produced in the other countries, however, due to wide variation in the meals, these values were not statistically significant.  One of the most interesting tables was comparing average values for six essential amino acids reported in their 1996, 2001 and 2006 databases.   In the new soybean meal data, a slightly higher level of lysine and threonine was reported, whereas methionine, methionine plus cysteine, tryptophan, arginine, isoleucine, leucine and value were essentially similar to the 2001 database values.  When the new values were compared to those in the 1996 database; a trend towards lower amino acid concentration was observed.  The author concluded that precise information on nutrient levels in feedstuffs is needed for profitable animal and poultry production.

Johann Fickler.  2006.  Feed your matrix: New amino acid data for soybean meal.  AminoNewsä  7(2): 5-10. (July 2006).