Cargill looks to boost poultry farm profits with feed data
The Minnesota-based company announced it was launching the tool globally on Tuesday, it also has been piloted in several areas.
In the testing phase, producers saw a 3.5% margin improvement on average from optimizing production costs, reported Cargill.
The dynamic predictive software tool, TechBro Flex, took about two years to design, said Henk Enting, global poultry technology director, Cargill Animal Nutrition. The project was a priority for Cargill because of the increased pressure faced by poultry producers, he said.
“We saw an opportunity to improve profitability with more knowledge about interactions between nutrient levels and farm conditions,” he told FeedNavigator. “Recommendations about nutrient levels and some production factors had to be changed in order to improve profitability.”
The tool can be used to design simulations of both future feed and management scenarios for broiler facilities, said Cargill.
Predictive software and feed formulation
The new technology is software-based and designed to run on any type of laptop, said Enting.
It can be used to design feed programs and establish a management strategy, the company said. The program first requires data around the breed being raised, feed form, other nutritional information and economic and production data.
The software is then reportedly able to generate different pathways for producers to meet set economic goals, said Cargill. Based on the models generated, a producer has the ability to pick a feeding strategy that aligns with the business model.
One goal of the technology is to allow producers to mitigate cost or revenue risk, Cargill said.
“On the basis of the cost, of different nutrient levels in feeds and performance goals, new feeds can be designed, together with proposed changes in a number of farm production parameters like downtime or stocking density,” Enting told us. “Different scenarios can be run in order to compare profitability and practicality of different options.”
The predictive tool should work for producers of different sizes – from small to larger facilities, he said. “For large integrations we also have a more extended tool that is made ready on the same platform as TechBro Flex,” he added.
The technology is now available and operational for producers globally, said Enting. “Further implementation will be done in the next half a year with more customers all around the world,” he added.
