March 14, 2011

 

VIV Asia 2011: Returning to nature, innovating beyond scarcity

 

This is at least 25% more than this biannual show's 2009 edition and an extra hall was added up to accommodate the exceptionally large turnout. With 277 new exhibitors, the show's New In Town pavilion stood out strongly. The fact we can expect many of these new participants to be return in years to come implies that this Asian livestock show is entering a new growth phase.

 

With Asia entering a third year of economic recovery, integration, internationalisation, the feed-sourcing stresses that accompany this prosperity were all in evidence. Livestock's integration with other sectors could be seen in the concurrent running of Bioenergy Asia 2011 and Aquatic Asia.

 

Similarly, at the opening night's ChinaVisions dinner seminar, speakers from the China Animal Agriculture Association and agribusiness research firm eFeedLink explained the challenges, opportunities and impacts created by this vast, fast growing market.

 

The speakers made clear that the next phase of China's livestock industry expansion would be more challenging and internationalised than the previous one. It was made clear that raising China's vast protein output to export quality will require huge infusions of technical and management human capital, both from the west and from Asia itself. This is the reason why this year's VIV Asia show enjoyed such a large increase in both exhibitors and attendees.

 

With Asia's rapid growth outpacing feed supplies, "agflation" and feed shortages have returned with a vengeance. With feed crop scarcity becoming a chronic agribusiness condition, many VIV Asia participants exhibited innovations designed to transcend these underlying resource constraints. In this respect, the concurrent running of Bioenergy Asia 2011 explored ethanol and biodiesel's impact on scarce livestock inputs.

 

New natural supplements, mycotoxin treatment methods, and meat shelf-life extension techniques were just several of the numerous technologies centred on the same central theme: Getting more protein out of less feed.

 

Suppliers often had presentations or materials showing both the severity of feed supply deficits and their product's capacity to stretch scarce livestock feeds through improved feed conversion ratios. Firms such as European feed giant, Provimi, explained how a synthesis of satellite terrain imaging techniques and the data mining of soil and livestock information could be synthesised by complex decision tree methodologies to create optimal livestock solutions, rather than singular products.

 

With the old synthetic supplement and AGP paradigm crumbling in the face of falling feed quality and quantity, suppliers such as Kemira, Alltech, Kemin and Biomin offered natural, sustainable alternatives to maximising livestock performance. Natural supplements, which were considered exotic a decade ago, were nearly ubiquitous at this year's show.

 

A theme of restoring livestock inputs to abundance could also be seen in concurrent events. Bioenergy Asia gave a frank assessment of how much feed has been diverted from livestock, while explaining how second generation biofuels could restore these agribusiness inputs.

 

With fishmeal stocks falling in the face of rampant aquaculture expansion, both at VIV Asia itself and at Aquatic Asia, suppliers offered a wide choice of solutions. Still immature and based on everything from Omega 3-fortified soymeal to krill, they made clear that Asia's vast aquaculture sector will innovate itself past today's US$2,000/tonne fishmeal costs.

 

Behind the booming exhibitor participation rates and theme of raising livestock performance and stretching feed materials further was one unspoken truth: The input constraints challenging Asian livestock are a direct by-product of the region's prosperity and flourishing meat consumption. Input shortages, high Asian meat consumption and exhibitors ready to bridge the gap between supply and demand are all here to stay.

 

With an endless horizon of meat consumption increases ahead, Asia's livestock will continue offering unprecedented opportunities and challenges. Hence, we can expect agribusiness stakeholders to continue offering innovative answers to the region's large yet lucrative feed sourcing, livestock rearing, and meat processing challenges for many years to come. 

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