April 4, 2011

US uses soy to make aquaculture sustainable 

The United Soybean Board (USB) is putting in money on projects which will benefit domestic aquaculture producers.

The majority of the projects entail one of two categories.

The first entails research to improve fish farming output. This includes researching new soy traits to boost soymeal characteristics for diets fed to farmed fish, and upgrading the efficiency of aquaculture production by using best practices and standard operating procedures at critical control points.

The second category entails working through the National Aquaculture Association (NAA) to help promote the benefits of the country's aquaculture in terms of health, economic and environmental benefits. This includes communicating these benefits to consumers, the food industry and health care professionals; running workshops to teach farmers how to better their product marketing and help enhance public perception locally; maintaining a website to serve as database of aquaculture information; and attracting positive media exposure.

USB administers US soy farmers' checkoff investments and state soy checkoff boards. The soy checkoff supports the domestic aquaculture sectors which are a leading buyer of US soy.

Recently, USB devised a project to keep driving demand up for US soy through the aquaculture market. According to checkoff-funded research, this growing industry could eventually use millions of bushels of soy.

USB touts protein-rich soymeal as a sustainable replacement for the traditional, fish-based diets given to farmed fish.

"US soy farmers support the interests of all US animal farmers, including aquaculture producers, in order to help protect our number one market for our crop,"stated soy farmer and USB Director David Wilson. "We are interested in making US soymeal as good as it can possibly be for our customers."

Health experts at the American Heart Association (AHA) and other groups, USB said, advise that people eat finfish or shellfish twice weekly. As the UN said that the globe's wild fish stocks are being depleted, it will not be able to meet this demand. Thus, US aquaculture producers can help fill this need.