Project Overview
Commodities
- Agronomic: corn, oats, soybeans
- Additional Plants: native plants
Practices
- Animal Production: feed/forage, feed additives, feed formulation, feed rations
- Education and Training: demonstration, technical assistance
- Farm Business Management: new enterprise development, feasibility study, agricultural finance, value added
- Pest Management: sanitation
- Production Systems: holistic management
- Sustainable Communities: new business opportunities, community services, food loss and waste recovery/reduction
Abstract:
The concept envisioned in this study was to convert institutional food waste into swine feed using the dry extrusion technology. Due to the high moisture content of food refuse, moisture was
reduced by adding dry feed ingredients and nutrient deficiencies were adjusted by adding
appropriate supplements before extrusion process. The moisture content of the food refuse, as
currently disposed off, is as high as 90%. This means that, at most we can only process about
25% food refuse with 75% imported dry ingredients in order to have the acceptable stable moisture of no more than 11% in the final product. Considering all the added cost of transportation, labor, electricity, machine parts and maintenance, the present approach is not
economically feasible.
Project objectives:
Objective 1: Estimate volume and feeding value by source of food refuse.
Objective 2: Process representative samples and determine feed value after processing.
Objective 3: Develop and evaluate feed formulations for growing and finishing swine using food refuse and by-products.
Objective 4: Establish cost and benefits of processed food refuse.