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CapitalPress.com
January 6, 2017
Company to make fish feed
from raw processing waste
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
Customers shop at the Capital City Public Market in downtown Boise in September. A first-ever na-
tional USDA study shows that 167,000 U.S. farms sold food locally through direct-marketing channels,
including farmers’ markets, in 2015.
Survey: 167,000 U.S. farms
sold food locally in 2015
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — Eight percent of
the nation’s 2.1 million farms
produced and sold food local-
ly through direct-marketing in
2015, according to a first-ever
national USDA survey.
The Local Food Marketing
Practices Survey found that
more than 167,000 U.S. farms
produced and sold food locally
in 2015 through direct-market-
ing practices, resulting in $8.7
billion in revenue.
The survey was conducted
by USDA’s National Agricul-
tural Statistics Service and
was based on survey respons-
es from thousands of farms
around the nation.
Joe Parsons, chairman of
the NASS agricultural statis-
tics board, said determining
how many U.S. farms sell food
locally was a difficult task.
NASS used the small
amount of data on local food
sales it had obtained from pre-
vious Census of Agriculture
surveys to reach out to 44,000
farm operations. More than
11,000 responded to the sur-
vey.
“I think we have some solid
results ... at the national level,”
Parsons said.
The survey targeted 30
states that existing USDA data
showed were likely to have
the highest number of farms
selling food locally through di-
rect-marketing practices.
The survey results, which
include both fresh and val-
ue-added food, showed that
most of the revenue from di-
rect-marketing practices, $3.4
billion, came from farms sell-
ing directly to institutions and
intermediates, such as whole-
salers, who locally branded the
food.
A total of $3 billion in sales
came from 115,000 operations
that sold directly to consum-
ers, such as at farmers’ markets
and on-farm stores.
Sales directly to retailers
totaled $2.3 billion from more
than 23,000 farm operations.
California dominated di-
rect food sales with $2.9 bil-
lion worth in 2015 and was
followed by Michigan ($459
million), New York ($441
million), Pennsylvania ($439
million) and Wisconsin ($431
million).
In California, 14,315 oper-
ations engaged in direct food
sales in 2015.
In Washington, 5,341 farm
operations that sold food di-
rectly brought in $150 million
in 2015 and in Oregon, 5,227
operations brought in $114
million.
Idaho was one of the states
NASS didn’t publish data on
because of its relatively small
population, which would make
it a small overall player in di-
rect food sales.
Instead of trying to define
“local,” which is an evolving
definition, NASS focused on
the practices that constitute
selling locally, he said.
Other survey highlights:
• Although 73 percent of
farms that sold food directly to
consumers had internet access,
only 8 percent of them sold
directly through online trans-
actions.
• In terms of number of op-
erations, beef (52,766) was the
top commodity sold directly
through all channels in 2015,
followed by fruits and nuts
(46,130), vegetables (46,029),
poultry (32,332) and lamb and
goats (15,078).
HAGERMAN, Idaho — A
fish processor has invested in
a high-tech feed mill that will
convert what has long been a
worthless waste product into
a key input, valued at about
$300,000 per year.
Leo Ray, owner of Fish
Breeders of Idaho, believes
he’ll soon be the only busi-
ness in the industry making
fish feed directly from raw
fish processing waste — an
approach he said will result
in a pellet fish will more
readily convert into body
mass while producing less
excrement.
“Leo has been one of the
innovators in aquaculture in
the U.S. for many years,”
said Kevin Fitzsimmons, a
University of Arizona envi-
ronmental sciences profes-
sor specializing in aquacul-
ture.
Fish meal and fish oil —
essential components of fish
feed often derived from pul-
verizing undesirable ocean
fish — have been rapidly
increasing in cost, due to
dwindling wild populations.
Ray said his own fish pro-
cessing waste should be suf-
ficient to meet all of his feed
demand when blended with
plant-based additives.
His largest customer,
Whole Foods, will pay a
premium for his fillets in
order to make a sustainabil-
ity claim. Ray said he may
also make his feed without
any ingredients derived from
genetic modification, en-
abling Whole Foods to make
a GMO-free claim. Fish
Breeders is negotiating with
local farmers to contract for
wheat, corn and peas and
will also use soybeans.
Until about a decade ago,
Ray fed the guts and scraps
left over from processing fil-
lets to farm-raised alligators.
Though Ray had good mar-
kets for alligator meat and
hides, he had to give up the
reptiles, which were prone to
catching West Nile Virus. In
Courtesy of Leo Ray
From left to right, Tod Ray, Leo Ray and Coner Ray stand beneath
the bins where they will store finished feed made from the raw
processing waste at Fish Breeders of Idaho in Hagerman. They
say they’ll be the only operation in the industry making feed from
raw waste.
recent years, Ray has given
the guts and bones to area
mink farmers.
“Where we process our
own fish, we’ve got that prod-
uct here, and we’ve been giv-
ing it away,” Ray said.
Fish Breeders raises about
1.5 million pounds per year
of trout, sturgeon, tilapia and
catfish. The new machine,
called an extruder, should be
operational by the end of Jan-
uary. It will cost $1 million,
and Ray anticipates recouping
his investment in about four
years.
Ray said an extruder works
like a large meat grinder, gen-
erating temperatures through
friction of up to 300 degrees
to cook the feed, His mill
will also use supplemental
heat. Upon entering, the in-
gredients are saturated with
moisture, which remains liq-
uid under high pressure and
instantly becomes steam, cre-
ating an expanded pellet when
removed from pressure.
Ray said the feed can float
in water and remains intact,
allowing feeders to better as-
sess how much their fish have
consumed. Dog food and ce-
real are often made using the
same process.
Ray currently buys fish
feed made with the same
process, but the fish meal is
cooked into a powder before
it’s added.
By adding the fish scraps
raw, Ray’s process reduces the
denaturing of nutrients during
cooking, and eliminates ship-
ping of fish scraps to a facility
where they can be processed
into a powder.
His production manag-
er, Starla Barnes, will help
get the machine running and
formulate feeds for different
species for her Ph.D. project.
She’s taking courses in nutri-
tion online through the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin. Barnes,
whose background is in dairy,
said the mill should reduce
feed costs by 30 percent.
Barnes said she chose to
work at Fish Breeders because
of her “interest in learning
something new, and the fact
that there’s a lot of research in
aquaculture left to be done.”
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