Sourcing Adequate Feed Ingredients Remains a Challenge
Sales for organic foods in the U.S. increased by 6.3 year-on-year in 2017, with the value of organic sales climbing from $3.4 billion in 1997 to more than $45 billion last year.
Behind this growth remains the challenge of souring adequate organic feed ingredients to support the necessary food production to meet demand.
Yorktown Organics, a poultry feed producer in Illinois, started business when organic producers in the region were sourcing organic feed from more than 200 miles away. Since then the company has become a key player in supporting the organic egg industry, supplying feed for the production of more than 10 percent of the organic eggs on U.S. shelves.
Until 2017, the U.S. produced only 75 percent of the organic corn needed to feed organic poultry in the country, and only 10 percent of the necessary organic soybeans - with the balance being imported from abroad. This supply gap reflects a need for an additional 400,000 acres of organic soybeans to be grown and harvested in the U.S. In the following article, Ralph Kropf, owner of Yorktown Organics discusses the challenges he faces as a provider of organic poultry feed.
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