Thanks again to all of you for the great, and very engaged, conversation at OEFFA last week. It seemed clear enough that there is opportunity in forging ahead with building this nonGMO feed supply chain, including both production and storage, as well as mechanisms for smoothing price volatility in such a way that grain and livestock producers, and processors all benefit. I'm copying those involved with our oilseeds project at Mellinger Farm because the pressed meal is generally nonGMO feed supplement, and our research assistant, Hannah Whitehead, will be able to help with the logistics of sample preparation and shipping. It takes about 10-12 business days to get results back on the amino acid profiles, so that determines the deadlines listed below.
Following is what I came away with in terms of next steps. I was taking pretty sketchy notes, so please feel free to add, correct, suggest other activity, etc., in a comment. I put in names based on what I recalled and to have someone identified, but please don't hesitate to speak up if you need help or someone else should be taking charge on a particular part.
Perry will round up spelt, barley and triticale grain produced this year and get samples to Columbus before 9/16/13. He also has his own triticale for silage that will be analyzed.
Michelle and/or Brandon will find sorghum and get the samples to Columbus before 9/16/13.
Casey will pick up the samples in Columbus (OEFFA, Perry's farm or OSU campus) by September 16, 2013 and get them sent off for amino acid analysis.
Warren will pay for the spelt, barley, triticale, sorghum samples and lab fees out of the Stinner Summit funding we provided last fall.
Eric and Carol, would you be willing to help Warren, Perry, Michelle and Brandon prepare a brief presentation (less than 5 min) on the nonGMO feed analysis for this year's Stinner Summit? It seems to me that one way to summarize the results would be to calculate, for a few example feeding amounts/cow/day, the area needed for a given nonGMO feed crop (triticale, spelt, etc.) given average yield, i.e. what area of these crops would need to be planted to feed a given number of cows.
The research possibilities that came up in the discussion were:
1. Market, supply chain, price, storage, and price volatility data for existing nonGMO feed supplies in Ohio.
2. Transition research on how to shift from corn/soybean to longer term rotations that include nonGMO feed grains including open pollinated corn.
Those were my takeaways, and there has been some good email discussion in the last few days as well.
All the best, Casey