The feed industry is a part of the agriculture sector. The term feed here is used as a noun and refers to the food provided to agricultural animals and fish, to livestock. Many different things are used as feed. These are usually broken into two categories, concentrates and roughage. The concentrates are the high energy value feeds that come from cereal grains, high-protein oil meals, and by-products from processing sugar beets, sugarcane, animals and fish. The category of feed referred to as roughage includes pasture grasses, hay, silage, corn stalks and the like.

An area of interest and research in this industry is raising insects for use as animal feed. It has the potential for being a very sustainable, comparatively low energy way to significantly increase feedstocks over the next decades. This is important since United Nations’ estimates predict a 70% increase in demand for agricultural feed over current rates by the year 2050.

Today’s market size is the quantity and value of feed production globally in 2011.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2011
Market size: 870 million tons valued at $350 billion
Source: “Insects as Animal Feed,” The Fish Site, June 3, 2013, available online here.
Original source: United National Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Posted on September 20, 2013