livestock feed

Drugmakers sold 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics for use in cattle, hogs, and poultry last year, up 4 percent from 2021 and the second increase in two years, said the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday.

Australia is setting up a $200-million innovation fund — half public and half private money — to try to commercialize breakthrough research from universities, government agencies and other research bodies, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Among the projects are Kebari, an ultra-low-gluten barley and FutureFeed, an additive for livestock rations made from seaweed that dramatically reduces methane emissions by cattle.

In a preliminary ruling, China's Ministry of Commerce said it will put a duty of 33.8 percent on shipments of distillers dried grains from the United States, a step that could affect ethanol makers and rebound against U.S. soybean meal usage, said Agrimoney. Some in the commodity trade speculated China was playing tit-for-tat with a U.S. complaint to world trade authorities over Chinese farm subsidies.

Despite a run of record soybean harvests in the U.S., surging demand from China and other importers is expected to cause the U.S. stockpile to drop below the previous year's level for the first time in three years, Bloomberg reports. "Since 2005, China’s imports of the commodity have more than tripled, and it now buys more than 60 percent of the world’s exports," the news service says. "The demand is primarily driven by its livestock sector as a growing middle class consumes more meat."

USDA has lowered its forecast of the U.S. corn stockpile for five months in a row and the current estimate, of 1.33 bln bu, is down 29 pct from November, when growers were harvesting a record-large crop, writes economist Darrel Good of U-Illinois.