Plenish in the Ration: Feeding Cows and Communities

In today's episode, we explore how agriscience has created a more valuable soybean. A soybean that gets the farmer more money, a dairy farm who buys it more profit, and has the added benefit of supporting a local agricultural economy. This is the story of Plenish soybeans. We are joined by Dairy scientist Dr. Bill Mahanna who works for Corteva Agriscience and manages Pioneer’s Global Nutrition Sciences Team. His team works with any product that might ultimately be fed to livestock, like corn, silage, and soybeans. Also joining us is Craig Phelps, who owns Edgewood Farms, Edgewood Grain, and Linwood Commodities based in Western New York. Craig buys, stores and roasts Plenish soybeans and sells them to dairy farmers in his area. Together we discuss components of dairy science, nutrition, agronomy, genetics, supply chain economics and more. It’s a great demonstration of how agriscience innovation can lead to better economic outcomes. To understand the Plenish story, it’s important to first understand the dairy science behind why they’re so desirable for dairy cows relative to commodity soybeans or other competing ingredients. Thirty nine years ago, Bill Mahanna became the first dairy-focused person hired by Pioneer. He grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York and was a college professor of dairy science before joining the company. He says these high oleic soybeans, now known as Plenish soybeans, were developed about 14 years ago but initially the target market was food ingredients. Then they started to realize the potential this innovation could have in dairy rations.“ It's a dense form of energy, it's a safe oil, it brings in the amino acid we need and can potentially, depending on how the ration is balanced, actually increase the butter fat content of milk.…It's a potentially homegrown feed that we process on the farm that's really relatively inexpensive for us compared to some of the other things that we might put in the diet like blood meal or palm fat or things like that.” - Dr. Bill MahannaSo these high oleic soybeans found a very important place in a dairy cow’s ration. Dairy farmers want to feed certain fats to not only provide complete nutrition but to also boost the butterfat percentage of the milk that they sell to achieve a premium price. But the type of fat that they feed is really important, and that’s why Plenish soybeans have really taken off. Craig Phelps has worked as both a dairyman and crop producer. Through these experiences he has seen the dairy industry from multiple perspectives and today roasting Plenish soybeans for local dairies is a big part of his business. The biggest problem he has found is there not being enough Plenish soybeans for the demand.“ That's what I recognized in the Plenish is if we could create a differentiated product, cut down the transportation, basically buy that product locally, process it locally, and sell it locally. We're cutting a lot out of the middle there, and hopefully everybody wins be it the grower, us as a processor in the middle and the dairyman getting a high quality product.” - Craig PhelpsA few takeaways from this episode: The opportunity we have to create new differentiated products that are innovative and unlock new value, but also work within the established system. Secondly is the fact that through agriscience, we can find ways to allow producers to capture and keep more of the value from what they’re producing. Rather than taking commodity beans and trying to convert them into better feed through extensive processing, genetics are sort of “baking” those solutions into the crop. The impact this is having on local communities: farmers receiving more per bushel, soybeans being consumed domestically that might have gone export, and a local company like Edgewood Grain connecting the supply chain. Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.