The news is full of economic comment at the moment. Chances are that whenever you are reading this, that statement will still ring true because the economy has been the news for the last 50 years. What might be different is the role agriculture plays in the economy as this seems to have been declining in Western Europe over the same time period.

Does that mean agriculture is becoming less important?

No I don’t believe it is; unless mankind dreams up an appetising alternative form of nutrition, then agriculture will remain as important as ever. After air and water, food is the next most important thing to mankind. So why is the agricultural section of our economy constantly shrinking - and what the hell has this got to do with silage and bacteria?

I will get to the silage bit, but firstly lets look at market economics and agriculture, and trust me, it is relevant. Firstly we need to consider the economics of market development. If your business is producing new products it’s possible to charge premiums but agriculture is mostly producing commodities. We have ended up with a developed market where there isn’t really much chance to charge any price premium and the only way to make any money is by controlling the costs of production. And that’s where agriculture is, as the worlds oldest (or possibly second oldest) industry, agriculture is an extremely developed market. The chances of charging premium prices only really exist if you are able to skip a level of the marketing chain and jump from wholesale to retail. So todays farmers concentrate most of their efforts into controlling their costs of production.

So is farming bacteria a new way for farmers to develop a new market?

Eeeerrr no, that’s not what I was thinking. Farming bacteria is really what many farmers are already doing but without really thinking about it. Being better bacteria farmers is a way of controlling the costs of production. Firstly lets explore where the bacteria are.

If you’re producing silage, then you’re probably feeding it to bacteria. For an AD plant that’s obvious, the tank is full of a bacterial soup so it’s easy to grasp that the silage feeds the bugs. If you’re feeding ruminants, then it’s easy to forget that the animal really doesn’t live off grass and silage, it lives off bacteria. The grass and silage mostly go to feed the bacteria. Sure it’s a bit more complicated that that, but the bacteria are the most important element in the nutrition of cattle and sheep fed a forage based diet. You only need to stand in a milking parlour pit when cows have been turned out onto spring grass to witness the effects of a diet change. The bacteria in the rumen that have been used to a steady supply of silage are just not able to cope with the fresh spring grass, and the milk yield, and your overalls, suffer as the population of bugs adjusts to the new diet. If you think more about the bacteria than just where they are living (be that tank or cow) then we can make better choices when it comes to diet formulation.

Why are bacteria such fussy eaters?

Changes in what we are feeding to the bacteria will always result in a drop in performance in the short term. The ideal would be to feed a consistent diet throughout the year. This way the population of bugs would be optimised to suit the diet without any dips in performance. Obviously this is not going to be possible, but it should the the aim or goal. What you don’t want are wild swings in diets that some AD plants using large quantities of food waste experience. You can’t expect a bacterial population that has been fed a diet of potatoes and carrots for three weeks to thrive and produce gas if you suddenly switch to citrus oranges and lemons on a Monday morning. In the same way you can’t switch from first cut silage to third cut and maize at the drop-of-a-hat without suffering some consequence.

We are outnumbered by microbes

We live in a world where we are massively outnumbered when it comes to micro-organisms. A rough estimate suggests there are 4 bacteria for every single human cell in your body - if you are healthy!

Perhaps the production of silage is one area where we probably do recognise their importance, even though we probably don’t do enough to make the most of these little fellas. By thinking a bit more about what conditions the bacteria can best thrive in, you can optimise their performance and ultimately reduce your costs of production.

In the production of silage, you rely on the bacteria to preserve the forage for you. In essence, everything you do in the silage making process is designed to make things better for the bacteria in the clamp. By wilting the grass you increase in dry matter and reduce the amount of acid the bacteria need to produce to preserve the crop. By chopping the forage you make the crop nutrients available to the bacteria so they make produce acid to preserve the crop. By compacting the silage you squeeze out the oxygen and produce conditions that suit the anaerobic bacteria that produce lactic acids. And the list goes on, and on.

Farmers rely on these bacterial to produce the silage but don’t even consider where they come from! By chance, or luck, they occur naturally, for free, in the surrounding environment to a greater or lesser extent. That’s why almost every farm can produce some sort of silage fermentation given half decent conditions. But to make the most of this free resource, you need to provide the optimal conditions and, possibly in order to tilt the population balance in your favour, by using a silage inoculant starter culture.

So how can being a better bacteria farmer reduce your costs of production?

Well that comes down to losses of your forage feed value. Get everything right and you might still have 85-90% of the feed value from the standing crop in your silage by the time it gets fed. Get it not quite right and there might be 75-80% left and get it pretty much wrong and it’s more like 60%. Now the cost of everything is up in the air at the moment, but you will know the cost of your forage and, whatever that is, it’s probably the cheapest portion of your ration. This level of variation between good and bad silage is a massive difference between, good and bad financial performance. Going back to our elementary economics for a moment, if you’re not working at minimal costs, then someone else will be and that makes you uncompetitive in the long run. If this continues the market price you receive will eventually decline to a point where you’re no longer profitable, whilst someone on lower costs is - just.

So by being a better bacteria farmer will reduce your costs of production, and in turn increase you chances of still being a farmer in the long term.

If you want to discuss farming bacteria or any other topic in this series, please contact me at jeremy@silageconsultant.co.uk

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