American wheat is tapping into a new market: aquaculture.
The U.S. Wheat Associates has been promoting the grain in South America as a key ingredient for salmon feed.
“So in Chile, salmon are produced in pens that are off the shore, and so feed ingredients have to do some very specific things. They require a lot of energy resource because salmon are constantly moving and eating as they grow. And because of that, they need a really high fat content in their feed a salmon pellet is actually about 40% oil. And so one of the reasons that wheat is a really important part of that ration is they have to find exactly the right binding agent that can serve as a particle that can expand and hold as much of that oil content as possible, so that the oil doesn’t just drip out. You can’t have an oily pellet. It won’t flow in the right space in the water, and it also that oil content is what those fish need,” USWA Communications Director Julia Debes said.
Debes says the wheat’s binding properties keep feed pellets intact long enough for salmon to consume them, which is crucial because salmon will not touch broken or crumbling feed.
