The U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) – Southeast Asia initiated the concept for the aquaculture industry to hold large-scale aquaculture formulation workshops. Starting in 2019, this is now a global USSEC program.

On April 29, USSEC kicked off this program with a conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, targeted at Southeast Asian commercial aquaculture feed nutritionists and formulators. The inaugural event was followed by workshops in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand.

USSEC, along with other cooperators, worked to create the International Aquaculture Feed Formulation Database (IAFFD). The IAFFD is the first standardized, commercially viable, publicly available formulation database for aquaculture. The database was developed to target and train aquaculture formulators in large groups, similar to what was previously done by USSEC with the terrestrial animal industry. This was the fifth iteration of the workshop concept, which this year focuses more directly on commercial aquaculture formulators and moves to a collaborative relationship with commercial companies who can lead the formulation exercises.

“The IAFFD workshop has helped me to better formulate the feed with the new Bestmix® feed formulation software and access to [the] database. Formulation guidance from experts was also comprehensive,” says Savitri of Surabaya’s Matahari Sakti feedmill.

USSEC’s work with the IAFFD and holding formulation workshops directly impacts the role of USSEC to differentiate and promote U.S. Soy specifically. The formulation workshops demonstrate the value of U.S. Soy based on intrinsic and extrinsic qualities through actual formulation to key target audiences. Several times during the workshop, U.S. soy products (U.S. soybean meal, fermented soybean meal and soybean protein concentrate) organically became part of formulations created by the commercial feedmill formulators based on the quality of those U.S. soy products.

USSEC continues to clearly demonstrate the value of U.S. soy products to commercial feedmill formulators/nutritionists, key influencers in the purchase of U.S. Soy.

The Qualified State Soybean Boards (QSSBs) of North Dakota and Nebraska helped fund this project. Nebraska has been a long-term supporter of this program.