80% of spent grain from Molson-Coors and Labatt breweries exported to the United States

Once the cargo was empty, Patrick Lahaise climbed aboard his tractor and added haylage and corn silage to the spent grain. He whispers the mixture into corn grains, white wheat grits (a by-product of flour) and soybean meal.

His mixer cooks everything. The ration is then distributed to the cattle in the barn. Their reaction is instantaneous: they rush to swallow the mixture.

Patrick Lahaise enjoys using spent grains – these leftovers from cereals used after making beer – that are rich in protein and cheaper than many other foods.

Spent grains are a competitive product. It is a product that somewhat replaces all the ingredients on the farm. This makes it possible to reduce the import of farm inputs, such as corn, soybeans or the import of other protein sources that usually come from outside.he explains.

In an inflationary context, the farmer considers himself fortunate to have access to the product, since most of the spent grain from Quebec’s largest brewery is exported to American farms.

Furst-McNess is the sole subcontractor of Molson.Coors and Labatt managing their spent grain. The company specializes in purchasing the food products it sells in the agricultural sector.

Our largest customers today are large dairy farms in Vermont and New York. 80-85% of our total volume from these two entities is exported to the United Statessays Daniel Fréchette, agronomist and sales manager for the east of the country.

It has between 50 and 55 tractor-trailers of 35 tons each crossing the border each week, full of brewing grains from Quebec.

When the spent grain leaves Molson-Coors and of Labatt, it is the subcontractor Furst-McNess caring for others. Brewing companies have no influence on customers ’choice.

There are trucks that are likely to pass through farms that should or may receive them, lamented Jean-Thomas Maltais, president of Quebec cattle producers. Rising input prices informed him that Quebec producers should be more interested in spent grain, especially for the beef industry.

We have large feedlots with several thousand heads […]. It eats a lot of spent grains, he argued. Mr. Thomas estimates that Quebec farms could use Molson-Coors and Labatt.

The exchange rate makes the product particularly attractive to Americans. But spent grain is also important for Quebec farmers.

A mentality to change?

It is not really the philosophy of the producers here to make simple ingredients like the grain consumed by the brewers., observation by Daniel Fréchette. According to him, feed mill representatives are looking to work with their products. They offer advisory services to farmers to optimize their production and also sell a variety of products, including feed. The largest cooperative in Canada is Sollio, formerly called Coop fédérée.

Patrick Lahaise, former vice president of Les Producteurs de lait du Québec, agrees with Daniel Fréchette. Farms in Quebec, for a long time, have focused on by-products. We are used to our cooperatives and our mills to have a complete product, everything is balanced. With by-products, we’re seriously behindhe pointed out.

Jean-Thomas Maltais disagrees. According to him, agronomists of cooperatives are open to use other than their feed. They don’t force you to sell their complete feed. They also force you to use what you have on the pitch. They know our problemshe says.

Quickly sell spent grain

The use of spent grain presents some particular logistical challenges. Not all farmers are equipped like Patrick Lahaise to receive and process large quantities of spent grain, such as those spent by Molson-Coors and Labatt per week. This is what the Sollio Groupe Coopératif is arguing about.

Few farms in Quebec have sufficiently large demand for such quantities, while many large farms in America see this as an advantage.said Virginie Barbeau, Senior Communications Advisor at Sollio.

Because the product is wet, it must dry quickly to prevent decay. Feed mills do not use wet products, only dry products, added Ms. Barbeau. Drying the spent grain, he said, will require huge transportation and logistics costs. On the other hand, its use of wet is not optimal, according to him, because a feed made of corn silage already contains water.

Dairy farmer Patrick Lahaise admitted that he was initially skeptical about the use of spent grains. He wonders if the investment is worth it. To try it is to adopt ithe summarizes.

It’s all a question of organization because farms, according to Patrick Lahaise, have the capacity to receive these volumes.

Moisture also forces the dispenser Furst-McNess to quickly sell consumed grain that cannot be stored. Certainly transportation was the roots of the war because it was so expensive, added Daniel Fréchette. The sales manager will have every interest in finding buyers in Quebec to limit his gas costs.

So far, this is clearly impossible.