Hello All-

The farmers on the Soy Aquaculture Alliance board met last week in New Orleans for their spring board meeting. This was the first time the board has held their spring meeting in conjunction with Aquaculture America. Aquaculture America is a combination of trade show and research reports from various researchers from all around the world. Several of the SAA and other QSSB and USB funded aquaculture projects were highlighted throughout the 4-day show. Attending this event it provided the farmers an opportunity to interact directly with aquaculture producers, feed manufactures, technology providers and governmental officials that oversee the U.S. aquaculture industry. Overall I felt like moving the meeting to Aquaculture America was a great success on multiple fronts for SAA and the U.S. soybean farmers as a whole.

During the board meeting the farmers adopted a new strategic focus for SAA moving forward. The farmers used the full strategic plan that was adopted 2 years ago as the starting point, from there the farmers were challenged on how to take the larger document and narrow the focus to goals that might be more attainable for an organization of the size of SAA. The board started the process at the 2018 summer board meeting in Auburn, AL. The farmers have adopted a strategic focus that will take steps to share our story, increase our credibility and grow partnerships. You can take a look at the strategic focus by clicking here

I hope you all will start to follow Soy Aquaculture Alliance on LinkedIn to get updates, we are also in the process of updating the SAA website and we have started to develop research briefs on many of the projects that have been funded through SAA over the years. With the research briefs we are working to develop a few articles that QSSBs could then use to share the story further.

We wanted to highlight one research project that has moved from the lab and is now being tested in a real world setting. A few years ago SAA with the help of research funds from USB funded some work at the University of Idaho and USDA-ARS to look at the opportunity in developing a strain of rainbow trout that would perform well on a plant-based diet free of fishmeal. This work led by Ken Overturf with USDA-ARS, just last week it was announced that Pacific Seafood has acquired the rights to the selected rainbow trout. The company reports that they currently have 1 million fry have been bred and will be released this spring. This is an exciting event for the U.S. soybean farmer and the investment that has been made in aquaculture – these type of results don’t happen overnight and take time and foresight to come to fruition. Look for more information about this project in the coming weeks from SAA. Further information can be within this article published by Feedstuffs.

Finally-SAA is planning our summer board meeting to be held in Twin Falls, ID. We are very close to finalizing a date for the meeting. As soon as that date has been determined-it will be reported.

We are looking forward to a great summer. Please feel free to contact me with any of your ideas or concerns.

Regards,

Andy Tauer

Soy Aquaculture Alliance, Executive Director