In the cattle markets, the price of wheat bran is all the talk. While the official price is 1,500 Algerian dinars per quintal, it is negotiated at 4,200 DA.
“You realize, storms a sheep farmer, it’s just a by-product, but it costs more than wheat!” The agricultural services try to regulate the market but to no avail.
Milling results come from the activity of grain mills. Once the wheat is crushed between the millstones, the outer husk of the kernels can be isolated and is the coveted bran.
Traditionally, farmers use it to feed cows and sheep. The current lack of fodder linked to the drought of the past year reduces the availability of hay, straw, and barley, hence the current pressure on prices. “Some mills charge us for it at 4,200 DA per quintal but indicate 1,500 DA on the invoice. Take it or leave it, they tell us,” reports a breeder.
Last February, the daily Liberté reported that around forty breeders had organized a sit-in in front of the headquarters of the wilaya of Nâama to protest against the lack of feed.
For the agronomist Sofian Benadjila, speaking in July 2019 in El Watan: “Over the years, we have seen the appearance of a type of fattening called finishing, like the Feed Lots (all proportion kept). Around towns and villages in the interior of the country, these feedlots are now part of the landscape. Their proximity to urban centers is justified by the ease of supplying grain, water, proximity to markets, etc.”
However, this type of farming “above ground” has the advantage of creating jobs in rural areas.
In December 2020, during an interview with the press, the Minister of Agriculture indicated that he had set up a system aimed at allowing breeders to have wheat bran at a “reasonable price” with a “new system which will put an end to these speculations”. On this occasion, he protested against the fact that bran was marketed at a price “twice the price of wheat”.
The minister said that a circular had been sent to the walis. In the future, bran should be distributed to breeders through breeders’ cooperatives and the National Animal Feed Office (ONAB) responsible for incorporating it into their feed. In each wilaya, the sale of bran should be controlled by a commission responsible for establishing the list of dairy farmers and the bran production of each mill. The distribution to breeders must be based on a ministerial note from 2015 defining a daily standard of 4 kg of bran per cow.
A lack of fodder in the steppe
Faced with this forage deficit, alternatives exist. As early as 2011, specialist H. Ben Salem from the Tunisian National Institute for Agronomic Research was surprised by the fact “that we tend to feed ruminants (cattle and sheep) like monogastric (poultry)” c ‘ ie based on imported products such as corn and soybeans. However, the rumen of ruminants can digest the cellulose contained in the straw or the leaves of fodder shrubs, cacti, olive pomace, and nitrogen in mineral form.
With this in mind, the High Commission for the Development of the Steppe (HCDS) has launched the planting of fodder shrubs over hundreds of hectares: Atriplex, acacia, prickly pear (opuntia). Today, the region of Tébessa is an example. Local plantations are used to supply sheep farms with opuntia snowshoes. Cut into thin strips, they are eaten by livestock.
But these plantations are based on public programs, agro-pastoralists remain spectators and do not plant this type of shrub even if they recognize their interest. One of the explanations comes from the status of the steppe routes: they are community-based for the most part. Then, until then, imported barley has largely supplied the farms. With its 30 million hectares, the steppe presents a certain fodder potential in Algeria.
By-products, neglected by feed manufacturers
Another source of feed for livestock can come from by-products of the agro-food industries: soybean and rapeseed cake, molasses from the refining of brown sugar, pomace from the crushing of olives, tomato pulp from canneries, brewery grains.
Individually these products are of little interest but mixed with others, they constitute balanced rations. They can be combined with a binder such as lime and supplemented with nitrogen with urea produced by the public group Asmidal. The final product is in the form of small food blocks that meet the basic needs of the animals.
Despite the development of rationing formulas by researchers at the National Agronomic School of El Harrach, the valuation of by-products in the form of blocks remains low. It faces imports of corn and soybean meal by feed manufacturers who benefit from generous VAT exemptions.
With the development of olive plantations, olive pomace is available in greater quantities. Their conservation, however, requires them to be dried, sieving eliminates stone debris.
Another way of using by-products appears in some barns equipped with mixing trailers. These machines make it possible to incorporate by-products including molasses and urea into traditional fodder and obtain “mash”. In Constantine, the Agro-fodder company markets this product, in Sétif it is the Anfel cooperative that offers it to its members.
Bran, coveted in human food
But the sound is also interesting in human food. Not separated from the grain of wheat, the seed coat is a source of mineral elements but also fiber. Fibers improve intestinal transit and block fat, resulting in a recognized effect against cholesterol.
The Parisian white flour baguette, widely used in Algeria and widely subsidized by the public authorities, has a high glycemic index. An index conducive to generating diabetes. The addition of bran makes it possible to produce semi-complete or complete flour. This type of flour and semolina is recommended by nutritionists.
Furthermore, with a grinding rate of 80%, switching from white flour to semi-wholemeal flour would involve greater use of bran and an average reduction of 10% in the quantities of wheat to be imported.
But, bran is not the only product courted by both animal and human food. Abroad, the cakes resulting from the crushing of soybeans are used in sauces, ready meals, and mixed at a rate of 15% in minced meat steaks.
Through the availability of wheat bran, it is the fodder autonomy of the farms that are at stake. Many barns do not have the surface necessary for the production of fodder and are considered “above ground”.
But it is also the definition of the type of agriculture and food which is in question with as a corollary the place to be given to meat and dairy products in the household food ration.
