Shrimp cocktail anyone?

When we first committed to sending out a monthly newsletter populated with stories about distillers grains, I admit I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to find enough story ideas. So I signed up for a Google alert—I get daily emails containing a link to anything published with the words distillers grains or DDGS. Turns out there’s more than enough to write about.

For example, who knew shrimp might be a good market for distillers grains? Last month I got a Google alert that led me to presentation slides from a talk given by Dr. Addison Lawrence. The researcher and professor spoke about studies of including DDGS as a portion of the feed for domestic shrimp at a Biofuels Co-Products Workshop held in early December in Waimanalo, Hawaii. There were lots of charts and graphs I wasn’t sure I understood but it sounded interesting, so I sent him an email, requesting an interview on the subject.

Talking to Dr. Lawrence was an experience I’ll not soon forget. First off, he earns the award for possibly the longest title I’ve ever come across. He’s a professor, senior faculty fellow and regents fellow for the Intercollegiate Faculty of Nutrition, project leader and scientist in charge at Texas AgriLife Research Mariculture Laboratory at Port Aransas, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University System. Even if you take out words such as "at" or "and" that’s a pretty impressive 30 word title. In his 50-year career in aquaculture they just keep piling on the titles, he told me.  

Talking to Dr. Lawrence, I learned that distillers grains is a great ingredient for domestic shrimp feed. First off, shrimp fattened up on 20 percent DDGS perform just as well or better than shrimp fattened up on traditional shrimp feed. Secondly, using distillers grains as a feed ingredient can significantly lower the cost of the traditionally expensive feed. We’re talking very, very expensive.

Basically, to make shrimp feed, you put all the necessary feed ingredients into a mixer and squeeze it out in long strings, which are dried. Putting DDGS in the feed results in a yellow feed that looks a bit like yarn doll’s hair. Shrimp, apparently, love the stuff.

His next two important points were interconnected. First, if the U.S. domestic shrimp industry could be revitalized, there’s a potentially huge market for distillers grains. Secondly, one major component of revitalizing the domestic shrimp industry is the need for cheaper feed and distillers grains fits the bill perfectly.

But why is the domestic shrimp industry failing you ask? Shrimp production has been moved overseas, of course. Most of the shrimp eaten in the U.S. today is foreign shrimp. Sound familiar? But if U.S. shrimp producers had access to cheaper feed and could produce multiple shrimp crops in a year, like they do overseas, the U.S. industry could build back up again. Pair that with the shrimp production system designed by you-know-who, which allows the production of shrimp indoors in any weather, the shrimp industry could provide jobs everywhere from Grand Forks, N.D., to Golden, Colo. Hey, look at that, another parallel to the ethanol industry!

Dr. Lawrence didn’t just tell me about shrimp and distillers grains. He converted me. His passion for the subject fairly leaked from the phone into my ear. I could picture him as he talked, leaning back into his squeaky chair and then sitting up abruptly as he made a particularly important point. Even though I don’t eat shrimp I found myself getting pretty excited about the subject—it’s hard to talk to someone like that and not catch the wave. Imagine it, ethanol plants could tap into a huge market for their distillers grains right here in the U.S. and shrimp producers could start churning out shrimp all around the country, saving freight costs. There might even be a day when we’ll have co-located ethanol plants and indoor shrimp farms. Fresh shrimp for everybody!

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do before we can really celebrate. More research needs to be done. And ethanol producers need to convince shrimp producers that they can provide them with a steady supply of the shrimp equivalent of a can of spinach in Popeye’s hands.

Do I think this is actually possible? Well, in our office we have a saying—this guy might be a mad man or he might be a genius. In other words, is it just a lot of gum flapping or could it actually become a reality? Well, Dr. Lawrence isn’t just talking, he’s involved in building the first commercial indoor shrimp farm using the super-intensive stacked raceways he developed. I smell the sweet smell of shared success between the ethanol and shrimp industries.