NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota
State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
August 6, 1998
An increasing number of North Dakota farmers are growing crambe, an oilseed that's useful for producing plastics and industrial lubricants. Research at North Dakota State University shows that the meal that's left over after the oil's extracted makes an excellent protein feed for cattle.
"Finding a use for the meal is a key to keeping production and processing of crambe profitable," explains Vern Anderson, an animal scientist at NDSU's Carrington Research Extension Center. "And now we've been able to show that crambe meal is an excellent protein source for cattle."
"It's the cheapest natural protein source on the market right now," Anderson says. That's especially true in the Carrington area of central North Dakota where a new oilseed processor, AgGrow Oils, is purchasing crambe to process and looking for markets for the meal. Last year, North Dakota producers raised 20,000 acres of crambe. The crop is proving to be a profitable alternative to more traditional crops in North Dakota and is useful in rotations for breaking disease and insect cycles.
In the NDSU research, Anderson found that crambe could be fed at rates of up to 10 percent of the dry matter intake of pregnant and lactating cows with no impact on performance. For steers, the researchers boosted crambe levels to 15 percent of the diet with no problems. Anderson compared performance to cattle on diets containing sunflower or soybean meal as the protein source.
Some research in the early 1980s showed that crambe meal contained glucosinolates, glucose-sulfer compounds with a sharp flavor to humans such as in radish, that reduced feed intake in some cases and was linked to the disruptions in the production of thyroid hormones. Anderson saw none of those effects in his research where crambe was fed in a mixed ration. He says changes in processing techniques or differences in diets may account for that change.
However, use of crambe meal in livestock diets is limited in feedlots and to just 4 percent of the diet by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration based on that early research.
"Our research supports changes in those FDA restrictions," Anderson says. In addition, Anderson plans to study the effect of crambe meal on meat to determine if the crop can reduce levels of saturated fat or cholesterol or have an effect on flavor.
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Source: Vern Anderson (701) 652-2951
Editor: Tom Jirik (701) 231-9629