According to the recently released U.S. Animal Food Consumption Report, a total of approximately 708,000 tons of aquaculture feed was fed to 493.9 million catfish, 1.4 billion shrimp, 186.9 million trout, 44.5 million tilapia, 7.4 million hybrid striped bass and 25.9 yellow perch in 2016.
More than 27 percent of this amount came from soybean meal. Adding corn, wheat midds and DDGs to soybean meal’s share represented about 66 percent of all feed tonnage provided by these four commodities to aquaculture in 2016. Other commodities comprising at least 1 percent of tonnage fed to aquaculture that year include: corn gluten meal, cottonseed meal, fish meal, wheat flour and porcine meal.
The map included in the report shows how the total feed tonnage fed to aquaculture is broken out by state. The top states include: Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Idaho and Arkansas, all of which feed more than 30,000 tons of feed to aquaculture.
