How to make the animal feed of the future

Let’s start by looking at what’s on the daily menu for a chicken in the Netherlands. Wheat accounts for 40% of the feed, followed by soybean meal (20%) as the main sources of protein. Maize accounts for a further 20%, with vitamins, mineral supplements and fats making up the remainder.

But while cereal and soybean meal form the basis of chicken feed, this menu is gradually becoming more varied. Dutch poultry feed producers are increasingly incorporating various protein-rich side streams in the feed – but often in relatively low amounts and aimed at finding the optimum balance between animal health, growth, cost and other factors.

‘Our overarching goal is to make the feed of the future’, says Arya Rezaei Far, poultry nutrition researcher at Wageningen Livestock Research (WLR). ‘Our research supports the transition towards a circular food system. In such a system, arable land and water resources would ideally be used for human food production while livestock would be fed mainly on biomass that isn’t suitable for human consumption.’

Many other protein ingredients for animal feed score much better on circularity than imported soy and soybean meal. European sunflower meal and rapeseed meal are among the most commonly used alternatives (‘meal’ being the by-product that is left after oil is extracted from the seeds). Other alternatives include legumes and side streams from fermentation and bioethanol production, for example. These ingredients all provide the protein and energy that are essential for animal feed.

But changing a chicken’s menu is easier said than done, says Rezaei Far. ‘There are many factors to consider: the nutritional value, quality, availability and price of the ingredients. The current diet has been used for a long time now, so feed producers can accurately predict how much protein the feed contains, how much is digestible by the animals, and so on.’ 

Rezaei Far illustrates what would happen if a feed producer decided to replace imported soybean meal by locally produced sunflower meal. ‘This would make the feed more circular, but it would also affect the nutritional value. The quality of sunflower meal can vary a lot depending on how it is processed. It also generally contains less protein and more fibre than soybean meal. As a result, you may need a larger quantity of meal to supply the same amount of protein, which makes the feed bulkier and harder for the chickens to digest efficiently. The chickens may then grow more slowly or need more feed. You’ll always run into these kinds of trade-offs.’ In addition, farmers and feed producers cannot be certain of consistency in the supply and quality of many circular alternatives.

WUR and partners from the feed sector studied these kinds of constraints in the Feed4Foodure programme (see inset above). They carried out experiments in which Brazilian soybean meal was partly replaced by peas, field beans and sunflower or rapeseed meal. They replaced 11 to 25% of the soybean meal in the diets of chickens at early age and up to 85% after three weeks of age.

The results were promising, says Rezaei Far: ‘Partial replacement achieves a balance between environmental benefits and animal growth. It reduces the carbon footprint of the feed by between 6 to 44%. Complete replacement of soybean meal would result in a reduction up to 55%, but then you need to address substantial issues in terms of the fibre content, energy value and other factors.’

Wageningen researchers are now working on getting a better understanding of these challenges and how to tackle them. Rezaei Far is optimistic: ‘We’re already seeing an increased usage of sunflower and rapeseed meal in the animal feed sector. That is a significant step towards sustainability, but our ultimate goal is to have a fully circular diet.’

But reducing soy imports is not just about sustainability anymore. Volkert Beekman, researcher at Wageningen Social & Economic Research (WSER), has noticed a clear shift recently: ‘Geopolitical instability has become a big factor driving efforts to reduce reliance on soy imports. The price of fuel has increased, and importing feed from outside the EU has become riskier and less reliable. Geopolitical tensions have made Europeans more aware of their dependencies. That could act as a stimulus for the transition to more sustainable animal feed.’

WSER regularly investigates the wider socio-economic dimensions of feed production. In 2025, Beekman analysed possible alternatives to soy imports after the Dutch parliament urged the government to encourage the cultivation of protein-rich crops in the Netherlands and reduce dependency on soy imports. ‘In the long term, fundamental change is needed in food systems: if people switch to more plant-based diets and livestock numbers fall as a result, that will reduce the need for soy imports. But that is part of a broader discussion about animal production systems.’

In the short term, Beekman thinks the production of peas and other legumes has a lot of potential. ‘Field beans (faba beans) used to be widely cultivated in the Netherlands, but not anymore. That’s because they’re simply not profitable for farmers. If the government wants to change that calculation, it could use EU agricultural subsidies to support the cultivation of crops like field beans and rapeseed. Some EU member states already do this.’

In a study commissioned by the Dutch ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food security and Nature, Beekman evaluated the sustainability goals that Nevedi, the Dutch association of feed producers, has set for itself. He concluded that these targets were realistic and contribute to sustainability in several ways: ‘The sector uses soy that doesn’t lead to deforestation, it is reducing its use of fossil fuels, and so on.’ Those are good steps, Beekman concludes, but that doesn’t affect the composition of the animal feed. ‘The sector uses soy that doesn’t lead to deforestation, it is reducing its use of fossil fuels, and so on. Those are good steps, but they don’t affect the composition of the animal feed.’ In order to reduce the import of soy from outside the EU, the menu will have to change.