TECHNOLOGY 92 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2025 families believe in the promise of creating a more resilient, dependable future. To top it off, and perhaps even the most motivating factor for farmers and ranchers, is the potential for making fresh, nutritious, and much appreciated feed for cows. Jack said that one of the main learnings from prior developments of the system was that the sprouted grains need to be broken into small pieces and evenly mixed into the total mixed rations. He’s seen cows fighting over the larger pieces of fresh sprouted grains and even pulling them out of each other's mouths. He looks forward to seeing many cows savor over the fruits of his labor. He’s also anxious to see what adding fresh sprouted grains to daily diets could do to boost feed intake, cow nutrition, and even milk production. This aspiration of feeding cows fresh spouted grains daily has been years in the making. A significant milestone occurred when construction of the first facility, the Forever Feed Technologies Innovation Center, was completed in October 2024. The 10,000-squarefoot building can produce up to 15 tons of fodder per day and has the capacity to feed 850 cows about ten percent of their diet. This system is one-third of the size of the planned commercial version, which will produce more than 35-tons per day in California’s environment. Everything is built to scale so that all aspects of the commercial FFT Grow System can be fully tested. Jack and his team of engineers and nutritionists are collecting data to better understand and adjust the system to achieve maximum consistency in the fodder, a key to animal nutrition. To date, the Innovation Center is still ramping up its production, and ForeverFeed™ is being fed to a control group of milking cows in order monitor performance. As more data becomes available it will allow Jack and his team to see for themselves the nutritional effect on the milking cows. Construction of the first commercial-scale FFT Grow Systems is anticipated to start as early as this year. “I'll tell you, my emotions swung from side to side when we first started building. There was a lot of nervous energy because I put a lot of time, effort and money into something that is still very novel,” Jack said in his recent interview with Progressive Dairy. “It still needs to be proven to a point that this scale and operation is going to be cost-effective and worth the investment put into it. However, seeing this go from a design on paper to operating at scale has been exciting to see. Especially how big and durable it is.” Durable is key, as Jack sees Forever Feed as a longterm solution to California’s water availability crisis. With the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and limited surface water availability, California’s farmers will continue to become more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The Public Policy Institute of California has estimated that at least 500,000 acres of irrigated San Joaquin Valley farmland (ten percent) will need to come out of production to comply with SGMA. By using 95% less water and 99% less land, the Forever Feed system shows great promise to help address this challenge. “We’ve received an incredible amount of interest and support,” said Jack. “People have seen value in what we are trying to achieve and have been amazed at the sight of the Innovation Center. This feedback is reassuring as we continue our hard work to make Forever Feed an important tool for sustainable agriculture.” Jack de Jong, Forever Feed Technologies Co-founder, CEO, and Chairman, is a third-generation dairy farmer in Kings County.
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