During the 1980s about 40 per cent of the world's cereal harvest was used as livestock feed. There is therefore considerable competition on a global scale between people and their domestic animals for this important commodity - and this can have a major impact on prices. About one-fifth (just over 22%) of cereals used as livestock feed was fed to livestock in the developing countries. This was equivalent to 15 per cent of all cereal consumption in these developing areas. Whilst this does not seem an enormous proportion the use of cereals as livestock feed in the developing countries continues to increase (at about 8% per year during the 1980s compared to 1%t annual increase in the developed countries) and engenders yet more competition. In addition the rise in the human population puts additional pressure on cereal consumption.

The nature of competition between food (for people) and feed (for animals) could result in poor people being unable to afford to buy the basic ingredients of their staple diet. In order to reduce or relieve the competition there is a need to develop livestock feeding systems that make minimal or no use of cereals. This is a particularly appropriate concept for poultry feeds (which normally contain up to 60 per cent of maize) as the demand for poultry meat and eggs increases rapidly at the expense of meat from grazing ruminants.

Commercial ("compound") feed accounts for up to 70 per cent of the cost of poultry production. Smaller scale producers often attempt to mitigate this expense by diluting such feeds with resources from the farm (usually cereals) which dilutes the nutritional balance and leads to lowered - and therefore more costly - production. There is therefore a need for commercial or home mixed feeds that contain nonconventional ingredients that reduce the unit cost of production for the producer.