A Napoleonville Louisiana company is making headlines these days for taking something that was once a waste product generated by Louisiana's sugarcane industry and turning it into a food supplement for cattlemen and ranchers around the nation. Impact Fusion International says its products that are made with sugarcane waste known as bagasse actually enhance the essential vitamins and nutrients that both beef and dairy cattle need to maintain good health.

This Week in Louisiana Agriculture via YouTube
This Week in Louisiana Agriculture via YouTube
loading...

If you're not familiar with the term, bagasse, it refers to the dry, pulpy fibrous material that is left behind after crushing sugarcane or sorghum stalks to extract the juice. For years, the Louisiana sugarcane byproduct has been used as fuel. Most often to power steam turbines to generate electricity.

Other uses for the "by-product" of Louisiana's $2 billion dollar a year sugarcane industry include using bagasse as a food packing material. It was found to be quite good for that use except in situations where the food being stored is very hot. The material, since it is basically the remains of a plant's stalk is considered to be environmentally friendly as it is both biodegradable and compostable.

This Week in Louisiana Agriculture via YouTube
This Week in Louisiana Agriculture via YouTube
loading...

By the way the term "bagasse" comes from both French and Spanish origins. It basically means trash. The term was first used to refer to leftover material from the pressing of olives, palm nuts, and grapes. But more recently has come to mean the leftover remnants from sugarcane or sugarbeet processing.

Impact Fusion is now taking the bagasse and turning it into animal feed in a product marketed by the company as Supreme Gold Plus. That product is manufactured in the Napoleonville Louisiana plant. It combines many attributes of the company's Nutri-Mastic product with the bagasse to create a supplemental feed that can be used in addition to hay and corn.

But perhaps the most interesting attribute of the bagasse-infused Supreme Gold Plus, at least from a human standpoint is this. The mixture when digested and eliminated by the cattle produce no "poop smells". Yeah, it's unscented cow manure. Which could lead to fresher "dairy air" for lack of a better term. The bagasse-infused Supreme Gold Plus is also reported to be a good source of nutrition for cattle too.

This Week in Louisiana Agriculture via YouTube
This Week in Louisiana Agriculture via YouTube
loading...

So, the next time you go to a livestock show, or rodeo, or just find yourself down on the farm and the air isn't filled with the smell of hundreds of cowpies baking in the sun just know that you can thank Louisiana sugarcane for making a difference in how you breathe in and breathe out.

And if you think unscented cow plops are hard to believe, wait until you check these out.

Louisiana's Most Unbelievable Urban Legends