Dive Brief:

• In Maine, farmers are using coffee grounds and chaff, and also spent grain that was used for brewing beer, to fatten livestock. And in doing so, farmers are finding a good, economical food source for animals, through partnerships with coffee roasters and beer brewers.
• The proliferation of craft beer breweries has helped spur this trend of using spent grain and other food waste to feed sheep and other livestock.
• As a result of this new market for the spent grain, Allagash Brewing Company now has a silo specifically for spent grain, enabling Maine farmer Norm Justice to pull up his tractor-trailer to the silo in order to collect and transport the grain. Justice sells the spent grain to dairy farmers.

Dive Insight:

Dairy farms are avid consumers of the spent brewing grains, since it is a cheaper and good source of food for the cows. "Any animal that is going to eat grain will consume this — except for horses," Justice said.