Sydney - When it comes to resolving a big global food problem, a new breed of farmers and their financial backers are thinking small. Work on the world’s largest fly farm has begun in South Africa after the European firm behind the project won funding from investors, propelling the use of insects as livestock feed beyond academic theory to a commercial venture.
The project near Cape Town was conceived by scientists and environmentalists racing to find protein alternatives as rising production of livestock feed such as soy gobbles up more valuable farmland.
The farm, being built by Gibraltar-based AgriProtein, will house 8.5 billion flies that will produce tons of protein-rich larvae as they feed on organic waste. The tallest barrier to such start-ups has been the availability of capital, with potential investors deterred by legislative hurdles.
But given the prospect of getting hundreds of times more protein feedstock from a single hectare of land compared with traditional sources, political objections are coming down. The success of AgriProtein in securing $11 million (R118m) in funds, while small, is a sign investors are warming to the idea that insects could be big business in the years ahead.
“The world has an issue with waste management and also sourcing protein,” said Johnny Kahlbetzer, the director of Australian agricultural firm Twynam, one of several global investors in the fly farm.
“If farming insects can solve the two problems, then that is a great outcome, and that is what has motivated our investment,” he said.
With human consumption of meat tipped to soar, and the increasing effect that livestock output has on the environment, governments are considering the use of processed insects as animal feed.
The European Commission is relaxing rules to allow the inclusion of insects in poultry and pig feed from 2015, while the US Food and Drug Administration is considering an application from US company EnviroFlight to sell livestock feed made from insects.
Livestock production, which accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land, is seen by the UN as a leading cause of environmental problems including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Referring to forecasts by the UN that food production will need to rise 70 percent by 2050, Professor Arnold van Huis, a tropical entomologist at Wageningen University, said: “It is clear to everybody we urgently need protein alternatives that are less demanding.”
Housing billions of flies that feed on more than 110 tons of rotting food and waste every day, the Cape farm will be capable of producing 20 tons of larvae a day, 3.5 tons of larvae high in fatty acids, and 50 tons of organic fertiliser, Jason Drew, the co-founder of AgriProtein, said last week.
AgriProtein will use a combination of the black soldier fly, the blowfly and the common housefly. In cages, the flies will be fed a mix of spoiled or leftover food, manure, and abattoir waste. They will then be left to breed. Their larvae will afterwards be dried and processed into an animal feed.
When sold, the AgriProtein feed was likely to be 15 percent cheaper than fishmeal, Drew said. Fishmeal was sold at $1 658 a ton at the end of May, the World Bank said, just shy of the record $1 919 a ton hit in January this year.
While having a price advantage on fishmeal, PROteINSECT, the EU-funded project investigating the efficacy and safety of using insect protein as a source of animal feed, said insect feed would probably never fully substitute for traditional protein sources. It would rather alleviate environmental pressures, as demonstrated by trials last year.
Based on UK trials, Elaine Fitches of the UK government-run Food & Environment Research Agency said it would be possible to get on average 150 tons of protein from a hectare of land a year, significantly above the yield of 0.9 tons of soy per hectare.
AgriProtein planned to grow beyond the first site, with work on a second farm set to begin next year in South Africa and a further 38 projects planned around the world, Drew said.
AgriProtein is not without competition in North America and Europe.
EnviroFlight and Canada’s Enterra Feed all plan to expand in North America, while Ynsect and Protix Biosystems have also committed to commercial fly production over the next year in the EU. – Reuters