Insects have been part of the agricultural scene for thousands of years and now a South African company is farming billions of houseflies and blowflies to make chicken feed from the larvae.
Using insects in agriculture is common - think honey bees, which have been farmed for centuries. More recently, Irish parasitoid wasps have been used to target clover root weevils and tiger worms are used to turn manure and other waste into compost.
Based in Cape Town, South African company AgriProtein recently built the first two of 40 commercial fly farms, each of which will house 8.5 billion flies.
The company uses the flies as livestock. They lay billions of eggs on organic waste material, which hatch into larvae (maggots). The larvae are then harvested, dried and milled to make ''Magmeal'', a natural feed for chickens and fish.
Run by Jason Drew and his brother David, the company has a factory in Cape Town and uses fly larvae as a way to recycle nutrients that would otherwise be wasted.
Jason Drew talked to Southern Rural Life about his project.
He said the process was developed out of concern about overexploiting the oceans.
The meal was a naturally-produced product, ''turning waste into high quality protein that would replace fishmeal in industrial farming''.
''I believe we have over-exploited the insects of the seas [shrimps, prawns, lobsters, crab, etc] and missed out on their land-based counterparts - insects,'' Mr Drew said.
''We have focused on one.''
He said their Cape Town factory handles 150 tonnes of waste per day.
''What we produce is a natural animal protein for use in feed formulations for monogastric animals,'' he said.
''We use three species: housefly; blowfly and black soldier fly.
''We recycle nutrients from a range of organic material, from food waste and slaughterhouse waste to manure from a range of species.
''After recycling one is left with nitrogen rich compost and the fly larvae [Magmeal].
''We have worked with dairy effluent ... but it needs to be mixed with other solid wastes to reduce the moisture levels to prevent the larvae drowning.''
Mr Drew said he was ''nutrient recycling'' and the meal could be fed to chickens and fish, and to some extent pigs, all of which were animals that naturally eat larvae.
''There is no yuk factor. This is nature at its best - recycling and disinfecting waste into food for other animals.''
The company used recognised food safety standards.
He hoped its product would be given European acceptance as an animal feed within 24 months and he intended to start licensing the nutrient recycling technology worldwide, including New Zealand, in 2015.
''We intend to start licensing early next year and intend to produce locally in many markets,'' he said.
SRL asked the main research organisations about research on insect protein and nutrient recycling, and they all said none had been done in New Zealand to date.
AgriProtein
- Manually produces feed of just under two tonnes a month.
- Uses a manual system but is working on an automated plant design that will produce up to 100 tonnes of wet larvae a day or 28.5 tonnes dry
equivalent.
- Has raised funding to build a large scale plant near Stellenbosch that will handle 110 tonnes of waste and produce 20 tonnes of larvae per day.
- According to Agriprotein's website, it works with the University of Stellenbosch on several insect protein programmes, including investigating the use the natural anti-inflammatory properties of larvae to heal lame sheep and looking at larvae's high concentrations of bio-available iron to reduce anaemia in piglets when used in hog feeds.
- AgriProtein entomologists are also pioneering fly fertility.
- In addition to producing an insect-based protein meal, they also produce an oil and a soil conditioner.
- The new factory will produce seven tonnes of meal, three tonnes of oil and 20 tonnes of soil conditioner a day.
- One kilo of fly eggs turns into 380kg of larvae in 72 hours.
- Won the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Solvers Challenge and the United Nations'- sponsored Innovation for Africa award.
- by Yvonne O'Hara