We need alternative proteins to relieve the burden on soya production.
This is what Larry Kotch, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of modular insect farming company, Flybox told us in this week’s Net Hero Podcast.
‘The food system has a lot of challenges around supplying enough protein without causing damage to natural environments.
‘People are deforesting large areas of the Amazon to make soya, that soya is going into feed pellets to feed chickens. So, how can we make some alternative proteins that have less of an impact on the environment?
‘And insects are readily eaten by omnivores of all types. In some parts of the world, humans eat insects but other omnivores are not as picky as we are.
‘Bird, chickens peck for insects. Pigs eat insects very regularly. So it’s potentially a very natural source of a high value protein.’
Larry told us that insect farming can also help with turn waste to a valuable asset.
‘What insects eat is waste. So where they sit in the ecosystem is in the decomposer layer, like the shrimp of the land.
‘And you have many companies out there that operate in the waste to value or waste to energy space. So when we create waste, it doesn’t go to landfill, it goes to these companies that try to get energy out of the waste through biogas. And insect faming can fit into that space.
‘It’s not necessarily a silver bullet that replaces everything else. But you can daisy chain a lot of these solutions together.
‘So, for instance, if you have a waste stream to produce biogas, you can run an insect farm that uses up your other waste streams and creates proteins that you can then sell. This will create a frass fertiliser that can go back into the biogas digester to fire start it and be even more efficient.
‘So it adds another brick into the option set for a waste to value player where they can recover more resources and become profitable.’
Larry believes that insects can provide the farming industry with the help that it needs.
‘I’m definitely a big defender of the livestock industry. I think they get a really bad rap. Farmers in general, they produce all of our food. They run difficult businesses under a lot of constraints.
‘And I just want them to know that there’s other solutions out there that make sense for them.
‘They need solutions, they can’t just have demands and restrictions. They need real solutions.’
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