How firm uses flies to turn waste into cheap animal feed

Palm trees whiz by as one approaches Biobuu Kenya Ltd, a waste processing company along the Mombasa-Malindi highway in Kikambala, Kilifi County.

The company uses Black Soldier Flies (BSF) to produce protein animal feeds and organic compost. On the day of the visit, The Smart and Technology team finds the factory manager Esther Sumbule and her staff busy at work.

Workers as they offload waste from different collection points in the county.

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Sumbule says the company recycles food wastes such as fruits, vegetables and hotel waste.

using the Black Soldier Flies which feeds on the wastes. The end-product is animal protein for making feeds for pigs, poultry, dogs, fish meal and organic fertiliser that is sold to farmers at affordable prices.

Solving a problem

Sumbule explains that they came in to sort the problem of expensive and quality feed.

She explains that most of the feeds fed to chickens, pigs and farmed fish require high levels of proteins which at the moment comes from soya or fish meal.

“We saw a huge gap in the animal food sector basically in protein feeds so we decided to create an affordable substitute,” she says.

Years of research

She explains that Black Soldier Fly scientifically known as Hermetia illucens, was the perfect choice for the production due to its biological advantages.

This was after three years of research on the breeding and feeding behaviours of the insect.

“Black Soldier Fly is an insect native to Africa and has larvae that can consume as much as 70 per cent of its own body weight in waste every day.” “For every kilogram of organic waste it consumes, 50 grams of proteins are produced whereas we use the larvae of this fly to recycle nutrients in foods waste and become the protein content for animals,” explains the website.

Superman-like ability

The Rockefeller Foundation says the single most important fact about Black Soldier Flies may be that in the larvae stage, they have the Superman-like ability to transform that waste into high-quality protein.

This is then used as alternative protein additives in animal feed, this translates into an inexpensive, clean and sustainable food source—especially important as farmers, struggle to recover from the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, including food shortages.

The process

The production includes the breakdown of the waste into small particles which can be fed to the insects by conveying it into the hammer mill.

The processed waste is taken to a place where the black soldier flies are introduced to lay eggs and after hatching the larvae feed on the waste for seven days.

The larvae are separated from the fertiliser and then transferred into other feeding trays to feed for  two more weeks before they are separated, dried and packed as animal protein. The remains are packed as organic fertiliser.

The process continues as the ones meant to hatch eggs are fed for one more week to grow into Pupa and are transferred into clean trays, mixed with water and sawdust and then put into dark cages to grow into pupae after three weeks where they turn into flies and lay eggs and then die.

The organic fertiliser, an organic mix, is what remains after the flies have fed on the waste.

She says the high demand for waste has helped in waste management and disposal in most hotels and marketplaces.

According to Sumbule, the company collects up to six tonnes of wet waste, from big hotels and the Kongowea Market in Mombasa and Kilifi Counties every week.

The company which has its main branch in Tanzania targets large and small scale farmers to sell their products.

“We sell a 90-kilogram bag of organic fertiliser at Sh2,000 to farmers,” says Sumbule.

A kilogram of fish meal costs Sh160 but we sell our animal protein at Sh100 per kilo.

Farmers save Sh60 when formulating their poultry, pigs, fish and dog meals.

The company which has 15 employees plans to expand and provide more job opportunities to locals.

The Smart Harvest spoke to farmers who have used the products.

Rosemary Njoki, a 60-year-old farmer in Kikambala, Kilifi County says she has seen a significant difference since she started using the BSF products on her farm where she keeps poultry and pigs.

 “I started pig and poultry farming when I was 20  years old and over the years finding a protein meal was a challenge since I depended in fish meal protein and omena which is expensive,” says Njoki.

Njoki, who keeps 100 large white pigs and 200 kienyeji and broiler chicken, says since she started feeding them with the larvae protein, she has seen a big difference.

 “Instead of giving maize jam only to the pigs, nowadays I add the larvae protein and it has so far become the best substitute,” she explains.

She also added that the mixture of the larvae protein with maize jam, Poland and sorghum helped her chicken to add weight.

Icipe role in projects

According to a research done by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology

(Icipe), the Black soldier fly’s larval meal in feed enhances growth performance, carcass yield and meat quality of finishing pigs.

Larvae as a naval protein source have been used in substituting fishmeal in animals globally.

In sub-Saharan Africa, pig production has great potential for raising household income of millions of resource-poor smallholder farmers.

However, a major barrier for producers is the lack of high quality feeds ingredients, especially major protein sources such as fishmeal and soybean meal.

Reduced market availability of these protein sources throughout the year has led to an increase in feed costs accounting to 60-70 per cent of production costs.

In Kenya fish meal is mainly obtained from silver cyprinid fish Rastrineobola argentea P, which constitutes the largest catch by weight of fish in Lake Victoria, but there is competition because fish is also human food.

Therefore, the amount of animal protein that goes to the animal food sector is restricted while overfishing and water pollution has reduced its production hence making it on high demand.

This makes it inaccessible to local farmers.

Dr Chrysantus Tanga, a research scientist at Icipe says there’s no competition in insect farming, hence it’s a more viable alternative and can be used in the animal sector.

Dr Tanga says Icipe works in all possible insects that can be of benefit to humans, animals and the environment.

“We don’t work on BSF alone; we work on all diverse insects and those that cause disease in crops. We also work on insects that are related to animals and human health like tsetse flies, mosquitoes and see how we can control them,” he says.

Dr. Tanga says when fish, soya beans and maize is removed from animal feeds, research shows that these raw materials can feed close to three to four million people per year, this can also create job opportunities and boost food and nutritional food security.          

“There’s competition for food between humans and animals, according to a recent study by Icipe, it shows that if you use insects as an alternative and adopt just five to 50 per cent uses of the insect-based feed in the entire Kenyan food sector alone, you can generate about 252,000 jobs per year,” he says.

The benefits of the black soldier fly are organic fertiliser, insect protein and insect oil products.

For farmers interested in insect production, Icipe gives free trainings, provides them with rearing houses and trays.

“We have trained close to 20,000 farmers and entrepreneurs. After training we give every farmer 10-20 kilogrammes of BSF for a free startup,” says Dr Tanga.

“We have a big production facility where we produce about two to three tonnes of insects per month and we have opened training centres across the country.”

The beauty of the insect, according to Icipe is that the normal decomposing period for the normal waste is about 24 to 32 weeks, but on using the insects it shortens this to five weeks there by helping in mitigating environmental pollution.