A single acre of black soldier fly larvae can produce more protein than 3,000 acres of cattle or 130 acres of soybeans
Washington Post Christopher Ingraham
July 3, 2019
11:59 AM EDT
Last Updated
July 3, 2019
12:46 PM EDT
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — It may be hard to understand the appeal of plunging your hand into a pile of writhing maggots. But the sensation is uniquely tactile, not at all unpleasant, as thousands of soft, plump grubs, each the size of a grain of rice, wriggle against your skin, tiny mouthparts gently poking your flesh.
For Lauren Taranow and her employees, it’s just another day at work.
Taranow is the president of Symton BSF, where the larvae of black soldier flies are harvested and sold as food for exotic pets such as lizards, birds, even hedgehogs. Her “maggot farm,” as she styles it, is part of a burgeoning industry, one with the potential to revolutionize the way we feed the world. That’s because of the black soldier fly larva’s remarkable ability to transform nearly any kind of organic waste — cafeteria refuse, manure, even toxic algae — into high-quality protein, all while leaving a smaller carbon footprint than it found.
In one year, a single acre of black soldier fly larvae can produce more protein than 3,000 acres of cattle or 130 acres of soybeans. Such yields, combined with the need to find cheap, reliable protein for a global population projected to jump 30 per cent, to 9.8 billion by 2050, present big opportunity for the black soldier fly. The United Nations, which already warns that animal-rich diets cannot stretch that far long term, is encouraging governments and businesses to turn to insects to fulfill the planet’s protein needs.
People who’ve seen what black soldier fly larvae can do often speak of them in evangelical tones. Jeff Tomberlin, a professor of entomology at Texas A&M University, said the bug industry could “save lives, stabilize economies, create jobs and protect the environment.”
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing this at some scale throughout the world,” he said.
So why aren’t we?
When the LED lights are flipped on in the fly-breeding room at Evo Conversion Systems, the whir of thousands of tiny wings fills the air as flies careen about their screened-in enclosures in search of a mate. Evo, which was founded by Tomberlin, shares a wall with Symton. The companies are separate but symbiotic: Evo hatches fly larvae and sells them to Symton, which fattens them up on a proprietary grain blend that ensures optimal nutrition for the animals that eventually will consume them.
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Well as long as there is a supply of beef, lamb,pork,fish,chicken,horse,kangaroo,venison,shellfish, eggs, and so on in another words REAL FOOD, maggots will be nearly the last on my list of things I would eat.
Cockroach milk would be about last . . .
OK … if overpopulation is the prompt for this dietary mandate, then might I suggest that those peoples who are actually ADDING to the population (by spawning litters of children) be the ones chosen to eat maggots. So, the Mexicans, Muslims, dot.Indians, and some Asians can eat maggots. My people who are reproducing at sub-ZPG … can still eat the white mans food. Simple.
How about the people that cane up with this nonsense live on nothing but maggots for a year and put their money where their mouth is.
Sounds like they’d be putting their mouth where their money is, in this case.
Eat my share, please. Yes, really! It’s OK – I’m feeling generous….
The UN Secretary General could not be reached for comment as he was on his tri-monthy pilgrimage to an Outback steak house.
Hi apologies for this not on topic post, but I would like help to find the reference that refutes the “by 2050 batteries will have undergone a technical revolution – akin the leaps and bounds of the computer world – and so will b able to save the world with their cheap mega-storage capabilities. Many thanks
Well, how do you prove a negative? You can’t. Instead, the burden of proof is on the person asserting that a battery revolution will come by 2050. Until then, it’s just a baseless assumption.
I have seen various of claims that battery technology, photovoltaics, wind turbines, you name it, are going to develop at something akin to Moore’s law and we will have cheap abundant renewable energy in the future. All we have to do is ban fossil fuels now so that big corporations have the incentive to do the necessary research. Or something like that. Most likely wishful thinking.
I do not know if it helps HS, but a commenter (“the man at the back”) on Paul homewood’s site a few days ago drew attention to a recent report from the Manhatten Institute that poured scorn on the idea that something akin to Moore’s law could apply to battery , wind or solar energy:
The link was this:
https://economics21.org/inconvenient-realities-new-energy-economy
Some points:
“4. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace 5% of global oil demand.
5. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” 10-fold.
11. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50%, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.
12. For security and reliability, an average of two months of national demand for hydrocarbons are in storage at any time. Today, barely two hours of national electricity demand can be stored in all utility-scale batteries plus all batteries in one million electric cars in America.
13. Batteries produced annually by the Tesla Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory) can store three minutes worth of annual U.S. electric demand.
14. To make enough batteries to store two-day’s worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).
31. No digital-like 10x gains exist for solar tech. Physics limit for solar cells (the Shockley-Queisser limit) is a max conversion of about 33% of photons into electrons; commercial cells today are at 26%.
32. No digital-like 10x gains exist for wind tech. Physics limit for wind turbines (the Betz limit) is a max capture of 60% of energy in moving air; commercial turbines achieve 45%.
33. No digital-like 10x gains exist for batteries: maximum theoretical energy in a pound of oil is 1,500% greater than max theoretical energy in the best pound of battery chemicals.
34. About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent of one pound of hydrocarbons.
35. At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.
36. Storing the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil, which weighs 300 pounds, requires 20,000 pounds of Tesla batteries ($200,000 worth).”
I cannot vouch for the scientific accuracy of the report but the points are of interest I think.
“Moore’s Law” is nothing more than exponential growth. Exponential growth is quite common. Many things grow exponentially (… until they don’t). What would be at issue is the exponent. For Moore’s Law — the component density of integrated circuits doubles every two years (until it doesn’t)– the exponent is around 1.4. That’s very high. e.g. for US population growth, the exponent is currently around 1.006.
How fast are battery storage costs dropping? That seems a bit fuzzy. But there’s no question that they ARE dropping. The first number the all knowing internet gave up to me was 76% in the 7 years from 2012-2019. That’s fairly close to 8% a year compounded. Exponent 1.08. Pretty fast. But clearly not Moore’s Law fast. How much by 2050? 1.08^31 = about 11. So the battery that costs $10000 today MIGHT cost only $920 in 2050. (Or not).
Pretty impressive if you believe it.
Even if we don’t completely believe THAT, it does seem that by the second half of the century, electricity storage costs might be pretty low.
The notion that this is even possible is false. Computing can be miniaturized because all of the processing has to do with signals/information. In the days of relays and vacuum tubes, transistors, etc. these circuits were large and generated a lot of waste heat. Efficiency was readily improved by going to smaller scale lower-power integrated circuits.
In the case of batteries for transportation, actual large-scale physical work is required. Batteries can become more efficient but they still have to provide the energy necessary to move someone’s fat ass from point A to point B, which is a lot more energy intensive that manipulating the flow of electrons.
It’s similar in the case of PV. Sure, films can be improved and made thinner within some limits, but the amount of solar energy that is collected is proportional to a panel’s area, and the size of the wire to transmit this energy still needs to be large as it has to be to handle the current density. In computing, for a given operation, current can be reduced. That’s not the case in doing physical work.
Well that’s the first time I felt that “Read the full article here” was an obscene comment.
I could tolerate using maggots as a chicken feed supplement, but as food?
I could tolerate battery reared chicken as maggot feed, but not as food.
Fried grubs and insects are very tasty if you can get over our cultural aversion to such ideas. I’d rate them above a vegan pizza any day. ( There are very few things which I can not stomach but one is a vegan pizza, the other is the vegan which goes with it. )
A good cut of steak or mutton would go down better on a night out at a restaurant.
Hey if God had wanted us all to be vegans he wouldn’t have created McDonalds.
If God hadn’t intended us to eat animals he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.
First we had to “save the whales”. Now we’re eating all their fish. Inconsequential.
Having been forced to give up animal protein by persistent gout, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. But I must say that the only “meat” that I really miss is the occasional shrimp salad. Maybe there is something to be said for eating arthropods. Not that maggots would be my first choice among the arthropoda.
I am finding that modern methods of presenting vegetable protein make a future without meat a lot more appealing (to me at least) than it might have been a few decades ago. Maybe the future for an overcrowded planet — if that’s what you folks end up with — is vegetable protein, not bugs.
exactly pigs n chhoks will eat em, cattle could eat them as a dried meal additive id guess but limited
BUT
did you all note the supposed crap rubbish n toxic algal eating maggots…are fed on??/
SPECIAL GRAIN BLENDS…sorta negates a lot of their claims doesnt it?
Marie Antoinette should of course have said, “Let them eat maggots.” Then the Loony Left wouldn’t have killed her.
RE: “…which fattens them up on a proprietary grain blend…”
Hmmmmmm. Do these folks understand conservation of energy?
The need to feed them on grass, like grass fed beef. You can charge a lot more for it, then.
My thoughts exactly Kerry. It appears the protein per acre calculation has not been applied terribly consistently. Yes maggots can be fed on stuff that is otherwise waste, but then so can pigs – and cattle for that matter (think palm oil kernel). And it is telling that in this case they are actually grain fed.
Probably “spent brewer’s grain” used for finishing the black soldier fly larvae. So, they are exploiting a industrial waste product for creating a value added product. The cost of pristine grain otherwise would not make the venture end product financially competitive in regards to protein per dollar.
What makes it “proprietary” is probably the addition of some compounds (vitamins/minerals/oils/aminos) that create a larvae with a standardized nutritional composition more commercially ideal (complete) for it’s target (fish/poultry) feed requirements.
well the cows n chooks would eat the spent brewqers grain and they already DO
so theyre filching good animal food to feed damned maggots
and then of course those breeding areas are artificailly lit heated/cooled for the flies
and ditto next door for the maggots as well.
plus material to build said sheds and the water use which i also bet is pretty high
eco?
NOT!
cows eating pasture just need some peace and vegetation
Cows and warm blooded creatures require more calories to thrive than bugs do. I have read as much as 10 times more calories to sustain the same biological mass.
Water requirements for insects is much less than for warm blooded creatures. The black soldier fly and their larvae have different water consumption; the larvae are not drinking (like say crickets).
The black soldier fly adult does need some light, but the larvae themselves do not require light. But the human workers do need to see what they are doing.
Unless butchering outdoors livestock and poultry commercialization do require structures (shed). Milking and egg laying commercialization also are usually tied to structures (shed).
> “The United Nations, which already warns that animal-rich diets cannot stretch that far long term, is encouraging governments and businesses to turn to insects to fulfill the planet’s protein needs.”
And there’s the lever with which to move the world. Frame the argument as the “animal-rich” vs. the “protien-poor.” No really unexpected just surprising they tip the hand so early.
And the WHO warns red meat to be cancerous;
https://www.google.com/search?q=WHO+warns+red+meat+cancerous&oq=WHO+warns+red+meat+cancerous+&aqs=chrome.
The workers at those factories are all likely Vegan.
Anyway these are available as ersatz-Burgers in Germany at REWE – the packaging says Insekt Burger, right beside top quality Block House Angus beef burgers. A closer look reads “buffalo worms”.
I’m going to complain to management about worms in the shop freezers!
I think the UN has a termite infestation.
Anyway a Freudian slip :
Evo hatches fly larvae and sells them to Symton, which fattens them up on a proprietary grain blend that ensures optimal nutrition for the animals that eventually will consume them.
So the cat is out of the bag – we are the animals that will feed on this slop. The oligarchy want to cull the herd.
Alarmists first! When I see Al Gore and Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna chowing down on maggots I’ll believe it.
Can’t – family cannibalism is taboo.
+++++++ roflmao thread winner;-)
So how soon will our intellectual betters be dining on these at Davos, and all their other Climate Mega-Conferences? The world watches…
when someone starts trying to make me eat worms is when I’m a gonna start shooting.
“save lives, stabilize economies, create jobs and protect the environment.”
Yes, a little known fact is that a 10 gallon bucket of black soldier flies can save a drowning child !
BTW is it “OK” to call them black soldier flies , or should we prefer soldier flies of colour?
I was thinking of the marketing – Soylent Black? OK, perhaps not…
I have a friend who has a cricket farm and raises millions of crickets for the pet food industry, which in his case is for reptiles, birds and other critters who like this raw protein. There is a huge market for this tech to raise insects for chicken feed, fish meal and even hog feed. Great! Huge markets.
I am not sure there is any need for this to be part of any humans direct diet, since we really have a food surplus at the end of the day. Unless people really want it. I suppose it isn’t really much different than some people liking raw snails, or caviar, sushi or a dozen other foods that aren’t high on my list of things to eat. A protein bar made up of processed insects is probably as healthy as it gets, although not big on my list to eat. Let the market figure it out as long as this doesn’t get pushed down my throat..no pun intended.
Actually, we’ll top out at 11 billion, and then decline to around 5 billion, assuming no large natural disasters and such.. The late Hans Rosling has already done the math, and shown his work on youtube…
The insect protein can be ground into flour and with additional ingredients made into almost anything.
Any greenies who claim that we need to take drastic action to prevent catastrophe, but who hasn’t made insect protein a staple of their diet is a hypocrite. We need to remind them of this on a continual basis.
The inapt and vague comparisons left me cold right away. What are the ‘3000 acres of cattle’ eating? And which cattle? Yearlings or eight year old cows?
Also, aside from a little fertilizer and water, I pretty sure my local farmer is not feeding his soy beans at all.
If maggots are such a good deal, more precise comparisons would be more convincing. Unless maggots are not all that afterall…
Same here.
I had no idea what one acre of maggots was; I am now assuming that it is 43,560 square feet of maggots (at some optimum depth) being fed a special grain.
I know what 130 acres of soybeans is, and the typical associated yield.
3000 acres of cattle must be the number of cattle that some typical & ambiguous 3000 acre area can sustain (likely without the special grain supplement).
Correctomundo. And what is the stocking density of the cattle? I have seen it range from one per acre to one per 100 acres.
Imagine the uproar if maggots were being fed to foreigners at our borders…
haha I was thinking the same thing
cheaper than a wall and more effective
The promotional piece cites “cafeteria refuse and manure” as potential feed for the maggots. Where does that come from — the animals raised conventionally? So, how is the maggot protein sustained if we do away with animals as their feed-stock? Soylent Green? Once again, the environmentalist zealots haven’t thought this through. It is a way to eliminate “cafeteria refuse and manure,” but it is probably best used as a protein supplement for farmed animals.
Clyde, please note that the touted maggots do not eat garbage; they eat a proprietary blend of grains to get useful nutrients. The save-the-world do-gooders miss the obvious unreality of this pie-in-the-sky scheme, once again. Grains require fossil fuels to grow, harvest, process and transport.
Anyway, for you people of a conspiratorial bent: Is just this the would-be world masters’ plan to feed the masses their version of Soylent Green?
Farms could raise maggots on manure and feed the chickens and pigs. These UN types think too linearly.
And the 1st question is, ……. . is Jeff Tomberlin, the professor of entomology at Texas A&M University, and his staff of researchers, ……. all getting their necessary protein by eating those black soldier fly maggots.
Or are Hillary’s “deplorables” the ones that are “earmarked” for eating maggots?
Totally a projection, they do a wash-rinse-repeat over a small space and then project it up to an acre. Further, it’s not within any process of a normal food chain, i.e., where do they get the nutrients? From a “proprietary grain blend.” I suspect this grain blend uses remnant material from grain elevators, (the stuff that rots on the ground). Subsequently, again, there’s no normal place in the food chain. Sustaining this process at scale could end up being more costly than any process currently in the human food chain.
Wish my dad were still alive, he used to debunk these “insects as food” myths very completely in a few sentences.
Didn’t I see this same thing awhile back when there were only 6 billion people, or was that meal worms???
You could make a very uncomfortable horror movie about a mass breakout from this type of farm. Cheers –
Global Worming is a very real and existential threat to our civilization.
DonM
+1
Count me in if they taste like prawns or chicken and can be made into a nondescript patty.
An innovative dish comes to mind:
maggot meat loaf with roach gravy.
After you’re done eating it, wash your dishes in a nearby stream, placing them carefully into the golden sunshine to dry.
It’s so natural. You’ll feel really good about doing this.
From the link
“More than 90 per cent of those fisheries are either fully exploited or overfished, meaning that as the world’s population grows, there will be more demand for alternative protein sources.”
More than 90 per cent of the studies on those fisheries are flawed.
Neither of these statements have much precision, and it is tiring to read all these armchair (better term needed for those pontificating outside of their knowledge) “experts” use a real or imagined crisis to justify their existence. Are students to be scientists now required to take a course in advertising? If so replace it with thermodynamics.
More than 90 per cent of the ocean is nutrient limited. Doesn’t seem possible with all these amazing views of copious amounts of life shown on TV of coral reefs, schools of porpoise, sharks, etc.
Cerca 1960’s, there was a proposal to harvest “trash” fish, dry and grind them whole into “fish flower.” At the time it was also believed that the oceans had an inexhaustible supply of fish. Can’t find a link.