Black Soldier Fly Farming – BlackSoldierFlies.com

Black soldier fly farming can be a great enterprise that combines generating profits with contributing to developing circular economy and improving environmental sustainability. It is also very scalable, ranging from a small box producing a few treats for backyard chickens to an automated factory producing hundreds of tons of refined oil and protein meal. Growing black soldier flies is novel enough to have a lot of room to grow and to allow new people and companies to enter this field. At the same time, it is mature enough to be considered for funding by private investors and lenders.

Just as any other type of farming, raising black soldier flies is both satisfying and challenging at the same time. Deciding to do so can be a great choice to make in one’s life. However, under any circumstances it must be an educated decision. There are special words to know, concepts to understand, and issues to keep in mind. Below is their brief overview.

Let’s start with the terms and the concepts that they describe.

Bioreactor. This is a fancy term for some kind of a container full of decaying stuff and black soldier fly larvae feeding on this stuff. The sky is the limit to the variety of its possible designs.

Frass. Insect manure. Black soldier fly feces mixed with the undigested leftovers of their feeding substrate, usually food waste of some kind.

Self-harvesting. When larvae are ready to pupate, they turn dark, stop feeding, and start looking for a protected and relatively dry place to pupate. This often involves crawling out of bioreactor. These migrating larvae can be intercepted and used for further processing. This approach is called self-harvesting, as opposed to mechanical harvesting by sifting them out of their frass.

Breeding cage. Also known as love cage. Enclosure where adult flies live and breed. It is very important that breeding cages receive proper illumination. Adults will not reproduce unless exposed to the light of certain wavelengths.

Nursery. A place where eggs laid by adults hatch and young larvae grow for a few days. After that, the larvae are ready to be released into bioreactors.

Continuous production. Resources necessary for black soldier flies are added and flies are introduced and harvested for a while without emptying and cleaning bioreactors or breeding cages between harvests.

Batch production. Production goes in distinct cycles from introduction to harvest. After each harvest, bioreactors or cages are emptied and cleaned.

Centralized production. Waste is brought to a central facility where it is processed by fly larvae.

Decentralized production. Bioreactors are set up at a site where waste is generated (e.g., a food processing plant) or accumulated (e.g., a city dump). Breeding cages and nurseries are usually kept at a different location. Bioreactors are inoculated by small larvae that are transported from that location.

Now that we are on the same page regarding terminology, it is a good time to consider a number of issues that an insect farmer is likely to face.

Generating revenue. Money can come from selling harvested black soldier flies in one way or another and from charging waste generators for disposing of their wastes. However, the devil is always in details. Market research is a must before making any significant investments.

Securing waste streams. While waste is seemingly everywhere, not all of it is equally suitable for black soldier fly farming. Also, many types of waste byproducts may be already spoken for. For example, spent brewery grain is commonly fed to cattle, finfish trimmings are a common ingredient in pet food, and so on. In addition, many wastes are seasonal. It is important to make sure that there is always enough food for flies to eat. Another thing to remember is that different diets are likely to mean different nutrient content of harvested larvae. This may become a problem if a certain nutrient composition is required for using them for a particular purpose (for example, a chicken feed manufacturer may require specific protein contents, etc.). As a result, constant switching between different wastes may not be appropriate.

Waste pre-processing. Available wastes may not be immediately suitable as larval substrate. Therefore, some kind of initial processing may be required. Oftentimes, it involves shredding and grinding, but other manipulations may include adding or removing water, mixing different waste types together, adding microbial cultures for fermentation, etc. One important thing to keep in mind is that even if larvae grow fine, there could be difficulties in separating them from the substrate at the time of harvest if waste particles are similar in size to the larvae.

Making sense of regulations. Both the manufacturing process and its products must comply with all kinds of laws and regulations. It is better to know them before starting a bug farm, not after it is shut down by authorities because of non-compliance.

Scaling issues. If something works great in Mason jars on a benchtop, it will not necessarily work in the same way in five-ton vats on a factory floor. This is one of the most underappreciated facts among scientists who have no experience in engineering.

Adult farming. Most current operations maintain populations of adult flies and raise their own larvae for subsequent use in waste conversion. This is different from most other agricultural operations, where immature organisms, such as seeds, calves, or fertilized chicken eggs, are produced separately and sold to farmers who then grow them to a harvestable size. This is increasingly becoming an option in black soldier fly farming as well. Such a separation usually allows for better quality control. However, it also puts farmers at the mercy of supply chain vagaries and market fluctuations.

Harvesting. Using self-harvesting on an industrial scale initially seemed like a very appealing possibility when black soldier fly farming was in its infancy. References to this approach are still commonly found on the Internet and in other sources. However, this approach has significant shortcomings, especially on an industrial scale (see the page on black soldier fly myths and misconceptions for details). Therefore, at present batch production and mechanical harvesting are the most used approaches.