About a decade ago, two Belgian men headed to Vietnam, chasing black soldier flies.
What Gaëtan Crielaard and Alexandre de Caters saw as untapped potential for the insects in Southeast Asia had their hearts "ablaze," as they describe it on their company's — called Entobel — website.
Fast forward 10 years, and the men have a processing plant in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Vietnam, that can turn abundant soldier flies, their eggs, and larvae into a sustainable animal feed protein and soil fertilizer. The goal is to reduce reliance on other sources of those products that negatively impact our planet.
The Entobel team said the larvae are well-fed themselves, producing top-notch, highly studied products. It's part of the insect-propelled transformation they anticipate happening in our food system, which will need to feed close to 10 billion people globally by 2050, according to a company video clip.
"I hope that now, it's time for Entobel to shine a bit more and demonstrate it's possible to produce industrial volumes of insect protein at a competitive cost," de Caters said in a story by AgFunderNews.
The company is growing, processing billions of insects daily, per the video. Each production site can make up to 20,000 tons of highly nutritious powdery protein for feed each year. The dried fly larvae can be turned into a fatty acid oil that can be used in animal and pet foods, as well.
The products could relieve stress on our oceans and lands, which are utilized for fishing and soy production to make feedstock, Entobel reports in the clip.
It takes nearly 9 pounds of wild fish to make about 2 pounds of fishmeal, according to the company. Alternatively, Entobel said its fly product provides a healthy and immune-boosting feed for a variety of animals, including hogs and chickens.
The third product from the enterprise is 100,000 tons of fertilizer, which can be produced at each site yearly. Conventional nitrogen-rich fertilizers can leach into water sources, contaminating them, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The bug-based product, however, is billed as being healthy for the soil, with microorganisms that promote plant health.
"Our industrial farming systems aren't able to follow the demand in a sustainable way," the clip's narrator notes.
Black soldier flies are sometimes mistaken for wasps, though they only have two wings and no stinger. They buzz loudly, according to a description from the University of Florida. Another innovation being studied at Texas A&M is using their carcasses to make a sustainable plastic.
The Belgians have raised about $36 million during the last 10 years for their effort. The men expect to be profitable this year, per AgFunderNews. Now, the entrepreneurs aim to expand globally with larger facilities.
"We faced a lot of challenges around controlling the environment in the growing rooms, setting up the right ventilation systems, airflow control, and heat distribution, but we've taken those learnings and incorporated them at the new site, where there is a lot more automation, and we are a lot more energy efficient," de Caters told AgFunderNews.
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