Are fly larvae the answer to UK farming's environmental woes?

NationalWorld.com

Flybox co-founder and CEO Andrea Jagodic talks fly larvae as animal feed - and what environmental benefits it could offer to UK farming.

Transcript

00:00 - Hi, I'm Andrea Jagodic, I'm the CEO

00:02 and co-founder of Flybox.

00:04 The whole principle behind insect farming

00:07 is imitating the natural process

00:12 to get nutrients out of waste.

00:15 So we feed the black soldier fly larvae organic waste,

00:20 and then we harvest them for protein for animal feed,

00:24 primarily for fish, poultry, and pigs and pet food.

00:30 What we do at Flybox is we do containerized insect farms,

00:35 like you've seen for lettuce or basil before,

00:39 now it's just full of insects.

00:41 In Aylesbury right now in Buckinghamshire,

00:43 we're building a demonstrator farm.

00:45 So that's going to be really the world first

00:48 end-to-end modular insect farm.

00:51 This is where we have all of the modules demonstrated,

00:56 and it is on a commercial layer hand farm,

00:58 so we can already see how it integrates

01:01 into a farm as well.

01:02 The main environmental benefits,

01:04 the way that we look at them are just lowering land use,

01:09 water use, CO2 emissions.

01:11 These insects are not a pest,

01:14 they're not a vector for disease.

01:16 They're extremely safe and natural

01:19 to integrate into the food chain.

01:22 Someone told me growing up

01:25 that I would be perfectly happy putting my hands

01:29 into a giant box of wriggling larvae.

01:34 I would never have believed them ever.

01:37 So I understand it,

01:39 but it's about the fact that we're completely disassociated

01:43 from the farming process as a whole.

01:46 So that's just the reality of it.

01:48 What we're doing is feeding these animals

01:51 what they're supposed to be eating,

01:53 and that's all essentially.

01:55 So I think it's not really that insect specific,

01:58 we just don't want to accept the realities

02:01 of how our food gets to our table, I think.

02:03 We have so much market interest for this technology

02:07 from New Zealand to South America,

02:11 to North America, to the whole world.

02:13 And the mission here is to enable access to protein

02:18 to anyone who needs it,

02:20 because the mission is, broader mission or ambition

02:24 is to help feed the growing population.

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