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    Kenya leads charge in emer­gent mil­lion-dol­lar in­sect farm­ing busi­ness

    BSF

    By George. P. Munene

    Headed by the In­ter­na­tional Cen­ter of In­sect Physiology and Eco­logy (ICIPE), headquartered in Nairobi, and aided by Kenya’s ideal cli­mate, many in­sect farm­ing star­tups are find­ing the coun­try fer­tile ground in this new farm­ing fron­tier.

    Ac­cord­ing to Dr. Tanga Chrysantus, Head of ICIPE’s In­sects for Food, Feed, and Other Uses (IN­SEFF) pro­gramme; “ Over 1000 farm­ers in East Africa are en­gaged in in­sect rear­ing. 75% of the re­gion’s millers are will­ing to for­tify their feed with in­sects to re­duce their costs while up to 95% of fish and pig farm­ers are act­ively look­ing to bring down their pro­duc­tion costs by in­cor­por­at­ing in­sects into an­imal diets. In lay­ing chicken, in­sect sup­ple­men­ted diets have shown to in­crease lay­ing life by up to 62%.”

    The "In­sect Feed Mar­ket - Growth, Trends, and Fore­casts (2020 - 2025)" re­port showed that the global in­sect feed mar­ket was val­ued at $687.8 mil­lion in 2018 and is pro­jec­ted to grow by 11.7% between 2022-2027. In 2019, the mar­ket for ed­ible in­sects ex­ceeded $112 mil­lion glob­ally and is es­tim­ated to grow at over 47% CAGR between 2019 and 2026. In­creas­ing de­mand for high pro­tein, low fat & eco­nom­ical food source along with shift­ing trends in di­et­ary needs is likely to stim­u­late mar­ket out­look.

    Rear­ing in­sects provides farm­ers with an op­por­tun­ity to meet a twin de­mand for both a pub­lic good and a money-mak­ing one. 

    Some of the Kenyan com­pan­ies doing just that in­clude: 

    Sanergy Lim­ited

    The com­pany col­lects waste from Nairobi's in­formal set­tle­ments which are con­ver­ted to or­ganic fer­til­isers and in­sect-based an­imal feed that has been found to in­crease crop yield and an­imal weight by 30%.

    Through its fran­chisee model, Sanergy serves over 126,690 urban slum dwell­ers pro­cessing 43,473 tons of waste.

    Re­lated News: Kwale farm using spirulina su­per­crop to com­bat en­demic mal­nu­tri­tion

    Re­lated News: Eat­ing crick­ets can end mal­nu­tri­tion in chil­dren

    The or­ganic waste is con­sumed by a colony of Black Sol­dier Flies (BSF) lar­vae which churn the waste into a nu­tri­ent-rich pro­tein input for an­imal feed.  

    For fer­til­izer, frass residue from Black Sol­dier Fly pro­duc­tion pro­cesses is mixed with car­bon sources from plant waste to pro­duce high-qual­ity com­post.

    “We are in­ten­tional about using re­sid­ual or­ganic mat­ter that isn't already find­ing its way into feed spaces, there­fore not com­pet­ing with tra­di­tional feed makers,” ex­plained Ani Vallabhan­eni, the com­pany’s co-founder and CEO.

    The com­pany provides non-sewered san­it­a­tion solu­tions that are five times cheaper than tra­di­tional waste dis­posal meth­ods.

    In­secti Pro

    Foun­ded by Talash Huijbers, In­secti Pro is a Limuru based com­pany that farms half a bil­lion crick­ets and BSF for human and an­imal con­sump­tion re­spect­ively. 

    Des­pite gen­er­at­ing up to three tons of feed daily the com­pany can't sat­isfy grow­ing con­sumer de­mand.

    A rich source of pro­tein, zinc, and iron, the com­pany is work­ing with over 100 res­taur­ants in the coun­try to have crick­ets fea­tured in their menus.

    Ad­di­tion­ally, In­secti Pro is work­ing to com­bat mal­nu­tri­tion using crick­ets to feed over 500 chil­dren in HomaBay County.  

    Black sol­dier flies are used to pro­duce an­imal feed es­pe­cially tar­geted to com­mer­cial fish grow­ers. Black sol­dier flies con­tain over 50%  pro­tein mak­ing them a bet­ter op­tion than soy. They are also far cheaper and purer than fish­meal.

    The com­pany is fo­cused on meet­ing four of the UN’s SDGs: (2) Zero hun­ger and mal­nu­tri­tion by cre­at­ing al­tern­at­ive food sources that are higher qual­ity and more af­ford­able; (9) In­dustry & In­nov­a­tion; (12) Re­spons­ible pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion by using a zero-waste model fo­cused on cir­cu­lar closed sys­tems; and (17) Part­ner­ships.

    Or­ganic waste, the com­pany’s main raw ma­ter­ial is bulky to trans­port which has meant a need to de­velop work­arounds to im­prove their lo­gist­ics. 

    “We have set up four dif­fer­ent hubs across the rural coun­tryside that are close to our end con­sumers who’s often the farmer,” ex­plained Talash

    At just 26, she provides em­ploy­ment to 80 full-time work­ers. 

    Re­lated News: Kenya waste-to-value com­pany en­list­ing farm­ers to earn from black sol­dier flies

    “In­sects have proven to pro­duce health­ier foods at max­imum ef­fi­ciency and with little en­vir­on­mental im­pact. For farm­ers and en­tre­pren­eurs, this is a clear high po­ten­tial growth in­dustry they need to be get­ting on board at the ground floor,” said Mi­chael Beer, GM Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment at Ag­ri­Fu­tures Aus­tralia.

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