Black soldier fly, a friendly insect

I have been hearing the complaint about the quality of fish and poultry feed for a long. Farmers complain that the food available in the market does not contain as much protein, vitamins or minerals as it should have had. More than half of what is written on the feed packet is absent and this is where the question of food purity raises. Tannery waste or DDT mixed dry fish is heard to be used as food ingredients.

A variety of insects are farmed in many foreign countries to provide safe protein in fish. The insect is also used as poultry feed. But there were concerns about how acceptable it would be in our farming social trend. I have been listening to the story of the Black Soldier fly (BSF) for some years now. Farmers in several European countries as well as in China, Japan and Australia have developed this Black soldier fly farm as an excellent source of food for poultry and fishery. Needless to say, the fly has received a good response from all over the world in the last one and a half decades. In South Korea, this feed is being bought and sold in shops. In recent times, some of our local farms have developed such fly farms.

The Black soldier fly is very calm and its larvae stage is most important. In the last week of October this year, I had the opportunity to visit a remote village in Munshiganj to witness the farming of black soldier fly. The fly farm is built by three entrepreneurs, who also have fish farm and poultry projects. Like the other farmers, they also had problems with fish and poultry feed. To ensure the feed system, they have built the black soldier fly farm. Besides, even a hundred years ago, this fly was considered as an insect. In the evolution of time, which is now a very useful fly. One of the entrepreneurs Mohammad Hasan told me the story behind the farm, "I have been farming fish and raising chickens for a long time. I always had to get the obstacle from the feed."

A couple of years back one of his teachers came from Australia and informed him about the black soldier fly and how it could resolve all his problems. "I learned about the fly farming from watching YouTube," Hasan said. Last year, during the COVID-19 pandemic that turned everything upside down, Hasan collected the fly eggs from Malaysia. "Chicken and fish get 45 to 50 percent protein from the larvae, which you cannot find in any feed available in the markets," says Hasan.

Hassan said the fly has several stages in the production process. Although it is black in appearance, this beautifully shaped fly is not at all scary. It has a wing but no sting. Even adult flies do not eat any food, they live by drinking water only. The first stage is to breed flies and lay eggs. In the second stage, the larvae grow from the eggs. Then 20-day-old larvae are collected for poultry and fish farms. This is not the end. In the third stage, flies are made from larvae. The production process is not too difficult, but it should be scientific and timely. 

Black soldier fly has brought new hope. There is a lot of unknown information about these flies or larvae. The fly is one of 2,700 soldier fly varieties. More than 99 percent of the fly species spend most of their lives in water, but these flies spend their lives on land. Mainly the land area is their roaming area and it prefers 'Coffee' and 'Beer.' The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations conducted a research on black soldier fly in 2014 and they said it is a great source of healthy protein. The oil produced from the fly can be turned into biodiesel. The fly can become a source of natural antibiotics as well. In the laboratory, the black soldier is a unique assistant in the work of genome sequencing of flies. The fly lives around 45 days. Surprisingly, after becoming adults they live only for nine days.

The black soldier fly market is expected to reach USD 3.4 billion by 2030, says a report by Meticulous Market Research. The fly is now being marketed in all continents of the world in the form of protein meal, biofertilizers, whole dried larvae, larvae oil and others. It's widely marketed in the United States of America, Canada, The Netherlands, France, England, Germany, Finland, Belgium, China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

All farms cannot prepare food for their farms. Everyone has to depend on the market for some materials. But the market is not able to guarantee proper nutrition. This is where the black soldier fly comes into play. It is a natural solution to ensure nutrition and protein for the livestock sector. I am very much hopeful that its farms will spread across the country in a short time. I would rather suggest to keep an eye on everything from production stages to marketing, also looking at how this can get a fair market structure that will eventually benefit the farmers. Black soldier fly can truly become the future of our poultry and fish feed.