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From TFA: > An acre of land used to raise soldier fly colonies can produce more than 60,000kg of protein per year, according to various peer-reviewed estimates
by jagger27 7y ago
From TFA:
> An acre of land used to raise soldier fly colonies can produce more than 60,000kg of protein per year, according to various peer-reviewed estimates. That’s several orders of magnitude greater than the per-acre protein yield of cattle (about 18kg), soybeans (430kg) or chickens (816kg).
At least from a land density POV, it wins hand over fist.
- ianai 7y agoProbably not the full story. What do these bugs need for food? Plants take in water, micronutrients, air, and sunlight.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoThey eat the organic waste
- jbob2000 7y agoSo in order for us to farm these flies, they need organic food. So we're back to growing food for our food, just like we do for livestock.
- jagger27 7y agoYes, but the protein conversion factor is orders of magnitude better.
- fredophile 7y agoThe examples given in the article are difficult to dispose of waste products from other food industries such as brewing. We're already making beer. Might as well use the waste products for something productive.
- jbob2000 7y agoIt's not easy to convert waste to a commodity. Recycling has a big problem with this - if the waste isn't provided in the right way, then it's totally useless (ie. plastics need to be completely clean, all food waste has to be washed out, otherwise it just goes to the landfill). What if different breweries output different quality waste? Some is too watery, some too thick. Is it now worth it to reprocess this waste to make it usable? Is the collection and processing of this waste cheaper than just growing food for the flies?
- jacobedawson 7y agoThe article makes it pretty clear that the soldier flies aren't fussy at all: “They’re generalists,” Tomberlin says, and eat just about anything. Pig manure? Check. Human waste? Check. Food scraps? Check. The only organic materials they haven’t had luck with are bones, hair and pineapple rinds, he says.
- RosanaAnaDana 7y ago>It's not easy to convert waste to a commodity. Recycling has a big problem with this - if the waste isn't provided in the right way, then it's totally useless (ie. plastics need to be completely clean, all food waste has to be washed out, otherwise it just goes to the landfill). We need to acknowledge that the requirements of 'almost-perfection' required in our recycling stream is something we built into it. We had reusable systems that operated without issue for decades that we discarded in favor of modern co-mingled recycling (which is obviously failing us). There's no rule of recycling or reusing that says the parent material needs to be pristine in its condition to be recycled, thats a rule we introduced because of how 'we' thought to do recycling. We could build re-usability back into our systems, we are choosing not to do so.
- pharrington 7y agoFor these maggots, our waste is it's fuel. Biology's produced a whole bunch of bizarre, extremely niche DNA coded self replicating machines. If the machinery is already there, and the ethical concerns are minimal, why not exploit them?
- antisthenes 7y agoHow scalable is this then? What happens if the local breweries can only supply 50% of the waste demand for the larvae? What if it's not 50% but only 10%? How do you feed the insects then?
- bin0 7y agoThe difference is that we're using stuff that's already being grown. It's re-using that which already exists. This could be lawn clippings, coffee grounds, or other compost stuff. It could be rotten food and help solve the food waste problem. We're not growing more food, we're making wasted protein available.
- nkingsy 7y agoThey are also great animal feed. Chickens and fish find them irresistible