How to spin compost into food — by maggots

A mass of writhing maggots swarms in Greg Wanger’s open hands.

Their small bodies twist and stretch, rambling as they tumble from his fingertips into a bed of sawdust.

For Wanger, a maggots — or grubs, as he prefers to call them — are an critical partial of a food chain.

The CEO and boss of Oberland Agriscience rears about 100,000 of a black infantryman fly larvae each day during a company’s trickery in Halifax.

“I never suspicion I’d be a bug farmer,” he said.

Someday, a creatures, that eat insect food done from organic waste, could turn your pet’s lunch — or even yours.

Greg Wanger is boss and CEO of Oberland Agriscience, formed in Halifax. (Dave Laughlin/CBC)

Right now, Oberland sells live larvae as food for pet lizards, snakes, frogs and spiders. The association is going by a Canadian Food Inspection Agency acceptance routine to turn a feed mill for large-scale aquaculture and ornithology operations, and Wanger hopes to enhance to some-more normal pet dishes such as dog and cat food.

From compost to insect food

At a room in a Ragged Lake Business Park, cosmetic barrels are filled with organic rubbish that’s waiting to be incited into insect food.

Today, there’s a cylinder of mushrooms prepared to be processed, though on other days, a barrels could be filled with brewery rubbish or coffee grinds from a internal coffee shop.

Mushrooms are converted into insect food during Oberland’s trickery in Halifax. (Frances Willick/CBC)

Wanger won’t contend how a organic matter is converted into insect food, as that’s “proprietary information.” But he pronounced black infantryman flies are picky eaters — they won’t eat decaying or live food.

Eventually, a association aims to accept rubbish from metropolitan immature bins.

Wanger’s stand of larvae grow to about dual centimetres in these beds before they are harvested. (Frances Willick/CBC)

One block metre of black infantryman fly larvae can assimilate 15 kilograms of rubbish per day, according to Oberland’s website.

That’s partial of a reason a plan has perceived $75,000 from Divert Nova Scotia, a not-for-profit that champions rubbish rebate and recycling.

“What’s also engaging with this trickery [is] how it’s roughly probably a sealed loop,” pronounced Jeff MacCallum, CEO of Divert Nova Scotia. “Pretty most all they take in there, they use. It’s roughly a zero-waste facility.”

Black infantryman fly larvae feast on coffee drift during Oberland’s trickery in Halifax. (Dave Laughlin/CBC)

Wanger pronounced his association treats rubbish as a resource.

“This is indeed a feedstock and it is not a waste. This is indeed a very useful and roughly required partial of a puzzle.”

Cycle of life

In another room, a potion tank is bathed in pinkish light — “love light,” said Wanger — that encourages adult flies to mate. The few houseplants inside are partly for emblem and partly so a flies can splash a dew that forms on the leaves in a wet air.

After mating, black infantryman flies lay about 800 eggs. (Dave Laughlin/CBC)

The fly eggs are deposited in corrugated cardboard, like honeycombs, and when they hatch, a larvae crawl out and tumble into a tub, where they’re collected and eliminated to vast tables. That’s where they’ll grow from a hardly manifest pinch to about dual centimetres.

Most of a element in a holes of a corrugated card seen here is simply cardboard, though some cells enclose eggs. When a eggs hatch, a larvae will yield out and dump into a tub. (Frances Willick/CBC)

Only about one to 5 per cent of a larvae during Oberland are diverted from their predestine and authorised to pupate and grow into adult flies to say a supply of eggs.

Popular with lizard, chickens

The operation is one that Obie, a company’s proprietor lizard, would expected adore to get a closer demeanour at. The leopard gecko cooking adult to 10 larvae per day.

“Since we’ve had Obie, Obie has lived on a 100 per cent black infantryman fly diet and seems happy six months later.”

The larvae have been renouned with Obie, a proprietor lizard during Oberland Agriscience. (Dave Laughlin/CBC)

Oberland’s product has also been tested on chickens belonging to one of Wanger’s friends.

“Her chickens adore them,” he said. “She indeed pronounced to us that if her chickens had a choice, they would eat zero but.”

Protein source

By weight, a larvae are about 50 per cent protein. Compared with some-more traditional feed, they’re an efficient crop.

Wanger said Oberland can furnish adult to a million times some-more protein per hectare than a conventional soyfield or cornfield. Plus, larvae grow most faster — adult to 4,000 times their size in only 7 days.

“I consider this is unequivocally a diversion changer,” he said.

Wanger checks on a compost as it is processed into food for a larvae. (Dave Laughlin/CBC)

Most aquaculture operations get a protein for their fish from anchovies and sardines harvested in a sea off Peru and Chile, but it doesn’t have to be that way, Wanger said.

“Our idea unequivocally is to tighten a food loop and get a protein and keep a protein in Nova Scotia,” he said. “Our immature rubbish that we’re feeding a insects is all local. The insects are grown here, that is local.

“And we unequivocally wish … that a salmon locally in Nova Scotia will devour a product. Thus a salmon here truly will be internal salmon.”

Food for humans?

Will Oberland’s products eventually make their approach to your cooking plate?

It’s conceivable, Wanger said.

“The live tellurian marketplace for insects is flourishing rapidly.… I praise those in Canada who have taken a plunge and have put these into markets, and we are some-more than happy to demeanour during that in a future. Right now a hands are full with feeding Obie and eventually Nova Scotia fish and poultry.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/black-soldier-fly-larvae-compost-pet-food-aquaculture-oberland-1.4629991?cmp=rss