{"id":14908,"date":"2020-09-24T20:28:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T20:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.com\/kenya\/?p=14908"},"modified":"2020-09-24T20:28:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-24T20:28:41","slug":"kenya-harnesses-fly-larvaes-appetite-to-process-food-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/kenya\/economy\/kenya-harnesses-fly-larvaes-appetite-to-process-food-waste","title":{"rendered":"Kenya harnesses fly larvae&#8217;s appetite to process food waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Author:\u00a0REUTERS<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>AfricaPress-Kenya:<\/strong> Rotten bananas? Mushy avocados? Pulped oranges? Talash Huijbers wants them all.<\/p>\n<p>The 25-year-old is the founder of Insectipro, a Kenyan farm rearing black soldier fly larvae for animal feed. In the 10 days it takes for them to grow, the larvae need to be fed too &#8211; and fruit waste from factories and food markets in the capital Nairobi is just the thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe take all the green waste in Nairobi and we turn it into something of high value, animal protein,\u201d said Huijbers at their farm in Limuru, 28 kilometers (17 miles) from Nairobi.\u00a0\u201cFrom waste to gold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Every day, the farm processes around 20 to 30 tonnes per day of fruit waste and produces 2 and 2.5 tonnes of larvae, which are then dried and turned into animal feed. Any remaining waste is used as manure, some of it on the farm, and the rest is sold to farmers in neighbouring farms.<\/p>\n<p>The firm is the biggest in a wave of investment into larvae farming, seen as a lucrative and environmentally friendly way to dispose of organic waste and generate animal feed as concern rises over environmental pollution and\u00a0sustainable eating.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe end product of the waste goes to produce crops. And then the larvae that you get goes in to feed our livestock,\u201d said Chrysantus Mbi Tanga, a research scientist at the Nairobi-based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE).<\/p>\n<p>The institute has trained 2,000 black soldier fly farmers in Kenya in the past year and a half, but almost all are small operations. Insectipro, which began with an investment of USD850,000 (Sh92 million) two years ago, is the biggest. They will have their first profit before the end of the year, Huijbers said.<\/p>\n<p>The company says it can\u2019t keep up with orders and hopes to double or triple production by the end of the year when it gets a bigger dryer.<\/p>\n<p>Now Insectipro is researching the production of chitin, a byproduct of the black soldier fly\u2019s pupa as it turns into an adult. The pharmaceutical industry uses it in\u00a0compounds for dressing wounds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe anti-microbial properties, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial properties, when you put them in wounds, it helps to eliminate these bacteria that are causing decay,\u201d Tanga said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author:\u00a0REUTERS AfricaPress-Kenya: Rotten bananas? Mushy avocados? Pulped oranges? Talash Huijbers wants them all. The 25-year-old is the founder of Insectipro, a Kenyan farm rearing black soldier fly larvae for animal feed. In the 10 days it takes for them to grow, the larvae need to be fed too &#8211; and fruit waste from factories and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":14909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,8],"tags":[5793,858,5794,5795,5796],"class_list":["post-14908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","category-homepage-english","tag-black-soldier-fly","tag-farming","tag-food-processing","tag-icipe","tag-insectipro"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Kenya harnesses fly larvae&#039;s appetite to process food waste - kenya<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rotten bananas? Mushy avocados? Pulped oranges? 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