Environmental value

It is an established fact that insect farming will lead to radical changes in feed production, if only because the main animal protein component used in the industry is fish meal, whose production cannot be ramped up without having devastating effects on the environment, and replacements have to be found.

Furthermore, the recycling of organic waste by means of insects is a prospect that is bound to revolutionise the very concept of organic waste within a few years’ time. In all likelihood, a further boost to the expansion of the sector will come from the European Commission's progressive authorisations of trade in edible insects.

• Based on these considerations, we deem it important to set out the reasons why, in actual fact, the success of this new agricultural production chain, which is still viewed with suspicion by many people, is crucial to the achievement of ecological transition goals.
• Hence, we put across some observations on the environmental and social value of our proposal.

Expected impact on the production chain and the local communities.

From the social standpoint, the project envisages the valorisation of the activities carried out locally – e.g., the management of breeding facilities, genetic selection, waste salvaging, valorisation of the larva product – through the direct involvement of production realities operating in the areas connected to a Bugsfarm.

Our project is also expected to have a positive impact on farmers’ income by providing new sources of revenue from agriculture and ensuring transparency and a fair price structure throughout the value chain.

Through an efficient use of natural resources and a reduction in post-harvest losses and waste, this impact - combined with improved sustainability of the food production chains - will bring prosperity to the production chain and the region.

As is well known, insect breeding is a decidedly controversial topic, mostly due to a media narrative that so far has been unable to go beyond folklore or the mere surface of the issue.

to this conjection, at BEF, we believe there is no real chance of halting the objective revolution that the development of this new zootechnical specialisation will bring about in agro-industrial production chains the world over.

• Protein deficit: Italy and Europe import high quantities of raw materials for animal feeds, such as soybean and fish meals. In this context, insect breeding provides a viable alternative to importation, both because of the insects' protein content and because they can be reared on a wide range of substrates.


• Circular economy: the use of waste and by-products generated by other production chains makes it possible to salvage and put to good use an important source of organic material, which, once processed into insect biomass, acquires new value as feed.
• Sustainability: with regard to the feed industry, the qualifying element of the production of insect-based raw materials compared with traditional flours is a smaller ecological footprint.
  

The environmental value of insect farming is attested to by numerous studies; in the figure below the environmental impacts of the production processes of the main components of animal feed are compared with the impact of insect meal and insect oil production.

The table compares the environmental impact of the production processes of the main components used in feed production with that of insect meal and oil production.

The use of insects in feeds enriches the standards of excellence of the products, as it adds quality to the food constituents of feeds while it enhances the sustainability of the enterprises that make them. The ecological footprint of an insect farm is much shaller than any other type of breeding businesses in terms of both CO2 emissions and use of water resources. An example: a cattle farm releases 295 kilos of CO2 per kilo of protein produced, an insect farm releases 15 kilos.

And the consumption of water resources is not even comparable.

Organic waste management methods compared.

To what extent do the main waste and organic refuse management solutions meet the needs of the population and the territory in terms of environmental sustainability? In 2020, we collaborated in conducting a research study comparing different processes:




• Disposal in landfills
• Composting: transformation of organic waste into soil improvers that can be used in agriculture
• Energy production in a biogas plant
• Bioconversion with insects in large centralised cassette breeding plants
• Bioconversion with the BEF process in small plants using Bioconverters
• BEF process + BIOGAS
• Integration of the BEF technology with heat recovery in biogas plants

The table shows the positive impact of the business model of BEF Biosystems, and notably, the further added value generated by the combination of Bugsfarms and renewable energy plants.

The analysis shows the following:

1. As expected, disposal in landfills is the waste management system with the worst sustainability rating in terms of all impact parameters. Moreover, it is a model opposed by all EU waste policies, even though it is still used widely in many areas.
2. The production of compost from the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) offers many advantages, but separate collection and disposal costs are very significant. The process is often opposed by the local communities on account of environmental odour concerns. Lastly, even the possibility of economic valorisation of the compost is more hypothetical than real since the material obtained is typically poor quality, with no real commercial application (unlike insect droppings, which constitute good/excellent quality soil improvers).
3. Biogas and bioconversion processes have a positive impact, which becomes optimal in the case of BEF + BIOGAS, as the value of existing industrial facilities is further enhanced, reducing the load on the land and administrative complexity, as well as combining synergistically the benefits of recovering the heat surplus of biogas plants and meeting the energy requirements of insect farming due to the need for air conditioning of the rearing facilities.
4. Of the two bioconversion processes compared, it should be underscored that the BEF system (with Bioconverter) is preferable to insects rearing in sheds in that it makes it possible to significantly reduce the considerable energy consumption of the latter system (microclimate control, winter heating and summer cooling, machinery operation).
5. Finally, in terms of the safety of the working environment, the comparison of the two processes shows that the distributed solution proposed by BEF Biosystems is also preferable in terms of working conditions for the people running the farms (workplace microclimate and ergonomic design).