The reporting for this story stinks

Move over, grass-fed beef. Insect-fed fish have arrived.

Standing in a room of one million flies, my senses were at full alert. Each cage undulated with wriggling waves of the buggers, and the stench was powerful. Ostensibly all the insects were secured into compartments, but if even a half a percent were free, that’s a hell of a lot of loose flies. And every one of the escapees seemed to be crawling on me rather than on the employees at the fly lab farm. Like dogs, they smell fear, I was told.

These flies are part of a growing interest and experimentation with insect protein in general, and nutrient recycling in particular. Which is greener–certified organic production that ultimately wastes a third of its crops, or nutrient recycling, where those same wastes become the energy for livestock?

This piece, South African ‘fly farm’ recycles food waste nutrients, is the first of my pieces for IFT’s FutureFood2050 project.