High costs of commercial feeds remain a key challenge affecting the viability of smallholder pond production in many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. High feed costs result in farmers having to choose between not feeding their fish adequately or potentially running a loss due to high expenses. While fish feed availability and cost have reduced in recent years, a more affordable option is still needed for smallholder farmers to ensure commercial success.
Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) are voracious feeders of organic material, including decomposing animal and vegetable matter. They can, therefore, be used to convert wasted and spoilt resources into usable protein for feeds. Black Soldier Fly (BSF) are therefore being explored globally as an alternative source of protein for animal feeds. There are numerous challenges with this objective of using BSF as protein replacement in animal feeds. These include high labour costs, large volumes of waste aggregation and high cost of BSF processing into meal. Thus, their application for large-scale operations is limited.
RAD (a smallholder focused fish farm service provider in Uganda) has pioneered a novel BSFL-as-feed approach that circumvents these challenges, enabling smallholder farmers to achieve economic growth performance. The approach sidesteps the processing requirements for BSF, by feeding live BSFL to fish in ponds. A trial in partnership with the ThinkAqua examined how live BSFL feed would affect fish growth. This trial was conducted in fertilised ponds at the RAD farm in Rukungiri, Uganda, to evaluate different feeding strategies to optimise fish growth. A total of 100 fish were stocked in hapas and subjected to four different feeding treatments. The treatments included no feed (NF), commercial feed only, 33% substitution of commercial feed with BSFL, and 66% substitution of commercial feed with BSFL. Over the trial period there was no reduction in growth between fish fed on commercial pellets or those fed with substituted BSFL.
Based on the results of this trial, RAD scaled their BSFL production and now produces fish with a BSFL substation rate of 80%. In addition, RAD breeds and rears BSF (the more operationally challenging stage) and sells the BSFL to smallholder farmers. BSFL production is possible by smallholder farmers to support their own pond production, requiring only a source of organic waste, a small area to grow the BSFL, and low daily labour requirements. Smallholder farmers can focus on the relatively simple challenge of growing their BSFL at the current price point of $0.70 per kg. This compares favourably to the market price of $1.30 per kg for commercial pellets. Thus, an 80% inclusion of BSFL offers over 36% reduction in feed costs. This approach provides a strong incentive for farmers to adopt this approach as it significantly reduces their production costs, while considering the local contextual challenges in which they operate.