Why The Black Soldier Fly?
Insects are incredibly efficient at converting feed to biomass, making them an excellent source of protein. Black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illuciens) are voracious eaters, consuming a wide variety of organic material. With spent grains as a feed stock Oberland’s BSFL have a wet weight feed conversion ratio of about 4:1, far better than conventional protein sources.
The roughly one-month lifecycle of the BSF makes it ideally positioned to efficiently produce protein on a consistent, industrial scale. Once morphed into fly form, the BSF does not have a fully formed mouth and no longer eats. So, during the larval stage the BSFL naturally store large reserve of nutrients to complete the life cycle.
Oberland reared black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) provide extremely high production yield per hectare compared to corn, cattle, and soy. Given the inherently high protein content of insects (30-50%), the yield is even more pronounced when these values are converted into kilograms of protein produced per hectare.
