Proteins and fats can come from many sources, but perhaps one of the most novel is that found in insects. Insect protein can be produced using a fraction of the land, water, and resources required – thus helping our customers meet their sustainability goals.
Global Risk Management and Sourcing Director
Cargill Aqua Nutrition
With a growing population and swelling middle class, we’re keenly aware that global protein consumption is set to double by 2050. It will take innovation across the food chain to sustainably, affordably and nutritiously feed the world. At Cargill, we’re leveraging our unique position at the heart of the global food supply chain to meet these challenges head-on – whether that’s investing in new technology to create alternative protein choices for humans or exploring novel sources for animal feed.
Cargill Animal Nutrition & Health provides nutrition to a wide range of land-based and aquatic species, and we see an opportunity to cut our carbon footprint by utilizing novel feeds. For us, sustainability is a business imperative – it’s not just a nice thing to do, it’s the right thing to do for the people and the planet we share, and it informs every part of our decision-making and growth strategies.
Sustainability is a critical part of customer operations, and our customers face increased complexity as they balance animal health and welfare, performance, and business economics while reducing their environmental footprint. At Cargill, we challenge ourselves to explore opportunities to lower our carbon footprint across our aquatic and land animal species. By sourcing new raw materials and creating new, innovative feeds, we are continually working to do more with fewer resources.
For example, within our aqua nutrition business we recognize that there is a growing demand, but a finite annual supply of fish harvested and processed to fishmeal and oil for aqua nutrition. We see a need for scalable and sustainable alternative feed ingredients that bring similar benefits provided by fishmeal.
To explore the possibilities of protein alternatives, we partnered with biotechnology company and leading insect producer for animal and plant nutrition, Innovafeed, which has a solid concept, talented team, and the right understanding of feed. From a successful start with our aqua nutrition team, we were able to expand our partnership across other land-based species feed, such as poultry and swine.
WHY THE FLY?
Proteins and fats can come from many sources, but perhaps one of the most novel is that found in insects. Insect protein can be produced using a fraction of the land, water, and resources required – thus helping our customers meet their sustainability goals.
The advantages to using insects (specifically black soldier fly larvae) are numerous. In addition to being a source of high-quality protein and fatty acids, insects are powerful ‘up-cyclers’, meaning they can feed off large quantities of local agricultural by-products, can be farmed in vertical farms with low environmental impact and are part of most animals’ natural diet.
Innovafeed’s expertise lies in the farming and processing the Black Soldier Fly (BSF)– one of seven species authorized by the EU for use as an animal feed ingredient. BSF was chosen due to its short lifecycle of nearly 45 days, of which only two weeks required to reach processing age, and its high-quality protein and oil.
The BSF larvae feed on agricultural by-products, such as wheat bran and wheat slurry during its larvae stage, then 99% are harvested. Only a very small percentage of the larvae population go on to the pupate stage, which ultimately becomes flies for reproduction purposes. One fly produces between 500-1000 larvae eggs and all parts of the insect are used.
Oil and protein are extracted from the larvae through a mechanical process. The protein is used in aqua diets and the oil is used for monogastric diets. Insect compost provides fertiliser for arable land, and it is returned to farmers supplying by-products, making the process circular.
First, we looked at how we could leverage insect protein across Aqua Nutrition, given the finite resources of fish available for fishmeal and oil. We found that by leveraging high-quality insect meal in aquafeed production can save up to 16,000 tons of CO2 for every 10,000 tons of insect protein whilst maintaining fish performance. Cutting CO2 emissions in the aquaculture industry is core to Cargill’s SeaFurther™ Sustainability initiative where the ambition is to reduce the carbon footprint of our customers’ farmed seafood by 30% by 2030.
Innovafeed is scaling up and processing insect meal from black soldier flies to a format that can be used in making salmonid feed. Cargill can supply the food chain by-products the insects need to grow, further reducing our environmental footprint. Innovafeed’s circular economy approach brings added environmental benefits as the company upcycles co-products from the agriculture production of starch to feed black soldier fly larvae. Once the larvae reach a certain stage, protein and oil are extracted for use in animal and fish feed.
BRINGING THE POSSIBILITIES ASHORE
While Cargill’s initial collaboration with Innovafeed has focused on aquaculture, last year we announced the expansion of our partnership to include more species, starting with the use of oil derived from insects in swine and poultry feed.
Bringing the possibilities ashore, we have conducted numerous feed trials in swine diets to compare the impact of different oil sources. These trials demonstrated that the nutritional profile of insect oil fits well with swine requirements, making it possible to supplement or replace vegetable oil without negative effects on performance.
Naturally present in their diet in the wild, insect oil is rich in lauric acid, a fatty acid that helps support the intestinal health of animals, especially piglets. The Cargill/Innovafeed research also suggested indications of possible performance and health benefits that require further study, such as improvements in stool quality in piglets fed insect oil post-weaning.
After three years of running trials and exploring the practical solutions to be able to use insect oil in piglet feed, Cargill has started selling piglet feed with insect oil in certain markets. This expansion demonstrates the strategic role the insect industry can play in transforming the global food model towards a more sustainable feed industry.
BUZZING INTO THE FUTURE
In addition to application in piglets, Cargill is pioneering trials to compare insect oil versus plant oils in broiler diets, and to date has found similar advantages with no detrimental effects. We are further exploring the expected benefits of lauric acid in insect oil on broiler gut health and welfare.
When the trials on broiler feed conclude, we will work with customers to bring more products from insect-fed livestock to retailers’ shelves and to consumers who are increasingly recognising the use and benefit of insects in meat production, including as an alternative source of protein and oil.
In the meantime, Cargill continues to work to broaden its basket of sustainably sourced raw materials to reduce reliance and pressure on any individual supply chain. Other protein sources being investigated include bacterial meals grown in fermentation systems, whilst oil from micro-algae also raised in fermentation systems can produce important volumes of valuable fatty acids EPA & DHA. These long chain omega-3 fatty acids are otherwise currently mainly available from fish oil. Bringing more sources to our basket enables us to support the required sustainable growth in global aquaculture, while ensuring we continue to provide highly nutritious feed to our customers and have options to reduce carbon footprint and other environmental impacts and manage total feed costs in changing global markets.
Cargill’s partnership with Innovafeed marks a major milestone toward more sustainable and efficient animal feed and is just one of the many avenues we are exploring to create a more sustainable future. There is no one single solution to reducing the environmental impact of livestock husbandry, and getting the job done requires relentlessly driving incremental improvements and proactively working as an industry. With the help of our partners, we know that we are making significant inroads towards a more sustainable future.
About Brad Rude
Brad Rude, a Director of Cargill Aqua Nutrition (CQN), has been with Cargill for 18 years and has a broad range of experiences, from commodity trading, supply chains and feed production to sustainability. Rude currently resides in Minneapolis, MN, USA – the home of Cargill’s headquarters – but spent most of the last 10 years in international roles.
Brad’s current responsibilities include the CQN global leadership team; ingredient sourcing, risk management and feed formulation for all CQN assets; strategic relationships, supply agreements and upstream investments; sustainability programs related to ingredients and supply chains.
