LIFE-ND Beneficiaries Exposed To Benefits Of Insect Farming

 

Taking up opportunities in the conversion of wastes to wealth has been identified as an avenue for youths to harness their potential to escape joblessness and poverty.

This was the submission at the FGN/IFAD/NDDC/LIFE-ND project workshop during an inspection of a Black Soldier Fly farm in Afam, Oyigbo local government area of Rivers state following the train the trainer workshop in Port Harcourt.

The surge in the cost of livestock feeds and other essentials have continued to drive the search for alternatives where discarded materials like plastics, agricultural byproducts, and organic refuse are transformed into valuable raw materials, energy, or consumer goods.

 To this end, the farming of the Black Soldier Fly, BSF, as a good alternative for protein in Livestock feeds informed the train the trainer workshop where beneficiaries were exposed to the value and benefits of the Black Soldier fly farming which is primarily used as an eco-friendly ingredient in commercial animal feed like poultry, swine, and fish farming.

Explaining the process involved in Black Soldier fly farming, the CEO More Ahead Integrated Farms, Mrs Becky Jacobs popularly known as Maggot Jagaban, said BSF, a harmless and non disease carrying fly goes through breeding to adulthood, hatch their eggs, and the larvae is allowed to consume decomposing waste before harvesting the nutrient-dense grubs for livestock or aquaculture.

Earlier, the National Environment and Climate Change Specialist, FGN/IFAD/NDDC/LIFE-ND project Bemigho Wategire said the thrust of the workshop is to drive the narrative that nothing is a waste from production to processing.

Two other Environment and Climate Change Specialists, Mrs Edidiong Wilson from Akwa Ibom state and Dr Ikona Eteng Lakam from Cross River state said they were now well equipped to take the message of waste to wealth to their immediate environment.

Participants at the workshop were drawn from the nine states of the Niger Delta, including Edo, Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Bayelsa, Imo, Ondo and Abia states.