Starter Kit. Idea 450 of 500. Cluster 23
Insect farms that turn food and market waste into protein feed for the fish farms and poultry, replacing imported feed
The mechanism, from the book
The single largest unused asset in the country is sitting at home. Much of what keeps it there (childcare, safe transport, working hours) can be sold as a service, and the industries that would employ it can be built.
The first step
Collect a week's food waste from two restaurants and a market stall, and start a small trial of fly larvae on it. Weigh what goes in and what comes out. Take a dried sample to two fish farms and a poultry farm, and ask what they pay for imported feed and what they would pay for this. The proof is one farm's trial order.
- Who pays first
- A fish or poultry farmer who pays a high price for imported feed and wants a cheaper protein made locally.
- What leaves today
- Food waste rots and feed is bought from abroad; insects turn the waste into feed and keep that money at home.
Ask first
- Central Environmental Authority. Ask what approval a site that processes food waste needs.
- National Aquaculture Development Authority. Ask what standard fish feed must meet before farms can use it.
Check before you spend
Confirm the local council's permission for the site, safe handling of the waste, and that the feed meets the standard the farms require.
Find out these three numbers
- What do farms pay per kilo for imported feed?
- How much waste can the town's markets supply each week?
- How much dried feed does a tonne of waste produce?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.