Andreas Walter

Today, insect applications for food and feed are of strong economic, ecological and social interest. Despite their tremendous potential, insects still elicit negative associations in the mindset of Western consumers, which is attributed to a lack of knowledge and scarce opportunities for engagement in this topic. The citizen science project ‘six-legged livestock’ aims to increase the potential of the insect Hermetia illucens (black soldier fly), merging the topics ‘waste re-valorisation’ and ‘protein production’ as a cross-link to circular economy. Workshops were held in four school classes, involving 89 pupils, aged 15 to 18 years old. Making use of organic wastes, participating school classes ran eight rearing systems containing a total of 1800 H. illucens larvae. In the four-week experiments, the pupils monitored larval growth and development. Evidently, the pupils were highly motivated to run their rearing systems and fulfil their working tasks. Furthermore, negative associations with insects, including phobia and scepticism decreased, while excitement for the topic increased after hands-on work with the insects. The presented project may be considered an innovative approach paving the way for the establishment of insects as an important educational tool, since they are still underrepresented in scholarly curricula, despite the public outrage over insect decline.

Innovative businesses and a growing body of research have put their eyes on insect-based solutions to produce high-quality feed and food. One of the forerunner species in this trend is the Black Soldier Fly (BSF; Hermetia illucens) – a low maintenance tropical insect capable of efficiently converting organic wastes into insect biomass that mainly consists of protein, fat and chitin. However, the exploitation of insects in western countries is still in its infancy, but an improving legislation as well as scientific advancements support the growing insect industry. By offering hands-on workshops to schools and the public, we aimed at getting people in touch with the BSF to raise awareness about the re valorisation of organic waste and sustainable feed production. Participants were invited to build a take-home BSF rearing system running on their daily occurring household bio-waste. Within these three-week home experiments, citizen scientists successfully collected data on the amount and composition of fed bio-waste, larval development and substrate maturation. Moreover, carrying out the same feeding experiment under different environmental circumstances provided insights in the adaptiveness of the larvae of this fly and will further help to improve rearing conditions.