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Comment by dv_dt | Hacker News Reader

I thought there were fairly large blackfly farming operations for fish feeding. maybe for non-ocean species? As with a lot of operational farming practices- it's probably a lot more complex than a few articles could easily encompass.

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Did you mean black soldier fly? Farming them is a thing and there should be a lot more of them -- converting waste to protein is a major win.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens

Yes, that's the species I was recalling. There were some issues with occasional accidental releases, but other than that, they seemed like a nice process.

A friend of mine has been working on a company[1] that does exactly this: they sit on the waste stream of large agricultural processing plants and use black soldier flies to convert that waste into protein for aquaculture (and fertilizer).

1: https://www.chapulfarms.com

My notion of how to address the feed supply issue is:

  1. Black Soldier Flies
  2. Duckweed
  3. Algae (Omega 3s)

All of the above are strong protein sources and duckweed and algae are fast growers and high density producers (at least an order of magnitude more than soybeans).

Obviously more effort is required to farm them but with automation it should require minimal labor.

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