An elementary school teacher in southern Vietnam has enriched his family’s life by raising black soldier flies to process the waste from his pigeon farm.

It was a year ago when Phan Van Be, a teacher from Duc Lap Thuong B Elementary School in Long An Province’s Duc Hoa District, and his wife were raising around 2,000 pairs of pigeons to supply local restaurants, but cleaning the cages was a task that took a lot of time.

In particular, guano accumulated day after day.

Necessity is the mother of invention though and so Be and his wife borrowed the idea of using black soldier flies to process their pigeons’ excrement and other waste, from countries like Germany and Belgium, which they discovered while looking online.

“Looking at the flies on the Internet, I thought I had seen them many times before,” Be recalled. “They often land on ficus microcarpa trees and sometimes in local markets.”

The day after finding the solution, Be caught around ten black solider flies to study.

Flies can bring money, and prize

After nearly nine months of studying, Be completely understood the lifecycle and hobby of black soldier fly larvae.

Over the last year, Be has been able to earn several million dong a month thanks to the insect.

The fly 'farm' of Phan Van Be consists of two mosquito nets set up on his backyard, which he keeps damp with a squirt of water.

The nets are capable of housing thousands of flies.

“The most favorite environment for fly eggs is wet noodles,” Be said. “Eggs will hatch into larvae 3-4 days after being put in there.”

“The larvae grow in around 20 days depending on food,” he added. “This is the period that larvae contribute to processing organic waste because they can eat anything from dead animals, fish bone to guano to grow.”

After that, the larvae will turn into a cocoon which covers it for seven days before they hatch into flies.

According to Be, a black soldier fly lives between seven and 10 days and then dies after spawning.

To collect fly eggs, Be puts a bucket of waste mixed from bone, meat and fish attached to pieces of paper to create nets for the insects.

After eggs have filled the pieces of paper, he collects them for incubation.

A piece of paper can contain around ten clutches of eggs which can be sold for VND10,000 each (US$0.45).

Sometimes Be sends hundreds of clutches to customers in other provinces.

Meanwhile, besides using fly larvae to feed his pigeons, Be also sells the worms to bird breeders in Ho Chi Minh City. A kg of larvae is sold for between VND75,000 ($3.35) and VND80,000 ($3.57).

The larvae brought Be an award when his project called “Feed from Black Soldier Fly Larvae” won third prize at the 2015 startup competition held by the Ho Chi Minh City-based Business Startup Support Center and the Ho Chi Minh City Young Business Association last August.

Moreover, Be and his wife also founded a company to study, invest in and develop agricultural projects, including the website ruoilinhden.com which systemizes documents on black soldier flies for those who care about the insect.

“If it receives enough investment, the model of raising black soldier fly larvae can help process waste at city level,” Be said. “However, so far we have only developed it to a family scale and have hesitated to expand because there is currently no specific regulation on developing larvae.”

Nguyen Thanh Tung, director of Long An Province’s agriculture encouragement center, said so far biological screening and managing agencies have completed no detailed study related to the black soldier flies.

“So the agriculture encouragement center won’t stop locals from raising the insect, but we have always kept an eye on it,” he said.

Flies can replace food

According to Dr. Tran Tan Viet, head of a research group from Ho Chi Minh City Nong Lam (Agriculture-Forestry) University, who has researched black soldier flies in decomposing organic wastes since 2000, black soldier flies are beneficial organisms.

Moreover, he said the insect is likely able to replace protein-based foods in the future if the application is done at the macro level.

“Besides decomposing waste, the flies can replace marine food sources, playing a practical role in protecting the ocean,” he added, saying many countries like the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and South Africa are developing large-scale black soldier fly farms producing millions of tons per year.

Viet said the demand for black soldier flies is very big in Vietnam, used for example to provide food for ornamental birds or fishes.

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