Flies and maggots might seem a nuisance and unwanted visitors to our dinner tables but in the not too distant future they could become an important part of our natural food chain.
It is widely accepted that the best eggs you can eat are from free range chickens. Free range birds wander around picking up flies, insects, grubs and larvae. It's all part of natural food production.
With estimates predicting that the world needs to increase its food production by 70 percent by 2050 in order to serve a global population of nine billion, insect farming on a commercial scale might just be the simplest way of meeting our growing needs.
At the recent Feed the World conference in Wageningen in the Netherlands, delegates discussed the harvesting insects from nature and the use of insects as food, animal feed and fertilisers.
Earlier this month, AgriProtein announced that it had raised $11m to build two commercial-scale insect farms. The first, in Cape Town, is capable of producing 20 tonnes of larvae and 20 tonnes of fertiliser per day.
Canadian company Enterra Feed Corporation are set, next year, to triple production of black soldier fly larvae products for pet food and eventually for aquaculture feed.
French company Ynsect will be producing mealworms and black soldier flies near Paris on a commercial scale by 2016.
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