Sidebar: Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment
At a recent symposium ( Building-Integrated Sustainable Agriculture) sponsored by Sky Vegetables in Berkeley, California, Paul Oliver, Ph.D., a Vietnam-based researcher with the multinational waste management company ESR International, gave a fascinating presentation on an integrated food-waste-to-animal-feed system he developed. Working in the early 1990s on a way to get rid of organic waste that was separated from municipal solid waste, he came up with the BioPod, a proprietary vessel that is now being marketed by the Bioconversion Technologies Division of ESR International.
Here’s how it works: food waste (or any other organic material, from slaughterhouse waste to manure) is dumped into a 2' or 4' diameter (600 or 1,200 mm) BioPod with black soldier fly ( Hermetia illucens) larvae. The voracious larvae (less charitably, maggots) consume the waste in a matter of hours, growing dramatically in the process. As the larvae mature they are “self-harvested” by crawling up ramps that are molded into the BioPod and falling into a collection vessel. Once harvested, the larvae—52% protein and 39% fat by weight—can be fed to either fish or chickens.
The black soldier fly is native to most of the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific region from Samoa to Hawaii. In the U.S. it commonly feeds on carrion, manure, and plant waste of all types. It often breeds in outdoor toilets, poorly managed compost, and poultry manure. While it looks somewhat like a wasp, it is non-biting and generally not considered a pest. Oliver is overseeing the refinement and manufacture of BioPods in Saigon; they can be purchased online through www.thebiopod.com.
