Alternative Proteins Magazine ISSUE FOCUS 30 October 2025 While many companies have gained insights from this observation and have tried to mimic the forests, current technologies fall short at industrial scales. Composting is slow and produces lowervalue output. Anaerobic digestion can recover energy, but only at high cost. And unfortunately, the most ‘practical’ option remains still too often the least sustainable: landfill and incineration. Neither delivers the high-quality protein the feed industry needs. The challenge is therefore not theoretical but practical: How do we take the nutrient recapture role of insects and turn it into an industrial process that is reliable, economical, and scalable? DECENTRALISATION: BRINGING THE FARM TO THE WASTE To industrialise this natural process, we must begin with the logic of the raw material itself. Unlike consolidated commodities like grain or soy, organic side-streams are wet, heavy, geographically scattered, and often spoil quickly. Transporting this low-value, high-volume material over long distances creates enormous costs in fuel, labour, and carbon, eroding the value we aim to create. The most effective strategy, therefore, is not to fight the distributed nature of this resource, but to embrace it. This is why decentralisation has become a central idea in insect industrialisation. Medium-scale, modular systems allow insect conversion to happen closer to the source. What is transported is no longer low-value waste but stable, higher-value ingredients. This approach also shifts the role of industry actors. Instead of a few central processors managing logistics, decentralised models invite orchestrators who coordinate many smaller nodes of farms and processors into a functioning network. Waste is valorised locally, ingredients are standardised through protocols and technology, and trade platforms connect supply with demand. In this way, insect farming resembles not just biology scaled up, but also an infrastructure for distributed nutrient recovery (Figure 1). INGREDIENTS WITH A CIRCULAR STORY The products that emerge from insect conversion are familiar to the feed sector: Protein, oil, fertiliser, but they carry with them a different story. They are not only functional ingredients, but embodiments of a system where waste is recaptured and revalued. At Protenga, we’ve been working since 2016 to industrialise the Black Soldier Fly (BSF), one of nature’s most efficient recyclers of organic matter through the Smart Insect Farm (SIF). We are leaders Figure 1. A decentralised approach: Local insect farms turn agricultural byproducts into valuable ingredients, feeding back into the food system Animal Farming & Agriculture Human Consumption & Pet Food Local Waste & Agri Byproducts Insect Farm (Decentralised) Insect Processing Plant Insect Products Distribution Source: Protenga
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