PHOTO: FAO
NEW PROTEINS ▶▶▶
Swarms of locusts as chicken feed
Enormous swarms of locusts – about 60 million insects – have caused major devastation to crops and livelihoods in countries in East Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Scientists in Pakistan have come up with a way to turn these critters into chicken feed.
BY NATALIE BERKHOUT, FREELANCE JOURNALIST D
espite attempts to control the infestation, heavy rains have created the ideal conditions for the pest’s reproduction in several countries. Young ju- veniles will become voracious adults as farmers
begin to harvest, compounding an already bleak food securi- ty situation. “The locusts, combined with the impacts of Covid-19, could have catastrophic consequences on liveli- hoods and food security,” says director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Qu Dongyu, adding, “We’ve made significant gains, but the battle is a long one and locusts are spreading to new areas.”
A simple but clever solution Muhammad Khurshid, a civil servant in the Ministry of Na- tional Food Security and Research, together with Johar Ali, a biotechnologist at the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council,
came up with an innovative pilot project which encourages farmers to trap the locusts that are then turned into chicken
feed.They identified Pakistan’s Okara district as the most suit- able area to carry out a three-day pilot project, due to it being heavily populated and a place where the locusts were less likely to be contaminated by insecticides. Using the slogan, “Catch locusts. Earn money. Save crops,” the project offered to pay farmers 20 Pakistani rupees (US$ 0.12) per kg of locusts caught, according to The Third Pole: Journal of Geography Education. Locusts only fly in daylight. During the night they cluster on trees and on the open ground in sandy areas, where they remain almost motionless until dawn (making them easy to catch).
Seven tonnes of locusts per night The community catches an average of seven tonnes of locusts a night, which are weighed and sold to nearby chicken feed plants. Farmers earned up to 20,000 Pakistani rupees (US$ 125) each for one night’s work. The Third Pole adds that Muhammad Athar, General Manager of Hi-Tech Feeds, says his firm fed the locust feed to its broiler chickens in a five- week study: “All nutritional aspects came out as positive. If we can capture and kill the locusts without using chemical sprays, their biological value is high and they have considera- ble potential for use in fish, poultry and even dairy feed,” he said.
Locusts contain more protein than soy “We currently import 300,000 tonnes of soybean and, after extracting the oil for sale, we use the soybean crush in animal feed. Soybean contain 45% protein, whereas locusts contain 70% protein. Soybean meal is 90 Pakistani rupees per kg (US$ 0.5), whereas locusts are free – the only cost involved being that of capturing and drying them,” says Athar. The most challenging part of this project, says Ali, is confirming that the locusts are free of pesticides, which makes them un- suitable for feeding. The most exciting part, he says, is seeing people earn money. Despite interest from large-scale com- mercial operators, scaling up the project had to be put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. The lockdown is eas- ing in Pakistan and so they can now start up again. All that’s needed is for the local community to collect the locusts and sell them to chicken farmers.
8 ▶ ALL ABOUT FEED | Volume 28, No. 6, 2020
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