‘Black Soldier Fly’ farming road to Profit

​Mr. Nguyen Thai Phong and Mr. Nguyen Van Nhu are implementing the BSF eggs incubation process.

Currently, he has a fly farm with a total area of 2 thousand m². The Larva Farm brand, created by him and his two friends, is also starting to make a ‘name’ for himself in this relatively new market.

Starting a career with a weird job

BSF larvae are omnivores. They eat all kinds of leftovers such as soybean meal, beer wort, leftover fruit, etc. When they become flies, they will not eat food anymore, but only absorb water and reproduce. BSF are raised to get larvae as food for poultry, birds, fish, etc.

As a voracious insect, they can be used to treat waste. Therefore, the raising of BSF for farming is considered a good solution for the environment. However, this profession is quite unfamiliar in Vietnam.

In 2017, after completing his military service to return to the locality, a young man Nguyen Thai Phong learned about BSF farming. At the beginning of 2018, he bought 10g of BSF eggs for VND 600,000 to test on an area of 2m². At that time, although there were many people working in BSF farming, there were very few documents related to BSF in Vietnamese. Therefore, Phong had to look up information on websites in English and work on his own translation. The first larvae of flies (often called worms), he used to feed chickens. When raising chickens with fly larvae, he does not have to use industrial bran anymore. Meanwhile, fly larvae only use leftovers, so Phong can save costs in breeding.

Seeing clearly the effectiveness of raising chickens with fly larvae, Phong made video clips to share on the internet and were interested by many people and asked to buy flies. Seeing the potential of the market to supply flies, Phong decided to invest in raising BSF to supply the market with seeds. He takes advantage of his family's old pigpen that has been abandoned for about 10 years to raise flies.

At the time of raising, 1kg of BSF eggs cost VND 30 million. However, due to lack of technical knowledge and lack of experience, Phong only gets 1 ounce of BSF eggs every day.

“When we first raised, the flies died a lot or didn't lay eggs because we didn't know how to watch the sun. This fly, if it does not have sunlight, they cannot breed. But if the sun is too hot, the flies die. The suitable temperature for BSF to live and reproduce is from 25-33⁰C ”- Mr. Phong shared.

Within 1 year, he worked and learned to improve farming techniques. By May 6-2019, he expanded a farm of 500m². At this point, his egg harvest has reached 1kg per day. However, the selling price of BSF eggs at that time dropped to VND 7 million per kg. Although the price is 4 times lower than before, but the profit is still more because the weight of eggs harvested per day has increased 10 times.

“Currently, the selling price of BSF eggs is only about VND 5 million per kg. With a total area of 2 thousand m², every day, we can collect 2-3kg of eggs. We have a total of 6 people working, paying VND 7 million / month / person. As for the members who have shares in this farm, we also get to share the profit after deducting all costs”- Mr. Phong said.

Brand Development

Nguyen Thai Phong with his product - Dried BSF Larvae.

In the process of raising flies, Phong regularly makes videos and shares his personal experiences on the internet. As a result, Phong has many close customers: Mr. Nguyen Van Nhu is from Ben Tre and works as an electrical technician for a company in Binh Duong. Although he has a stable job, Nhu still wonders to find a new direction for him. He knew about the job of raising black soldiers and decided to quit his job and return to his hometown in Tien Giang to open his own farm.

In the process of exchange, purchase and sale, the two parties realized that they have the same development orientation. Therefore, Mr. Nhu decided to close his farm in Tien Giang and went to Dong Nai to work with Mr. Phong. In addition to Nhu, Mr. Phong also cooperates with Mr. Lam Thanh Loc (Bien Hoa city). The group of 3 friends decided to “join shares” to develop the model of raising BSF and building the Larva Farm brand.

Since the 3 people worked together, the work has developed quite smoothly. Currently, the number of customers that Larva Farm exploits has increased about 3 times compared to before, which leads to the current current situation is ‘too much demand, not enough supply’.

Currently, Larva Farm is providing BSF eggs, fresh larvae and dried larvae products. Customers are smallholder farms or other BSF farms. The specialized provision of seeds helps other farmers to cut one step in their fly farming process. From this breed BSF egg, the customer turns into a larvae and uses the larvae as food in livestock.

In the near future, in addition to developing drying products, those men also plans to develop more product lines such as protein powder from larvae, oil from the pressing process of protein powder used for mixing in organic fertilizers; hydrolyzed fluid from larvae for foliar fertilizers (especially suitable for citrus plants), etc.

Hoang Giang