Silvestre Langa, a Master’s student within UWA’s School of Agriculture and Environment, is investigating the impact of soil amendment with Black Soldier Fly frass on greenhouse gas emissions, supervised by Dr Sasha Jenkins and Dr Deirdre Gleeson.
An increasing global population and associated wealth have led to increased food demand to feed a growing population. This has led to mass production of livestock and poultry with concurrent generation of large quantities of animal waste manure. Amending soil with manure has many benefits including increased nutrient supply, enhanced soil structure and improved crop yield. However, there are increasing concerns in terms of the environmental risks associated with applying manure to land, particularly with respect to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Black Soldier Fly (BSF), Hermetia illucens, farming is an emerging technology that converts manure into protein for animal feed. This technology produces high quality larvae for the fish, pet and livestock industry while at the same time decreasing the volume of waste from poultry farming in half. Fly casting, or frass, is the major waste by-product of BSF farming but has the additional potential to be used as a soil amendment.