Author: Ying-Chen Lin^1,* and Kai-En Chuang¹

¹ Agricultural Economics Division, Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC.

Abstract

    The consumption of fish is growing globally. Aquaculture has been predicted to provide 62% of fish for human consumption by 2030. To improve sustainability and profitability of current aquaculture practices, management of production cost and use of high nutrient aquafeed become the major challenge for continue business expansion. Fish meal is the main protein source of a farmed fish diet. Due to the limited marine resources and increasing demand in another industrial sector, international fishmeal price has been increased for a decade. High price fishmeal is a significant burden on aquaculture farmers and aquafeed companies. Therefore, finding new feeding products for partial replacement of fishmeal is required. There are several options of alternative feed protein sources include plant based feed, insect meal, earthworm meal, single cell protein and biofloc. The insect meal is more favorable following with Sustainable Development Goals than other options. Due to insect farming needs less land space and water than farming traditional livestock and cultivating soybean, processed insect protein is considered as a low environmental footprint protein source. Additionally, because attention to sustainability and sustainable consumption has been increased, insect aquafeed has a high potentiality to develop. However, ensuring insect based aquafeed economic viability is essential for business development. Economic viability assessment is in terms of acceptability of farmers and industry stakeholders, consumers’ willingness, and cost and benefits analysis. The price of imported fishmeal has been rising for decades and increasing pressure in feed industry manufacturing costs. Therefore, the use of insects for feeding farmed fish represents an alternative to reduce the dependency of fish meal. Moreover, because of nutritional properties, developing insect-based additives to improve the health of farmed animals is a strategy of adding product value. In the situation of fishmeal price increasing and attention toward sustainability, developing farmed insect and insect protein is a viable option.

Key word: Insect protein, Insect feed, Aquaculture, Market viability.

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