Source: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA submitted to
NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR SMALL FARMERS: AUTOMATED MEALWORM FARMING TO IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY IN THE FACE OF PANDEMICS / COVID-19
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
SMALL BUSINESS GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1027216
Grant No.
2021-33610-35513
Cumulative Award Amt.
$650,000.00
Proposal No.
2021-06540
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Sep 1, 2021
Project End Date
Aug 31, 2024
Grant Year
2021
Program Code
[8.12]- Small and Mid-Size Farms
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
118 NEWINS-ZEIGLER HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
New Opportunity for Small Farmers: Automated High Density Mealworm Farming to Improve Food Security in the Face of Pandemics / COVID-19Our mission is to offer a robust alternative to the unsustainable, unstable food supply for animal protein in the face of pandemics such as COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). This project will provide profitable technology solutions to small and mid-sized mealworm farmers to lower costs and increase scale, contributing to our mission. Animal proteins such as mammals and poultry are unsustainable and pose production and biosecurity risks. We must learn lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and make changes, including how food is produced. Pandemics cause supply chain problems in animal protein. However, insect farms are easily quarantined and can operate with skeleton staff. There is almost no risk of viruses jumping from farm raised edible insects to humans. Insect farming being indoors means no exposure to environmental pathogens. With our innovation, small to midsize farms could easily farm mealworms for non-seasonal production, providing much needed income. Diversification of our food supply is critical for food security. The good news is insects, ie. mealworms (Tenebrio molitor), are a sustainable solution. They use less energy, feed, land and water than other livestock, contributing less to climate change and pollution. Over 30 companies in the US already offer products with crickets as a key ingredient. All Things Bugs LLC led the development of insects as a protein source, selling over 15,000 pounds of Griopro® cricket powder. However, cost of insects is higher than beef, yet beef requires 10 to 100 times more resources. Equipment and technologies for insect farming are primitive and manual (unchanged in 60 years) resulting in high costs. Major food manufacturers are ready to use insects as a key ingredient, but cost must be on par with other proteins. Thus, there is a need for innovation in US mealworm farming to compete globally.The insect-based food market is projected to reach $4.63 billion by 2027. To become competitive, the industry must innovate. The mission of this SBIR is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. Our innovation is a state-of-the-art, Insect Production System (IPS) designed to reduce cost, increase efficiency and scale of mealworm farming. Such innovation could lead to the highest production efficiencies of any protein production system. With this system, we believe mealworms can be produced at or below $1 per pound.This Phase II project will develop a mechanized mealworm production system. With these funds we will: 1) Evaluate/optimize our Phase I prototypes at 2 small mealworm farms, 2) Develop conveyor/separator systems for automated mealworm harvesting, 3) Develop a complete turnkey mealworm farming manual for small and mid-sized farmers using our technologies and 4) Produce/evaluate fully optimized Phase II mealworm farming systems at 2 small mealworm farms. If successful, this project will be a critical step toward revolutionizing the food industry by adding value to an industry based on an entire Class of animals largely ignored - Insecta.All Things Bugs LLC (www.crickepowder.com) (founded 2011), is an industry world leader. Recently, major news sources have covered insect as a food source, often mentioning his company. Examples include: Huffington Post, Forbes, Fortune, The New Yorker, Fox News and others. Dr. Dossey published the first comprehensive book, "Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients" covering all aspects of insects as food. Using patent pending technology, his company has sold to numerous food companies, and received over $4 million in research funding from USDA, DARPA, OCAST and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
100%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
40231101130100%
Knowledge Area
402 - Engineering Systems and Equipment;

Subject Of Investigation
3110 - Insects;

Field Of Science
1130 - Entomology and acarology;
Goals / Objectives
New Opportunity for Small Farmers: Automated High Density Mealworm Farming to Improve Food Security in the Face of Pandemics / COVID-19Our mission is to offer a robust alternative to the unsustainable, unstable food supply for animal protein in the face of pandemics such as COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus). This project will provide profitable technology solutions to small and mid-sized mealworm farmers to lower costs and increase scale, contributing to our mission. Animal proteins such as mammals and poultry are unsustainable and pose production and biosecurity risks. We must learn lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and make changes, including how food is produced. Pandemics cause supply chain problems in animal protein. However, insect farms are easily quarantined and can operate with skeleton staff. There is almost no risk of viruses jumping from farm raised edible insects to humans. Insect farming being indoors means no exposure to environmental pathogens. With our innovation, small to midsize farms could easily farm mealworms for non-seasonal production, providing much needed income. Diversification of our food supply is critical for food security. The good news is insects, ie. mealworms (Tenebrio molitor), are a sustainable solution. They use less energy, feed, land and water than other livestock, contributing less to climate change and pollution. Over 30 companies in the US already offer products with crickets as a key ingredient. All Things Bugs LLC led the development of insects as a protein source, selling over 15,000 pounds of Griopro® cricket powder. However, cost of insects is higher than beef, yet beef requires 10 to 100 times more resources. Equipment and technologies for insect farming are primitive and manual (unchanged in 60 years) resulting in high costs. Major food manufacturers are ready to use insects as a key ingredient, but cost must be on par with other proteins. Thus, there is a need for innovation in US mealworm farming to compete globally.The insect-based food market is projected to reach $4.63 billion by 2027. To become competitive, the industry must innovate. The mission of this SBIR is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. Our innovation is a state-of-the-art, Insect Production System (IPS) designed to reduce cost, increase efficiency and scale of mealworm farming. Such innovation could lead to the highest production efficiencies of any protein production system. With this system, we believe mealworms can be produced at or below $1 per pound.This Phase II project will develop a mechanized mealworm production system. With these funds we will: 1) Evaluate/optimize our Phase I prototypes at 2 small mealworm farms, 2) Develop conveyor/separator systems for automated mealworm harvesting, 3) Develop a complete turnkey mealworm farming manual for small and mid-sized farmers using our technologies and 4) Produce/evaluate fully optimized Phase II mealworm farming systems at 2 small mealworm farms. If successful, this project will be a critical step toward revolutionizing the food industry by adding value to an industry based on an entire Class of animals largely ignored - Insecta.All Things Bugs LLC (www.crickepowder.com) (founded 2011), is an industry world leader. Recently, major news sources have covered insect as a food source, often mentioning his company. Examples include: Huffington Post, Forbes, Fortune, The New Yorker, Fox News and others. Dr. Dossey published the first comprehensive book, "Insects as Sustainable Food Ingredients" covering all aspects of insects as food. Using patent pending technology, his company has sold to numerous food companies, and received over $4 million in research funding from USDA, DARPA, OCAST and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Project Methods
CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY INFORMATION:Phase II Work Plan - 24 months Objective 1: Construct 4x Phase I Prototypes for Additional Testing and Optimization at 2 Mealworm Farms (2 units at each farm). Method of approach: All Things Bugs LLC will manage all aspects of this project, including work done by our subcontractors and our partner mealworm farm. We will utilize one of our optimized Phase I units at each location to repeatedly simulate harvesting / dumping to determine how the unit can be further optimized and improved for maximum efficiency for small to mid sized mealworm farmers. The second unit at each location will be set up for a complete mealworm growth cycle to monitor how the mealworms grow and behave in these units and how harvesting will work at the end of a real growth cycle - to evaluate whether or not mealworms can escape during 4 months in these trays and if they are able to thrive in these trays with that depth of wheat bran, etc. While we will determine optimized mealworm rearing conditions during Objective 3 (including number of eggs per 50 pound tray of wheat bran to add, and egg production parameters), for Objective 1 we will utilize our preliminary conditions determined in Phase I: 1,000 mealworm eggs per 750 grams of wheat bran, 80°F and 80% relative humidity.Objective 2: Add Automated Material Handling / Conveyor System to Phase I Mealworm Growth Tray System for Separation of Mealworms from Waste as 2 Commercial Products.Method of approach: For this objective, we will evaluate 3 different concepts for separating mealworms from waste byproduct at harvest (generating 2 commercializable products) and handling the material efficiently for post-harvest processing.Concept 1: Inclined Conveyor dumping into a shaker sifter. We plan to produce a simple cleated conveyor belt which is level with the ground for half of the length and inclined up to 6-8 feet for the second half. The material will be then dumped into one of two styles of shaker sifter to separate the mealworms from the waste and leftover feed. One shaker sifter is a circular model which vibrates the material in a circle and discharges different sized material into separate ports/containers. The other is simply a large rectangular angled screen that vibrates so that mealworms stay on top and waste falls into a bin.Concept 2: Two conveyor belt system which achieves material separation and transport for post-harvest processing. For this concept, we will utilize the conveyor belt in Concept 1, but add on top if it a conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction which will have a mesh style belt that will catch the full grown mealworms and allow the waste and leftover feed to fall onto the Concept 1 belt. We plan to design the top mesh screener belt (to catch and move mealworms) so that it simply slides over the top of the lower level Concept 1 belt. If it works, this will achieve both separation and post-harvest material handling right at the point of tray dumping which could be time and space efficient and prevent the farmer from needing to purchase a separate shaker sifter.Concept 3: Vacuum force for transporting mealworms and waste byproduct onto a downstream shaker sifter. For this concept, we will utilize a vacuum system to suck the mealworms and waste byproduct out of the dump trough between the growth trays as they dump at the maximum feasible rate, and the material will then be transported through a hose and/or pipe onto one of our two shaker sifter models. It is likely the circular shaker sifter is the best one to work with the vacuum system as it is fully enclosed so has the lowest risk of creating a dust cloud experienced using forced air to move the same material in Phase I. We already have successfully developed one vacuum system for crickets and their waste used in a similar way during a previous USDA SBIR Phase II project. We should be able to optimize this system to work with mealworms and their waste as well.Objective 3: Complete Turnkey Paper/Video Manual and System for Automated Small and Mid-Sized Mealworm Farming with Experimentally Measured Mealworm Growth Optimized Parameters, Economic Analysis, Market Strategies for Mealworms and Mealworm Waste Byproducts.Method of approach: For this objective we will determine optimized operating parameters for our complete turnkey mealworm farming system including: 1) number of eggs to add to a 50 pound tray of wheat bran for optimal growth and minimal leftover feed and 2) optimal egg collection methodology. Egg quantity optimization will be done in triplicate and test the addition of 1,000, 1,500 and 2,000 eggs into small scale tests with 750 grams of wheat bran in standard plastic shoe boxes. Egg production methodology will utilize mealworm pupae or beetles placed on fine wheat flour, and given polyacrylamide crystals for water, where they can lay eggs. Number of beetles/pupae for maximum egg production in minimum flour will be optimized and we will evaluate manual vs mechanized sifting of eggs for egg collection. Egg collections will occur once every 12, 24 or 48 hours to determine rate of egg production per number of adult beetles. We will also measure the number of eggs per 10 mL volume so that farmers can rapidly measure the number of eggs when setting up their growth trays. During all Phase II experiments and growth trials, we will utilize these opportunities to take videos of our equipment, systems and methods in operation to produce simple "Youtube" quality videos that will support the content in our mealworm farming manual. All of these data will be utilized to produce a complete mealworm production manual for use with our mealworm farming equipment and systems for farmers which buy or license our systems. We will also add an optimized customizable economic analysis spread sheet with business and farm operating costs, facility and equipment costs as well as projected mealworm outputs and profits based on mealworm market pricing as an additional offering to the farmers. Data for the economic analysis will be collected during interviews with small and mid-sized mealworm farms. The manual will also include a summary of various markets and applications for which mealworms and their waste byproducts can be sold (for example, live mealworms to pet shops, dried mealworms as bird feed, mealworm waste as a soil amendment or fertilizer for organic farmers and gardener hobbyists).?Objective 4: Real-World Pilot Scale Full-System Evaluation of our Turnkey Mealworm Farming System and Equipment at 2 Mealworm Farm Locations for Data Useful for Commercialization. Method of approach: We will take all input for engineering changes based on experimental results during the initial field trials and complete an engineering upgrade for the mealworm growing unit. Our team is planning for building an additional 4 units of the Beta growing system for the second phase of the field test. . At the end of this Phase II project we will install our complete mealworm farming systems, including optimized mealworm growth auto-dumping harvest trays, at least one of the best conveyor and mealworm/waste separation systems (Objective 2) and all methodologies developed at All Things Bugs LLC's facility and our partner small mealworm farm. Two (2) of the Phase II mealworm growth units will be installed at each site. We will run our turnkey mealworm farming systems for 2 growth cycles at both sites. We will collect data on productivity, mealworm mortality, mass and numbers of mealworms produced per growth cycle, amount of waste and leftover feed after a growth cycle, economic inputs and revenue generated based on wholesale live mealworm pricing. We will also collect photos, videos and other information about our systems for use in both the final mealworm farming manual and our marketing efforts to commercialize the innovations developed from this project via sales and licensing to mealworm farms across the USA.

Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:The goal of this SBIR effort is to contribute value and ingredient diversity to the food industry. The general interest in insects as a sustainable protein source is booming. Over 80 companies in North America and Europe currently offer a wide variety of food products with insects as a key ingredient (Dossey et al., 2016a; Dossey et al., 2016b). In fact, All Things Bugs LLC has led the industry's development of insects as a protein source, selling over 15,000 pounds of our Griopro® brand cricket powder. However, for this industry to be successful, we must continue to innovate and diversify. Mealworms (the larval stage of the Yellow Mealworm beetle species Tenebrio molitor), being the second most produced insect in North America (and most produced in Europe) represent the logical next step in our R&D. Small farm customer validation: Our research has discovered that there is a very large emerging interest in mealworm farming. Hundreds of small hobbyist farmers are planning to start their own commercial mealworm farms. The large capital raises (i.e. Ynsect - $400M and Beta Hatch - $9M) among mealworm companies validates our concept and choice of mealworms as a target species! We have surveyed over 20 small and mid-sized mealworm farms during Phase I to determine their needs as farmers, what aspects of their operation could be improved via technology and what their major cost drivers are. All have provided enthusiastic feedback that our focus on automated growth trays and mealworm harvesting are EXACTLY what they need to scale their operations and make them more profitable! Changes/Problems:The problems we have encountered to date are primarily due to global supply chain delays of equipment parts and materials via our sub-contractor. The sub-contractor building our equipment (Robotray in Miami, FL, USA) has also experienced what many companies in the US and world-wide have experience during the pandemic: labor shortages. Additionally, we have made some substantial improvements to our mealworm farming system (see details described above and below) which are not problems but did require us to adjust our schedule and strategy a bit. Nonetheless, we have made all of these adjustments and thus have remained largely on- schedule with a much better improved project. Also, our lab mealworm incubator experienced humidity control failure which caused us to lose many mealworms in ongoing experiments due to low humidity levels. We have found alternative ways to control humidity and can also use our walk-in environmental chamber currently used for crickets. We are currently shopping for a new reach-in mealworm incubator and searching for funds to buy one. In addition to delays in getting the equipment from our subcontractor, our senior scientist at All Things Bugs LLC left the firm at the beginning of the project for another job, so we had to replace him with the best alternative mealworm care technician we could find. We were able to find and train the new technician quickly and he is now operating fully independently in the laboratory with the mealworm rearing experiments. Thus in Year 2, we will complete the mealworm egg harvesting and mealworm feed optimization experiments in Objective 3 toward writing a mealworm farming manual for future small mealworm farm clients and the larger food and feed industry. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Publications, Presentations and Other Publicized Work Products (no max pages) Selected Subset of Presentations and Abstracts: 2022: As with the rest of the world, the various effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (reduced ability to travel, cancelled conferences, budget constrains and overall business uncertainty) has meant we have not had as many public presentations or publications as would have been typical in the past 1-2 years, or that we would have liked. However we were able to do the following: * In 2022 and 2023 we have several major publications and presentations of our substantial ground breaking work coming out on cricket and mealworm genetics, genomics, genetic engineering, farming innovations and food product development. Additionally, we have significant PR and marketing campaigns to launch in 2023 as well as at least 1 major new food product launch (cricket based high protein breakfast cereal). PATENT ISSUED: Aaron T. Dossey, INSECT PRODUCTS AND METHODS OF MANUFACTURE AND USE THEREOF, United States, U.S.?Patent Number: 11,337,451; U.S. Patent Application Number: 14/537,960; International Patent Application Number: PCT/US14/64920. PATENT ISSUED: Aaron T. Dossey, INSECT PRODUCTS AND METHODS OF MANUFACTURE AND USE THEREOF, Canada, Patent Application Number: 2,929,177; National Stage Entry of International Patent Application Number: PCT/US2014/064920. Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); Agriculture Meeting (first ever agriculture meeting for AGBT); April 4-6, 2022; Lowes Coronado Bay Resort, Coronado Island, San Diego, CA, USA; Selected as a "Flash Talk"; Monday, February 24, 2020; Title: " Cutting Edge Genomics and Engineering Insects for Sustainable Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Wednesday, April 6, 2022, held in the Commodore Ballroom from 10:20am - 10:40am. Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); Agriculture Meeting (first ever agriculture meeting for AGBT); April 4-6, 2022; Lowes Coronado Bay Resort, Coronado Island, San Diego, CA, USA; Poser# 803; Title: " Cutting Edge Genomics and Engineering Insects for Sustainable Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Exhibit Hall & Sponsor Promenade/ Avalon. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to continue execution of our objectives into year 2.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? To date this project, while delayed, has been quite successful and we have made some very valuable and helpful discoveries. Our work has also generated a lot of public interest, several publications and presentations etc. The following lists our discoveries, successes, achievements, publications and presentations to date: Discoveries and Successes: Our most significant discovery and innovation to date has been Dr. Dossey's re- design of the mealworm farming, harvesting handling, separating and processing system. His invention to leverage automated bakery/food industry equipment, particularly the tray handling and emptying system to unload standard industry trays from racks or stacks, dump them onto a conveyor, into a hopper or directly into a shaker sifter, then return them to a new or the original rack or stack, is a game changing innovation that will substantially improve the efficiency of automated mealworm farming at any scale, even for single-operator small farmer startups. This innovation leverages and adapts existing equipment and accessories (trays/racks etc.) used in the bakery, food and/or insect rearing industries to substantially improve mealworm farming for greater efficiency and lower cost. It uses bakery trays and racks or more modern stackable specialized mealworm/insect growth trays (used for other insects too like black soldier fly larvae, superworms, buffalo worms etc.). However, we are adding features that fully automate the process. We have discovered that humidity is critical for mealworm, growth and, while mealworms can grow in substrate at any humidity level above 25% without any water added, at dryer conditions growth is very slow and inefficient. Additionally, we have shown a substantially higher mortality and lower survival rate at lower humidity levels (survival from egg to harvest as low as 30%). However, at humidities over 50%, ideally at 70-80%, mealworms thrive in wheat bran or rice bran, and survival is well over 50% (can be as high as 75% in ideal optimal conditions). Adding water via water crystals (polyacrylamide or cut up vegetables) is not nearly efficient, requiring lots of labor and risk of mold growth. We also demonstrated that even at 70-80% humidity, there is little or no mold growth in mealworm substrates during a growth cycle, thus limiting risk of mealworm die-off or contamination of mold or mycotoxins in mealworms grown for human food or animal feed. This experiment is very valuable, as it demonstrates our concepts of using humidity in an efficient, hands-off fully-automated mealworm production facility are valid and can work. We have also discovered that rice bran substantially out-performs wheat bran as a mealworm feed. We found growth rates and survival as high as double for mealworms grown on rice bran vs wheat bran. This is great news for many reasons, especially that growing mealworms on rice bran results in mealworm protein that is gluten-free which is more desirable for the food industry. Also, rice bran appears to result in healthier mealworms which are more resistant to dryer conditions (higher survival in general, even when humidity is lower). These were all preliminary experiments and we plan to scale them up for more robust data in Year 2. During Year 1 we also conducted preliminary experiments to measure the number of mealworm eggs ideal to add per kilogram of mealworm feed (currently wheat bran) to optimize growth and survival while minimizing feed waste and eliminating the need to feed mealworms during a growth cycle (eg: add feed only at the beginning then "set and forget" until harvest - also the goal of using humidity vs added water). We were very surprised and pleased to discover that we under-estimated the number of mealworms and eggs that a kilogram of feed could support by approximately half. Thus, we should be able to produce approximately double or more the kilograms of mealworms and protein per kilogram of mealworm feed originally estimated under optimal temperature and humidity conditions. Additionally, we found literature showing that mealworms grow best in full time dark (eg: no light) conditions which also supports mealworms as an efficient, sustainable low cost and low-resource intensive protein source since there is no need to supply them with light at any growth stage. We will verify these results and scale up these experiments in year 2.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: 5) Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT); Agriculture Meeting (first ever agriculture meeting for AGBT); April 4-6, 2022; Lowes Coronado Bay Resort, Coronado Island, San Diego, CA, USA; Selected as a Flash Talk; Monday, February 24, 2020; Title: " Cutting Edge Genomics and Engineering Insects for Sustainable Food, Feed and Pharma". Dr. Aaron T. Dossey and Dr. Clay Chu. Room: Wednesday, April 6, 2022, held in the Commodore Ballroom from 10:20am - 10:40am.