Results of the 2nd annual Insect Industry survey, part 2 of 3
In this 2nd part of the results of the insect industry survey I will go thru a number of questions from the survey that related to buying and selling of BSF-related products and services (read the 1st part of the results here). Let’s start with a question that related to the different types of products and services with the question “Are you buying products, tools, technology or services related to black soldier fly farming?”
The sales and buying trends of BSF products and services
Most commonly our respondents were looking to buy BSF farming training. Almost 11% of the respondents to the insect industry survey were looking for BSF training, which of course makes us happy, as we’ve just launched the Manna Insect FARM Hub where people can start learning BSF farming for free and then advancing into more in-depth premium content.
All the other responses gained less than 10% popularity, and were as follows;
As we can see in the list of many are interested In buying the BSF larvae live, very likely to be used as animal feed, but also dried larvae, larvae powder / flour and BSF meal gained lots of interest among respondents.
From the input side also biowaste or other BSF substrate and waste management services were popular among the respondents.
For smaller operations LED lights and climatization technology such as Manna MIND were quite popular with approx. 7.4% of all respondents stated interest in these services.
Factory-size operations were also present, as close to 5% of responses indicated the interest to buy factory equipment or management services.
Of the rather specialized use cases also chitin extraction was among the responses with c. 3% popularity.
From the sales side, there was a great number of respondents ready to service customers with especially BSF itself in different forms, but also consulting, training and waste management services. BSF oil and chitin aren’t yet quite there what comes to popularity and perhaps production methods that would allow affordable mass production with competitive pricing.
Let’s not forget frass, which is available from almost 8% of respondents.
The logical next question is to try to understand the business logic with a question like “Who do you sell to or buy from?”
Most of our respondents deal with individual farmers, either selling the BSF larvae live, dried, frozen or whatnot to chicken, pig or fish farmers, or buying from individual BSF farmers. This was the case with almost 60% of responses.
Almost 40% of respondents to the insect industry survey dealt with companies, just over 10% with municipalities, and less than 4% with NGOs. Near-by-individuals were the target group in close to 15% of cases, which of course may well be included in the “individual farmers” scenario as well, and just over 10% of our respondents deal with petfood companies.
The channels
We were quite interested in understanding where do the respondents get all the news and general information about the insect farming industry and where do they meet their audience, whether buying or selling.
Just like we’ve noticed before, Facebook groups are a major playground for BSF farmers and enthusiasts, but Linkedin seems to be the channel of choice when actually selling and buying. This may of course be due to the number of respondents being involved in training, equipment manufacturing, consulting and researching insects and BSF especially, and the interest in identifying the potential customers or service providers with their business credentials, which is almost impossible at Facebook.
Nonetheless, Facebook still offers a huge opportunity for buying and selling just due to the great number of groups and group members that could potentially be reached thru Facebook.
Other sales and purchasing channels were moderately present, as only Instagram could reach over 20% and Amazon just over 10% of popularity, while the top channels Linkedin and Facebook were mentioned by well over 60% and almost 50% popularity respectively. All other channels were left to crumbles, IndiaMart 4,38%, Ali Baba 7,50%, and eBay 3,13 %.
A special mention goes to WhatsApp, which was often mentioned in the comments as a popular channel for sales and purchasing of BSF products and services.
To find information and even training our respondents turn towards Google and Linkedin.
Both of these gained over 65% popularity, while the 3rd most popular channel for researching and following up the insect farming industry was Facebook with 27% popularity.
Many of our respondents were coming from research institutes, Universities and NGOs, which explains why Research Gate was often mentioned in the comments, but so was YouTube, which hosts a great number of popular insect farming channels and free training content especially for backyard BSF farming.
Live events and local farmers represent an interesting new trend in sharing knowledge of this industry, whereas Bing has clearly lost popularity and Instagram seems to be too limited for information sharing. There has recently been numerous news across the globe about local governments and municipal programs that are highlighting the importance of insect farming and represent an interesting opportunity for funding, but at the end of the day municipalities are not a very widely used instance for finding information about farming, at least for the time being.
The one last question for this 2nd part of the insect industry survey 2024 results is “Do you have to pay for biowaste that you are using for rearing insects?”, and the answer is… not just yes or no, but almost equally both options.
We believe this to be related to the fact that some of our respondents were coming from countries where waste management is a much-competed industry, and you often have to pay for high quality waste, which could be used also in biogas plants, etc., and the other half of respondents came from countries where organic waste is an issue, waste management practices are poor or missing, and where you may even get paid to collect the waste and upcycle it back into use. Also the legislation may be an issue in many countries, when something that is already labelled as “waste” may not be upcycled into feed or food ingredients at all, and thus is only suitable for e.g. biogas production. And, of course, there are cases that fall somewhere in between these options.
Regardless of where you come from, waste management services may well represent an interesting business opportunity, just like frass, the “leftovers” from insect farming processes.
Over 45% of respondents to the insect industry survey get their biowaste aka substrate for free, over 35% have to pay for the substrate, almost 20% use their own substrate, and just over 10% get paid to recycle the substrate.
That’s all this time around, the 3rd part of the results focus on the actual production and obstacles to get started or to scale up. Remember to follow us in LinkedIn and to join in our Farm Hub for free and PRO materials for everything related to BSF farming!
Read also: Insect Industry Survey 2024 results part 1/3