Sometimes we don’t notice how well organized this entire world is. Everything is well planned and well orchestrated. It is only that we human beings upset the balance!
Let me get back to my gardening mood. I was talking about the nightmare my friend had while he was in the process of decomposing the grain waste as part of the acid test for our bacterial solution. What was it all about?
When my friend dipped his hand into the pile of grain waste, he at once shrieked and pulled back his hand since his hand was engulfed by thousands of worms that were crawling all over his hand!
We normally associate worms with something unclean, dirty, repugnant. We castigate someone as a worm! We think that worms are mean and useless.
These flies that look almost like a wasp, are totally harmless. They can’t even bite you since apparently, they don’t even have mouth or stings to bite! All that they have are tube like suckers using which they can either draw liquids or suck nectar from flowers.
They have a short life of a few days. All that they do in those few days is to mate, lay eggs and bid good bye to this world! They lay eggs on any decomposing matter. And in a matter of 3-4 days, these eggs hatch and the larvae come out. These larvae, that can grow to almost an inch-long, feed on the decomposing matter for a few weeks before they finally turn into their pupa stage.
The ‘worms’ that my friend encountered in his waste heap were these BSF larvae. They are completely safe and harmless creatures. Their job is to clear the mess that we humans keep creating. That is why I called them “God-sent soldiers to save this earth”!
Imagine what would have happened to this earth if such creatures did not exist! Today we are facing the calamity of plastic waste. That is some new problem that we have ourselves created.
But even before plastic was invented, we used to produce lot of garbage. And if these creatures were not present, we would have long back drowned ourselves in garbage that we ourselves have created.
So, don’t look down on worms. Don’t ever denigrate anyone as a worm. Respect them, they are our saviors!
Coming back to these BSF larvae, they are by far the best scavengers known to us. They eat almost twice their body weight everyday. They eat anything organic, more so if it is rich in carbohydrates and proteins. They just love that.
What do these larvae do with what they eat. Well, most of it gets stored in their body, utilized for their busy activity, and some they excrete out as rich frass. From composting point of view this frass or the excreta of these larvae are of importance to us. They are very rich manures.
It is believed that these larvae also neutralize many of the harmful bacteria in the decomposing matter. They also eat the eggs laid by other domestic pests such as house flies, discouraging their growth on garbage heaps. That would also minimize the stench caused by household flies and other pests.
The mature larvae are also no less useful. Their bodies contain almost 45% protein and 35% fat! They are considered to be very rich source of high-quality protein. When these larvae spend a couple of weeks on your waste heap and leave the heap to pupate, they can be harvested and can be used as chicken feed or fish feed either fresh or in dried form.
These larvae are also supposed to be edible for humans and are a rich source of fine protein and fat if only you can come out of the mental block of eating worms😉 Apparently, they taste like meat with nutty flavor!
In tropical countries, these flies are abundant and without any additional effort they quietly come and lay their eggs. At the end of their life cycle, these larvae pupate, turn into flies again, mate, lay more eggs and the cycle continues on its own without needing your intervention.
In colder parts of countries like United States for example, you need to make special effort to rear these flies and collect the larvae. I have seen ads on the internet – "100 BSF larvae for 10 bucks, all live and wriggling"!
In countries like Indonesia, these larvae are produced in huge factories. They use these larvae to decompose their city garbage – a completely safe, net positive way of getting rid of garbage which is becoming a menace these days.
In India, I am told that the dairy development authority is growing these larvae as a rich feed to be supplied to poultry industry. They probably use cow dung for rearing them. These larvae can be an excellent feed in fisheries industry as well.
In the next episode, I will get back to my friend’s experiment, after this brief detour.
A series of weekly (every Monday 12 PM PST) talks on new ways of Gardening by Dr. King. © Dr. King 2019
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