The world population will reach 10 bn by 2050. A growing concern is, how to meet the protein requirements of this expanding population. Even today, the world has 1 billion cattle, 25 billion chicken, almost 1 billion pigs and numerous fish and shrimp farms. We need to feed these animals to eventually feed us.
Kinshuk and Tania from the Sustainably Yours team meet Ankit Alok Bagaria, who is addressing this growing need for animal food with his start up Loopworm. Loopworm is an agri-biotechnology company that takes inspiration from nature to convert organic wastes into valuable products.
What will you learn from this episode -
Why are insects a great source of protein?
Is protein derived from insect really that efficient?
What goes into animal feed and how is loopworm adding value there?
What is the greenhouse impact of this process?
How does Ankit see the future global protein requirement being met?
Let's dive in!
The world population will reach 10 bn by 2050. A growing concern is, how to meet the protein requirements of this expanding population. Even today, the world has 1 billion cattle, 25 billion chicken, almost 1 billion pigs and numerous fish and shrimp farms. We need to feed these animals to eventually feed us.
Kinshuk and Tania from the Sustainably Yours team meet Ankit Alok Bagaria, who is addressing this growing need for animal food with his start up Loopworm. Loopworm is an agri-biotechnology company that takes inspiration from nature to convert organic wastes into valuable products.
What will you learn from this episode -
Why are insects a great source of protein?
Is protein derived from insect really that efficient?
What goes into animal feed and how is loopworm adding value there?
What is the greenhouse impact of this process?
How does Ankit see the future global protein requirement being met?
Let's dive in!
Kinshuk 0:00
And we are live. Hello and welcome to another episode of sustainably yours the podcast demystifying the effects of climate change and their mitigation. I'm Kinshuk and I'm joined by my co host, Tanya, hi Tanya, the world population will reach 10 billion by 2050. A growing concern is how to meet the protein requirements of this expanding population. We are already seeing the political ramifications of some of these issues. UAE has bought land in the USA to grow alfalfa for its cattle population to conserve on their precious water on their side of the world. Imagine how some of the people in the US are reacting today. Even today, the world has 1 billion cattle 25 billion chicken and almost 1 billion pigs. I can imagine us kings like humans, and the entire battalion of cattle and chickens and pigs following UN has been stressing on leveraging the underutilized source of protein, insects. Insects produce a lot of protein very efficiently. But I don't know much about it. So let's understand from an expert. How can we use insects to fill this protein gap?
Tania 1:24
My guest for the day Ankit Alok Bagaria is addressing this growing need for animal food with a startup Loopworm, an agri biotechnology company that takes inspiration from nature to convert organic wastes into valuable products, promoting health, nourishment and wellbeing for all forms of life. Loop farm is currently focused on producing alternative sustainable protein and fats for shrimp feeds, poultry feeds and pet foods. Ankit is a dual degree graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology rotate with a BTech in chemical engineering and an MTech specialization in Computer Aided process plant design. He is a state level table tennis player as well. Hi, uncle. Welcome to the podcast.
Ankit 2:08
Hi, Tanya, thank you for having me.
Tania 2:10
What got you into agri tech? And can you explain in simple terms, what loopworm does and what was your inspiration behind setting it up?
Unknown Speaker 2:20
So lukewarm is my second startup. My first startup called aggro snap. Like way back when I was in the college was also in agri tech, where we were capturing images of the leafs and data mining fertilizer inputs to the soil. Not the same domain, not biotech. It was a lot of precision agriculture and electronics. A lot of image processing in it. It didn't work out, unfortunately. But then Loopworm. So the love for agri tech persists. Lukewarm came into play because I am a co founder wanted to do something in the organic byproducts or organic waste segment, we were already working on three projects on plastic paper and flour based upcycling, like back in 2018 2019. And that's where we realized that like we wanted to address the elephant in the room, organic waste is 50% of our waste. Let's just hit that. Because the current solutions like say composting, or biogas generation is not just scaling up. These are age old solutions, it's not solving the issue. So there has to be an upcycling mechanism for organic waste. And that's how we stumbled upon insects by going through United Nations report stating insects are the future of food and feed, which beautifully stated that India is well poised to dominate the world in this space because we have a tropical climate that insects love insects are nature scavengers, so we have abundance of food waste and organic byproducts that we can use to feed them. And we have a very cheap and frugal cost structure with lesser costs for land, labor and utilities. So if you are in the primary and the secondary sector space, with the climate supporting you with the raw material availability in abundance, it's a very good space to be in and you are solving two problems here. It's not just a protein problem. So like you said, insects are nature's host of a lot of good biomolecules. Like they are very nutritious with good fats, good proteins, but what they are also solving is the waste management issue that we are currently facing. So what we are intern trying to create is a circular economy solution where waste comes in as a raw material and protein goes out, right and ultimately, the waste comes from our food system. So we are trying to create a more sustainable food system here. And that is how the love for insects began.
Kinshuk 4:36
That's amazing because the global wastage of food itself is so high, you know, that doesn't even account for a lot of waste. Is that how we throw food or how do we dispose our waste every day? So it's basically upcycling something which otherwise meant zero value or negative value actually to the ecosystem. Correct?
Ankit 4:56
Totally agree.
Kinshuk 4:57
How does it work with loopworm like what happens there? Can you explain that?
Ankit 5:01
So in loopworm what we do is we target food processing industries. we procure food waste from them or organic byproducts from them. For us, it's a raw material for us it's not waste, like we're procuring it. And ultimately, we pre processed the food waste and convert it into a nutritionally balanced feedstock for the insects that we are cultivating, we cultivate the black soldier fly larvae, they are voracious eaters of food waste, and grow 5000 times in a span of 12 days. So like they they very efficiently convert the food waste into their own food, even the poop like that is released also the leftover substrate which is there is an organic fertilizer, so nothing goes to waste. And ultimately, the system is that you have you need to have a breeding mechanism where the flies of this insect they breed, they lay the eggs, then you collect the eggs, you take it to an incubation system, where you incubate the eggs, let them to hatch, you have to take control of the mortalities here because the baby insects are really vulnerable to mortalities. And then you basically transfer them to a vertical insect farm. So imagine milk crates being stacked on top of each other, with like optimum amount of food waste, or the feedstock and the optimum amount of baby insects, which go into feed on the feedstock that we have provided, ultimately, like it will take time and we have well panel cycles going so that the production is continuous, you get inch long insects or inch long insect larvae, which is ready to get sterilized cleaned up before it gets processed. So like we clean it up, sterilize it, and ultimately put it in our proprietary processing mechanism, where we use no chemicals to extract the proteins and the fats. And ultimately, these proteins and the fats are then packaged and would be shipped to feed manufacturers feed manufacturers being people who make stream feeds, dog foods, poultry, foods, etc. Those would be supplied with our ingredients. So we are ultimately a b2b company both on our supply side and demand side as well.
Kinshuk 7:06
Understood. So larvae is one thing which gets created and then you process it for sale to the feed manufacturers. Correct. Are there other products that come out of this process?
Ankit 7:14
Not as of now, we are taking it one step at a time we want to create a business in the animal nutrition space, like grow there stabilize it, ongoing r&d Is there where we are targeting for other products for different industries? It could be cosmetics nutraceuticals, we can do biopharma, but depends on what kind of quality we get of those products. And ultimately, then those quality parameters would be matched to the end applications. So yeah, every two years or three years or so we should have like at least a couple of products that we can launch in the market, we would still be b2b, we would still be in the ingredients space, we don't want to hit the end consumer.
Kinshuk 7:53
What is there in today's animal feed that you are replacing with this larvae byproduct? So just explain to our listeners. What does it consist of today? And where does that come from? And how are we making this process better?
Ankit 8:08
globally, just hit with some numbers. I'll start with some numbers, like 5.5 billion people are dependent on animal based proteins for their staple protein diets. And 2 billion people are dependent on fish. So 2 billion people are dependent on fish as the staple form of proteins. And ultimately, you need food to feed these animals who are giving you food as well. And that's where the problem starts, like poultry and aquaculture is growing at around a 10% CAGR. We are expected to have two times more pets in 2030 than we have today. And where do this food come from that that basically creates the problem. So you need the proteins, the carbohydrates, the fats, all the vitamins and minerals to feed these animals, just like we feed ourselves, right. And here the proteins and the fats become very important ingredients because that is where the crunch in the entire ingredient space comes in. So all the conventional ingredients, whether it is plant based or animal based, right has some dependence on the natural resources that we have. Consider soybean 97% of the soybean is being used and animal nutrition and not for humans. So it's only 3% for humans. Wow. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 9:17
that's a great data point. Yeah.
Ankit 9:19
this 97% is basically being used only for animals, we are using that arable land and that potable water to basically grow the food for the animals who are giving us food rather than growing food for us directly. And based on my earlier data points, animal agriculture is not going away. The world is heavily dependent on animal based proteins. We can ism is just at the beginning of what it is right? And a lot of these cultures across the world they cannot accept veganism like it's it's basically a personal choice rather than something where there is can be a cultural shift in the entire eating behaviors of people. So like what happens is soya bean like I told you is dependent on land and water, we need to cultivate it and then feed it to our animals. So the entire entire agriculture process of soybean, we are releasing emissions, we are polluting groundwater with fertilizers, then again, like feeding it to the animals who are not very efficient in terms of converting it into food again. So like ultimately a cow cannot give you one kg and one kg out of food, right. So it would basically take in 10 kgs of food and just convert it into two kgs of food for us. And ultimately, what we believe is if we are replacing these conventional ingredients, and that's where a more sustainable food system would come in, because you're feeding the animals something else something which is or reject off your food system. And ultimately, using the same natural resources to grow food for ourselves directly produce from the plant based angle, but if you look at aquaculture, which is farmed fisheries, right, so there is a fish in fish out mechanism there. What I mean by that is, you go into the wild marine ecosystems, seas and the oceans, say for example, you go to the Arabian Sea, you will catch Indian Oil sardines from there, you will bring it to say a Mangalore port and ultimately extract the oil from it, which comes into our cod liver oil. And ultimately, whatever is left out is a powder which is defatted and protein rich, which is called fish meal and eat a meal, which is basically a defatted protein concentrate. Now the problem is 90% of our seas and oceans are not overfished, the world is producing 4.5 million tons of fish meat, you can go to 5 million tonnes of fish meal, but the demand is going to be around 6.5 billion tons of fish meal by 2030. So how do you bridge that 2 million tons of demand that extra demand which is going to come in because aquaculture is not stopping, the demand of fish is not stopping. It's one of the leanest sources of protein, very rich in a lot of amino acids, and like a good source of fats as well. So ultimately, people are seeing it as a very nutritious form of proteins and fats. So it is not getting stopped, it is basically increasing. And that is where we come in, where insects are the natural food for fish and birds. Right. So feeding the streams feeding our fish, the chicken, right, you can also feed pigs and goats and cattle and horses, everything with insect proteins and fats, and like convert the food waste into insects, the insects getting rewarded into food for animals who give us food and ultimately replacing these conventional forms of ingredients, which are stressing our natural resources.
Kinshuk 12:28
That's very clear. And thank you for explaining this in such great detail. You're absolutely right, that suddenly it's not like everyone will say that, you know, let's give up meat or fish. And at times, it's also cultural, like you said, right? I mean, food is such a big part of human culture. And there is climate justice angle as well that the population that requires protein the most, we may be denying protein to those people because of what has happened in the past. So this is something which has to happen. And I think eventually there will be many different solutions, they will be big veganism as well. But then this also has to be there as an option. Right. So thanks for explaining that in great detail. But tell me this, like I tried to insects in China the first time and then I tried insects in Vietnam the first time. And my friends avoided me for one day completely saying key you have eaten insects, and we don't want to be around you. Now there is this yuck factor associated with insects. In today's culture. I mean, some cultures and some tribes have been using and still use insects as a part of their food, and they're completely okay with it. But the modern civilization per se looks down upon this. Have you faced this challenge in your business? And how have you handled it
Ankit 13:48
actually not to be very honest, because we are trying to feed it to animals who are giving us food. Most of the people if you speak to them, they don't even know what a chicken or a fish is fed. Right? And like sometimes they don't even care, what are they being fed? So they only care about their pets. They do care about their pets? Correct, right. So like in terms of what a dog is being fed or what a cat is being fed, if you're basically raising it, people do care about them a lot, but they have limited choices there as well. So the yuck factor doesn't come to our way it actually like it's the other way. Because like the farmers in itself, they themselves they realize that insects are the best food for fish and birds. They were meant to eat insects, they were not meant to eat soybean or maize or whatever we are feeding them. It was for our convenience to get those eggs and meat. Right that we started feeding them so having that maize and it was scalable. So no no doubt soybean has been revolutionary for the entire animal agriculture industry just like palm oil has been for the entire food processing and cosmetic sector. So sustainability has to come with a solution and that is where like people blindly questioning these ingredients is not right because what what solution do you have If you want to just shut palm oil, right? You You don't have any solutions, right? Would you stop using the cosmetics? Would you stop using the food products that you are eating? Currently? No. Right? And there is no other choice? Like how do you basically get those volumes in place without palm oil without soya bean, when it comes to say the products that I spoke about, right? So the attractor is not there, in our case, just another fact 1.3 billion people across the world consume insects. So it's not a small population. It's a small population in India, because and also we are very away from those populations. So it's basically the Northeast where 130 types of insects are being eaten as food. And there's an ad and chutney which is famous in Karnataka. Right. So that's, that's India for you. And it's very limited. But Southeast Asia, it's a delicacy found the crickets are more expensive than the most expensive chicken in Thailand, China is a delicacy South America, even the Scandinavian countries are adopting it now. So yeah, that actually is a positive sign that if you look at the insect based companies in the world, you will find like 50, in what we are doing, and you will find like 500 and say insect based chips past us crisps, nachos, cakes, etc, etc. And the Food Innovation said not just bigger, light saved it just imagine the amount of food innovations which can come in with such a like a nutrient dense food, there are ways to change the taste profile of food, like if you don't know about it, like you can basically, like just use soybean and convert it into a chicken tasting substance by adding certain organic molecules, right? So you can do it with insects as well. Right? If it tastes like chicken, and if you're not bothered about it being insects, right, then it's a cheaper form of protein, because it's already nutrient dense. And then ultimately, like, what would happen is people would start realizing their benefits. So if we, if I give you historical evidences, right, it was back in China, right. People started like consuming cockroaches and cultivating them as well, because they wanted to solve respiratory problems. Because Cockroaches have dissolvable IoT in them. Right. So it was a biopharma ingredient. Again, silicone pupa was being used to solve fatty liver issues, because it has those natural liver detoxifying agents, or basically something that like increases the efficiency of liver functioning, which basically was used in Chinese medicines, or Chinese or European, if you can call it our country. It's basically plant and dairy and honey, and we stick to it, right, but like, we have basically avoided half of the good things in the world by avoiding animals there. And that's where these foreign cultures come into play. I sometimes give it a read as well, it's a difficult thing to find. But yes, you do get inspiration of what can be done, right? Imagine vaccines being made using insects. Right. And that is what we see the the foreseeable future, maybe you would not do it, but some company or in the right, was like focused and motivated to do it can do it. And that's the beauty of insects. Wow, that's
Unknown Speaker 18:06
very interesting. Thank you, thank you for sharing this. So
Ankit 18:10
I mean, if you read articles online, everywhere, insects are being hailed as the next big source of protein, right, and the sustainable source of protein for the future. How quickly do you think what's your guesstimate that a country like India will adopt it
Unknown Speaker 18:25
as animal nutrition now, but as human nutrition maybe later, so it like bringing it to the conventional human nutrition space is going to take time, right? And it's not the right market, right, we are culturally not fit our generation is basically who is the one who is experimenting with their foods. And before that, it was a lot of conventional orthodox religious beliefs, writing our food habits. So like now we are questioning them, I am the first meat eater in my family. So my generation basically, and that basically is increasing. So even if the population is is increasing, the meat consumption is not increasing at the population incremental rate, it's growing beyond that, like new people are basically getting converted to being non vegetarians, the same way people are getting converted to veganism, right, giving away dairy and any animal based product for that matter. The same way new people are coming to the animal agriculture, say animal based products domain as well. So maybe it's like India is still behind. And like we don't mind that like we can extract a number of products from insects for different industries, which is not going to go inside a human right, but you can make shampoos from it, the ingredients that we have, you can basically convert it into surfactants lubricants, right, you can get into oleochemicals. So a lot of products can be developed from the ingredients that we are creating, because it's another fat, if you come to think of it from a very scientific standpoint, it's a high quality protein. It's a high quality fat. Just keep the source aside for some time and look Get it from a chemical source standpoint right and then it starts making sense, but like what we can do and where India can excel like I told you, we have very frugal cost structures, we have abundance of raw material. Insect agriculture can be huge in India. And what we can do is produce in India sell across the world, just like we did with shrimps, right 80% Shrimp cultivation in India is exported right to other countries, mostly China and us. So we had no shrimp culture in India before 2008. It was just wild shrimps being cultivated here and there on the coastal areas. But 2007, eight wide legged shrimps came in. And we are now like second or third largest exporter in the world. It took us 10 years, 12 years to reach us there and starting from zero. And that's what we can do with insects as well. We do have a lot of good talent here in India, because sericulture which is silkworm farming is an actual practice here. Aquaculture, which is honeybee farming is still there, people realize the importance of earthworms for vermicomposting, three wonder insects you're already recognizing, and there are dedicated Institute's on each one of these. So you do have talent there. So why cannot be a black soldier fly or some other insect which is useful for us. And like that is where I feel that it just has to be that thrust from our end, that yes, there can be a good business that you can build around insects, and people would definitely pick it up.
Unknown Speaker 21:29
So you know, while you're talking about the shin cultivation industry in India, growing so fast, right, but with that growth came also came a lot of problems. We've heard of breeding in disasters conditions, so a lot of inbreeding or diseases, etc. Right. So that also is, of course, probably a result of how quickly it had to scale up, how will insect cultivation fee be different and I assure that it won't run into that kind of problem
Unknown Speaker 22:00
depends on how you do it, you can basically do deforestation and cultivate your crops. And that is also disastrous, right? So doing plant or animal or something else doesn't basically prove that it is going to be disastrous or not, it's the practices that we adopt, which is basically going to either help us solve it or enhance it further, right. And that is, so consider shrimps, right? So, if you look at shrimp breeding, it is done in house like it is not done in natural resources or natural ecosystems. Similarly, insects that we are cultivating would entirely be in house. So we are not going to use any natural resources that we would have our own cultures not dependent on nature, we will do our own breeding, our own insect cultivation, and we'll ensure that not even a single fly goes out of our facility, because we don't want to disrupt the natural ecosystem, because insects being on the lower rung of our food system right. So, if there are more insects, then the predators of those insects are going to increase as well right. So, you can expect more lizards and more birds right coming in and more frogs coming in if there are more insects in the ecosystem, and then even their predators would increase right. So, you can expect more snakes there, right and that is going to be nonsense for us. And that is where you need not you cannot and you should not like just mass cultivate insects and throw them in the atmosphere, because it is going to disrupt the entire ecosystem. And there are case studies, if you look at it, there have been multiple case studies across the world where like what people did was just 10 rabbits in a forest basically made it a rabbit hub right because the rabbits they reproduce like four to six times in any year, and like sort of population multiplication is rapid, the smaller the animal more apparatus the multiplication. So you cannot take the chance in terms of diseases and all black soldier fly currently is known to have no pathogenic contamination as such, like we have not experienced it, but like it can definitely come. So it can definitely come scientific community always keeps on evolving, right. And like so, there is an extent to which you can predict something, right we were not able to predict a Corona like event right? And that is for us humans, right. So predicting it for animals becomes or insects becomes even more even more difficult. And what we have focused on entirely as a nation is regard insect as pests just shoo them away or kill them. So the reverse talent is there. Right? But but you need people who are pro insects as well, in terms of cultivating them growing them solving their diseases. So just to take an example right, silkworm experiences a disease called the brain and the people have found a solution. There are bad disinfectants for silkworms. So solutions do come but it takes time and it takes that initiative so like so my personal motivation to come to different podcasts is basically to educate the kid I'll write more and more people should get into it. Because we cannot solve everything ourselves, we have a restriction in terms of how much legs we can spread, right. And ultimately, we will need to collaborate with other peoples in the people in the industry to take this forward. But yeah, it's about like keeping yourself conscious enough, by not knowingly doing something unknowingly a lot of things can happen, right? But knowingly, if you are creating a disruptive system, which is not good for the environment, or not good for people's health, or for Animal Health, that's not good. unknowingly. A lot of things can happen. And that is how evolution occurs.
Unknown Speaker 25:36
And it is black soldier fly. Is that native to India? Yeah, it is. native to India. What is it called in Hindi?
Unknown Speaker 25:47
Yeah. So like, I don't know what it's called in Hindi. It has a cool name that is called black soldier fly. Right? And it has a very cool name, right? Why am I calling calling it a data? Right? So ultimately, it's native to India, it's actually native to most of the tropical belt across the world, the history is basically from Mexico or Texas, in us, but it has spread across the world now. So like our starting cultures were from Mangalore, right, there is evidence is like, where people have sourced it from a compost pile in root key as well, or elsewhere in India. So but yet, like it's still in the very beginning of in the research phase, it's still in the very initial stage, when it comes to that soldier flies
Unknown Speaker 26:34
just could be a nice tagline, black soldier fly fighting waste since 14 million years. Something, why not? Why not? Essentially, is your animal feed, then working out to be cheaper than the regular animal feed? Or let's say feed built around soya, etc.
Unknown Speaker 26:52
Depends. So like our ingredients would be priced at the similar prices. It also depends on the cost benefit analysis that you get from the ingredients, right? Say for example, I'll just take random numbers here. So there is a product A which gives you x benefit, if there is a product B, which gives you 1.2x benefit, it need not be priced at the same level, right? Yeah, the profit has to be distributed amongst the entire value chain, that that is what our product is. So like Indians, by default, concentrate on whether the product is cheaper or not. Right, we should be more focused on productivity now. And that is going to help us lead that growth. We have a tremendous amount of arable land with us, like huge amounts of potable water that we can use. The problem is our farms are inefficient. And that is because like, we have that society mentality, we don't look at quality per price, it has to be a numerator by denominator, right. So if the quality is much more, and at the right price, it can be much more beneficial than like using cheaper products, which is not giving you quality, right. So like we by default, are conditioned in a way that like we only look at the pricing of a product and not the value of the product. And that that has to change.
Unknown Speaker 28:07
I displayed that behavior. Okay, yeah, Tanya,
Unknown Speaker 28:12
I'm speaking of productivity in terms of land usage, right to grow plant feed for animals versus animal feed, what would be a rough ratio of these two?
Unknown Speaker 28:24
So if you compare it with soya bean, we use 200 times lesser land for the same amount of protein, and 170 times lesser water, and that we are using non arable land. Wow, that's amazing. It's basically zero land, right? If you look at it from that perspective,
Unknown Speaker 28:40
okay, so for the same amount of protein, and then what happens to the product that you make, it needs to be mixed with actual food for consumption by the animals, right? I mean, you're you're making the protein content of it, right, and it needs to be mixed.
Unknown Speaker 28:56
So what the feed manufacturers normally do is they'll procure 10 to 15 ingredients, mix it in the right proportion and create a compound feed a pallet out of it. It's very similar to what you see in aquarium feeds. Right, the red yellow green beads red, yellow, green is basically to attract you as a customer, but it's normally amaze color or cream color bead, right, depending on the size of the fish or the shrimps can either be a one mm or two mm or three mm. So it changes right and ultimately, we are supplying the protein ingredient there. And that too, we don't promote the use of entirely our protein. What we are stating is you mix it up with whatever works the best for a particular animal that you are targeting to try to give it a balanced diet right and ultimately, the amino acids the other quality of the other biomolecules which is coming in from insect protein can be optimized in the diet of a particular animal at a particular life stage and that is what we are promoting.
Unknown Speaker 29:52
So Ankita LUCAM has won multiple awards from central and state governments and private foundations as well. including what I was reading a view on waste management, how are you contributing to the waste management sector with what you're doing.