KAMPALA/KAYUNGA – The war in Ukraine has led to an explosive rise in fertilizer prices in Uganda and neighboring Kenya, along with their scarcity.In the face of this crisis, some farmers are turning to a new and sustainable ally to enrich their soil: the droppings of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens).Even before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Marula Proteen Hub, an organization promoting sustainable solutions in agriculture based in Kayunga, central Uganda, mobilized farmers to produce Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae. in English).But many, especially the oldest in the communities, were reticent.“I wondered what they would think of me having worms.Some, however, accepted.So they have been saving those worms, with which we make feed and now also quality fertilizers,” said Abbey Lubega, supervisor of the Marula Proteen Hub in Kangulumira sub-county.Some 1,000 farmers in Kayunga have mobilized to raise the worms, which they sell to the center for cash or in exchange for ready-made compost.“Farmers have waste on their farms.So we give them BSF systems to rear the larvae.We also give them five-day-old larvae.The larvae feed on the waste collected in houses.After eight days, they sell the mature larvae to us or feed them to their cattle.There is also that option.Then they retain the fertilizer for their garden,” Lubega said in an interview with IPS.In addition to this income from the larvae, it is the fertilizer produced on their farms that interests the farmers, because “they can produce the quantities they want.It's fast, it's reliable,” she explained.Marula Proteen Hub, which promotes the use of concentrated proteins, is based in a processing plant for pineapple and jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) fruits, to take advantage of the waste generated as raw material for the rearing of FBS larvae, also known as by its acronym in Spanish MSN.A pungent smell of ammonia fills the air as you enter the larval rearing section, where the five-day-old larvae feed on the waste.“These larvae are eating.They are defecating.The ammonia that is smelled emanates from the excrements”, explains Lubega.Harriet Nakayi lives in the Namakandwa community, about 75 kilometers east of Kampala, the Ugandan capital.She is one of the women in this area who has received training to sustainably produce FBS larvae, in order to obtain animal protein and manure flakes for her crops.With her three-year-old daughter at her side, Nakayi scoops the larvae out of black containers and pours them into a metal mesh to separate them from the decomposed brown goo that looks like clods of earth.The larvae are about to be brought to the center for sale.The waste and compost are ready to be dumped on your coffee, vanilla and banana crops.The rural producer told IPS that the frost from the black soldier flies is much easier to apply compared to the manure from the animals.“This fertilizer does not burn the plants.So unlike manure, which you have to wait a while, this can be applied immediately on the crops,” said Nakayi.Like Nakayi, Solomon Timbiti Wagidoso, a pineapple farmer, said he applied the fly mulch to one of his orchards and its growth makes him believe he will have a better harvest.“The government had said that it would manufacture our fertilizer, but they have told me that this project is paralyzed.We are now dependent on imported fertilizers, the cost of which is going up and up” since 2020, and now more because of the impacts of the war in Ukraine, Timbiti said.You can read the English version of this article here.By early April, fertilizer prices had more than doubled in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.The three countries and the rest of East Africa depend on imports from Russia and Belarus for that item.Researchers in Uganda and Kenya found that composting black soldier fly faeces takes five weeks to compost, compared with between eight and 24 weeks for conventional compost."It has been proven that the droppings of it, a byproduct of the breeding of the black soldier fly, contain substantial amounts of nutrients that can fertilize the soil," explained Lubega as he collected the waste from one of the containers with his hands.Meanwhile, small worms continue to grind up the residue, which now looks like very fine earth.“It's almost dust, as you can see.It's very fine,” Lubega said.“Cow manure is good, but goat manure is better.Chicken is better than goat.And what about the larvae that are the smallest.Thus, we see that the smaller the animal, the better the manure”, he assured.Lubega details that BSF larvae manage to break down the substrates to make nutrients available to the plant.“Inorganic fertilizers provide the nutrients that the plant needs, but organic fertilizers improve soil health.They reduce that dependency.If I buy inorganic fertilizer for this season, I have to buy more for the next one.I will have to apply inorganic compost for life,” he added.The specialist points out that organic fertilizers are more suitable for small farmers, such as those in Kangulumira, who cannot afford to buy chemical fertilizers.In addition, in his opinion, there is a clear advantage because it is a long-term benefit for small farmers, for whom it does not make sense to depend on the purchase of inorganic fertilizers, when they can produce their own organic fertilizer."It is no different from giving the fish or teaching how to fish," Lubega said.Rucci Tripathi, Director of Resilient Livelihoods Global Practices at the international development charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), with offices in Uganda and other African countries, told IPS there is an urgent need for a strategy for farmers and developing countries protect themselves from the current crisis in the prices of fertilizers, fuel and food.The VSO representative, with some 80,000 volunteers spread across the global South, said there is a need to invest in supporting community initiatives on composting, including feeding soils through plant cover such as hay and planting nitrogen-fixing plants.“This reduces farmers' reliance on chemical fertilizer imports, which is good for farmers' income and soil health.We see many such small-scale initiatives in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya,” said Tripathi.Researchers at the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) have revealed that the adoption of insect bioconversion technology can recycle between two and 18 million tons of waste into organic compost worth approximately between nine and 85 million dollars a year.Sevgan Subramanian, Chrysantus Mbi Tanga, and Denis Besigamukama, part of those researchers, have just published an article titled “Nutrient quality and maturity stage of fertilizer from excreta of nine edible insects”.The authors noted that although the use of organic fertilizers is acceptable and affordable to farmers, their adoption has been limited in sub-Saharan Africa due to poor quality, long production time, and limited sources of organic matter on productive farms."There is therefore a need to explore alternative sources of organic fertilizers that are readily available, affordable and of good quality, such as insect faeces fertilizer," they wrote.Debora Ruth Amulen, founder of the Insect Research and Development Center based in the Ugandan capital, told IPS that farmers need to be made aware of animal protein and fertilizer generated from BSF.“It is useful on our farms.It is also a useful tool for our environment.We have a lot of manure from cattle.They produce many greenhouse gases.The black soldier fly has been useful for (generating) compost from urban waste,” explained Amulen, also a professor at Makerere University, the largest in Uganda and based in Kampala.For the specialist, “it is a very simple technology that can be applied even by those who have not gone to school.And it's very profitable."Subscribe to the Weekly NewsletterIPS is an international communication institution whose hub is a global news agency that 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