WEBVTT

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In 2050, there will be
10 billion people on Earth.

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Ten billion people that need to be fed.

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Ten billion people living off
the resources of a planet

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that is already unable to sustain
the 7 billion people living today.

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Or at least not in the way
we currently operate.

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We all agree that to live, we need food,
and, in particular, proteins.

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With wild resources being limited
and sometimes hard to obtain,

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we farm: pigs, chickens, fish.

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But to produce one kilogram
of farmed fish,

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we need to use five kilograms
of wild fish as feed.

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The consequence? Fish stocks
are being depleted.

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Same thing with chickens,
which we feed with soy.

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The more chicken we eat,
the more soy we need.

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And to grow more soy, we need
to deforest areas, like the Amazon.

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We are destroying whole ecosystems
to produce more food.

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And paradoxically,
we don't eat everything we produce.

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One third of the food we produce
will never be consumed by a human.

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One third.

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We're producing waste and destroying
our planet in the process.

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So why am I telling you this?

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My brother got married this summer.

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I had the honor of being a witness.

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On the day of the wedding,

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before his friends and family,
and before the mayor,

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the marriage certificate was read out,

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and the witnesses' names
and professions were given.

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Raphael Smia, fly farmer.

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Yes, I farm flies.

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To be more specific,
I use insects to reclaim bio-waste

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in order to produce proteins and lipids
for animal feed and green chemistry.

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OK, I've lost you.

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What I do is gather bio-waste,
like rotten apples from the supermarket

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or food scraps from a restaurant.

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We take all that, we grind it up,
we mix it all up,

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and we put it in our bio-reactors
with insect larvae.

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Our larvae love waste and rotting things.

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To each their own.
They eat, grow and fatten up.

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And when they've gotten
enough proteins and fats in them,

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they're used as animal feed.

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Chickens don't naturally eat
South American-grown GMO soy.

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No. They eat insects.
Same thing for fish.

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Yet, this is the model we've been given.

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We grow grain that we feed
to our livestock,

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we harvest it, we turn it into food,
we eat it, or we throw it out.

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Farming insects makes it possible
to recover the nutrients

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which remain in this waste

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and to reinsert those nutrients
back into the human food cycle.

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We go from a linear model
to a circular economy.

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So, who is this superhero of recycling?

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Let me introduce to you
the black soldier fly.

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This shows that the flies
in France aren't all white.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So a quick lesson on flies.
A fly lays eggs.

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Larvae hatch from these eggs.

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If there's just one, no problem.
But more than one, and look out!

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The larvae eat, and when they've
eaten enough, they become pupae.

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A pupa is sort of like a cocoon for a fly.

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After a few weeks,
a new fly emerges from the pupa.

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And this fly is the ideal farm animal.

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First of all, it's harmless.

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It doesn't sting. It doesn't bite.
It doesn't transmit disease.

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The adult fly actually doesn't even eat.

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The only things it does is drink
and look for mates.

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Sort of like if you were to spend
your whole life in a nightclub.

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(Laughter)

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And because adult flies don't eat,

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they don't spread germs as they go
from our garbage to our plates.

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And also, they exist
naturally in France,

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so there's no risk of ecological disaster,
like with the Asian lady beetle.

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Lastly, and most importantly,
black solider fly larvae are scavengers.

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They can eat and process
all different kinds of waste,

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while creating none themselves,

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since even their excrement
can be used as fertilizer.

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So, now you get it.
These flies are perfect!

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The only thing we needed
was to domesticate them.

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That's what we did with my associate,
Jean-François Kleinfinger.

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We built our first laboratory
in the Loire-Atlantique department,

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in a stable.

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In it, we built a climate chamber,

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which is a hermetically sealed chamber

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in which we can control
temperature, humidity,

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and all that, inside.

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I can tell you that for someone like me,

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who has trouble putting
IKEA furniture together,

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this was a pretty big challenge.

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We got our first larvae, we fed them,

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and we waited impatiently
for the first fly.

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And here it is!

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The first fly
from the NextAlim laboratory.

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I have to tell you
my family and friends were wary.

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Especially my grandma,

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who asked when I was
going to get a real job.

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And I get where they're coming from.

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I was digging through supermarkets' trash.

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I spent my time watching
and waiting impatiently

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for flies to mate.

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And I was putting larvae
into different situations

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to see how they would react.

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For example, black soldier fly larvae
behave in a peculiar way.

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When they've finished eating,

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they migrate out of their substrate,
out of their food source.

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This has its advantages and disadvantages.

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The advantage is that there's no need
to harvest the larvae one by one.

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That's pretty nice.

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The disadvantage is that they can migrate
when we don't expect it.

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That's what happened
with our first generation.

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We built them bins with ramps
to facilitate their migration.

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The ramps were precisely
45° from the ground,

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like the literature said.

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You can imagine the looks
on our faces the next day,

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when we found the lab
littered with larvae.

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The larvae had the brilliant idea
of going up the vertical walls

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rather than using our ramps.

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Well, anyway, the colony
is making progress.

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And we even want to optimize our set-up,

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like the number of matings, egg clutches.

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This involves playing
with different parameters:

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light, temperature, and a bit of music.

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(Barry White - "You're the First,
the Last, My Everything")

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No, seriously,
music really works with flies too!

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(Laughter)

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We domesticated the flies,
and with that success,

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we were able to raise funds

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from private partners
and also from public partners,

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who supported the project
to the tune of several million euros.

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What those funds, we were able to build
a slightly more professional laboratory,

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to conduct more thorough experiments,

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and, most importantly, to determine
the process and to draw up the plans

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for the first industrial
insect farming factory.

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In 2017, we will be able to process
13,000 metric tons of bio-waste,

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and to produce 4,000 metric tons
of larvae per year.

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And 4,000 tons of larvae,
that's about 20 million times this.

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And all that, with a single plant.
But that's not all.

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Bio-waste can be found
everywhere in France.

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We will set ourselves up as close
as possible to bio-waste producers

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to be able to produce local proteins.

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But that's not all.

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With one ton of bio-waste,

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we can also make 300 kilograms
of fertilizer, 75 liters of bio fuel.

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That's a full tank of gas.

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In 10 years, we'll be able
to replace 50% of fish meal.

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Still, insect farming isn't a panacea

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that can save the planet
and prevent the world's end.

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But for a more sustainable,
healthier society, every step counts.

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Even the steps of flies.

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(Applause)