Black soldier fly farming in Bangladesh: current practices, farmer’s challenges and future opportunities

Black soldier fly (BSF) farming provides a sustainable solution for waste management and animal feed costs. This study explores the current practices, challenges, and opportunities of BSF farming in Bangladesh through a survey of 60 farmers across 21 districts, using Kobo-Toolbox through a combination of Computer-assisted Personal and Telephonic Interview (CAPI and CATI) method with purposive and snowball sampling. Male-dominated (98.3%) farming, learned through YouTube tutorials (63.3%) with a motivation to reduce feed cost (35.1%) serves as the major driver of BSF farming in Bangladesh. A strong negative correlation (r2 = 0.7278, P < 0.001) was observed between farmers’ economic (low-interest loans, 24.8%) and technical (farming training, 17.7%) needs. BSF, largely raised using fruit (19.0%) and vegetable waste (18.7%) are primarily used as live feed for fish (50.7%) and poultry (46.4%), with selling prices ranging from US$ 0.42-0.84 kg for fresh/live larvae, US$ 2.93-4.19 kg for pupae, US$ 0.042-0.13 kg for dried frass, and US$ 0.42-2.51 g for eggs. Only 23.3% of farmers practiced substrate fermentation. Weighted scoring analysis highlighted marketing challenges (655.4) driven by inadequate storage facilities (186.3) as most prominent, followed by substrate sourcing (608.6) and daily-operational difficulties (566.7), linked to transportation issues (150.3) and temperature/humidity control (136.8), with no significant differences among these categories (F = 0.336, P = 0.718). Factor analysis revealed farmers’ prioritization of economic benefits (pet food and cosmetics production) over environmental sustainability. Given the diverse prospects of BSF farming, further research is recommended to address farmers challenges, providing policy interventions including low-interest loans, farming training, and improved market infrastructure.