Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
353 Sébastien Crépieux - Insects, the perfect livestock to reintegrate into an arable farm
A conversation with Sébastien Crépieux, founder of Invers, developing a decentralised insect farming supply chain for animal nutrition, placing farmers at the heart of the model. The role of animals and livestock in farming is something we cover frequently, but we’ve never discussed insects which can transform immense amounts of agricultural waste—such as leftovers from beer brewing or wheat milling—into high-quality protein and fats. Perhaps most importantly, their frass (manure) is an amazing fertilizer.
Of course, humans could consume insect protein directly, but in the Global North, this is rare and may take a long time to change. Insect protein is also an excellent poultry feed, but its greatest impact may be in aquaculture—specifically, fish feed. The immense destruction caused by industrial bottom-trawling fishing fleets is difficult to describe and comprehend. However, it’s safe to say that catching anchovies or krill for fish meal—to feed salmon and other fish—is highly inefficient and environmentally harmful.
With Sébastien we explore a decentralized approach to insect farming in France, one that focuses on putting farmers at the centre—not by reintegrating large ruminants into farms, but rather small mealworms. Why not go super-centralized with massive facilities and raise hundreds of millions of euros, as some other companies have done? Why hasn’t more insect meal been sold to the aquaculture sector to help reduce pressure on the oceans?
More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/sebastien-crepieux.
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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I spent my life to remove the insects from my farm and you, you want to bring them back to my farm. It's really stupid, really a mistake.
Speaker 2:But did you know anything about insects at that moment? Or it was just like you started?
Speaker 1:Google Even more and even more important, we'll put the farmer at the heart of the model. The best model we have to deliver is really the decentralized model, because we'll be able to scale like this centralized model because we'd be able to scale like this the role of animals and livestock in farming.
Speaker 2:We've covered it a lot on the podcast, but never animals, this small Insects, thinking about it, we probably have never covered it at all, while it holds great promises for the future of food, agriculture and, of course, aquaculture. Insects are able to transform immense amounts of agriculture waste, which could be left over from beer, brewing or wheat milling, into high-quality protein, fats and potentially, most importantly, their frass, their manure, this amazing fertilizer. Of course we could consume the insect protein directly as humans, but in the global north we hardly ever do that and it might be slow to change it. But it could also be great poultry feed. But the biggest impact we might have is probably in the aquaculture feed, fish feed. The immense destruction of the industrialized fish bottom trolling fleets is hard to describe and to understand, but it's safe to say that fishing anchovies or krill for fish meal to feed salmon and other fish is extremely inefficient and harmful. Today we unpack the decentralized way of insect farming in France, focused on putting the farmer in the center, how to reintegrate animals on their farms, not large ruminants like cows, but small mealworms. Why not go super centralized with massive facilities and raise hundreds of millions of euros, which some other companies have done? And why haven't they sold a lot of insect meal yet into the aquaculture sector to reduce the pressure on the oceans? Take a deep breath, and another one. Every second breath we take comes from the oceans and over half of the fish we eat is farmed. That's why we dedicate a series to explore the potential of regeneration.
Speaker 2:Underwater Oceans and other water bodies cover most of our planet and have stored most of the excess heat so far and at the same time, have some of the best opportunities to produce healthy food, mostly protein, store carbon, create materials, fuel, biostimulants and much, much more Plus, create a lot of jobs in coastal communities. We have largely ignored the water-based farming, aquaculture industry in this podcast until now. In these conversations we explore why aquaculture is so important for the future of our planet. If we get this wrong, we have a serious problem. What are the risks and challenges with feed, the reliance on soy pests yes, there are pests underwater antibiotics, microplastics, etc. What does it mean when you apply regenerative principles to aquaculture? What can soil-based agriculture learn from aquaculture and vice versa? And what should investors really know about water-based farming and what the potential is of regenerative aquaculture. A series of interviews with the people putting money to work entrepreneurs and investors in this crucial and often overlooked sector.
Speaker 2:We're grateful for the support of the Nest family office in order to make this series. The Nest is a family office dedicated to building a more resilient food system through supporting natural solutions and innovative technologies that change the way we produce food. You can find out more on thenestfocom or in the links below. Welcome to another episode. Today we're developing a decentralized insect farming supply chain for animal nutrition, placing farmers at the heart of the model. Welcome, sebastian. Good morning, kun.
Speaker 2:And we had quite an, let's say, an extensive prequel for this. I know your story into insect farming, which, of course, is quite a specific part of, let's say, the livestock industry and even of the agriculture industry and the aquaculture industry, where we're going to talk quite a bit about today. But just to unpack, why do you spend most of your waking hours thinking about mealworms and fertilizer, decentralization and also, let's say, streams of biomass? Because it's such a fundamental piece of your business model. How did that happen? Because I don't think you wake up one day. I mean, there must be a few people that go to university specific for this, but I think many people that are in the insect space now had a wandering journey towards that. So how was yours?
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, it's a long story. In fact, we have time. Yeah, we have time. Okay, if I come back to my personal story, I'm an agronomist initially, so I started to work really on the whale on plants.
Speaker 1:So my first career was on plant genetics, plant breeding, how to adapt, for example, plants to their new environmental conditions Like we have the climate change. Plants have to be more adaptive, like like, for example, wheat has to be more adapted to this kind of conditions. And then, after that, I moved to a new field, which was greening the cities. So you see, always on innovation, I was always passionate by entrepreneurship, how we can solve solutions, how we can solve solutions, how we can propose solutions to problems, and I think one of the problems of the towns is the lack of plants, the lack of trees, the lack of everything. I was really impressed by the green walls that were developed by Patrick Blanc in France, for example, on some museum, and I spent 10 years greening the cities in Belgium and Luxembourg, but I was missing something.
Speaker 1:I'm from the countryside. I always worked in farming, in agriculture, and then we went back to France in 2016. And almost suddenly, I decided to go back to farming and how to provide new farming models to the farmers. How can they move to new production? How can they move to a new production? How can they be more resilient to many things? And agroecology was a thing for me. I decided to create a company on agroecology called Agroecology, and from this start, I started to work on my ecosystem environment around the region where I am now so it's in the center of france, close to clermont-ferrand, and the idea to produce insects came almost suddenly, as you said. In fact, it's not one morning, but one day. I was reading the newspaper. It was in july 2016 and I was reading an article on the overfishing. So we all know that there is overfishing, but what we know less is that almost 40% of the fishing in the world is dedicated to produce fish meal 4-0.
Speaker 2:Yeah, almost half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's massive Almost half and it's increasing, always increasing. And all this fish meal is used mainly for one goal is to produce fish. It's for aquaculture. It's really funny. The problem is that, in fact, we take from the ocean fish with less value to transform them into a fish meal, to give to high value fish like a salmon, like a trout, like a fish from the ocean yeah, exactly, all carnivorous fish which need, in fact, proteins, and ideally fish proteins, to develop. And that's really a main concern. When we think aquaculture is driving a change, it's positive because we don't take the resource in the ocean when we grow fish. In fact, at the moment it's the opposite, because we take the fish in the ocean to grow other fish which are carnivores and I read this paper.
Speaker 2:I've heard people sorry to interrupt I've heard people describe it.
Speaker 2:I mean, of course we cover the feed side quite a bit in in the region aquaculture series where we're doing but describing it like we're it's not exactly the same. But we're farming like you would farm livestock in, let's say, on land and farming a tiger and eat the tiger and feed a lot of meat or or a lot of animals to the tiger, to uh, to end up with a tiger you can eat. And and there are arguments that probably the salmon or the trout are not the best fish to farm because they're carnivores and yeah, so they need a lot of protein and of course, now that the sector is looking for other proteins not necessarily insects, we get to that, but also soy with all its issues and and all kinds of. So it's a very like. Just looking at it on on, it seems like a very inefficient way of producing protein from fish that we could eat as well small fish to more valuable fish but losing, of course, a lot of efficiency and a lot of energy and a lot of oceans in the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're totally right, yeah, exactly. And seeing that, seeing that in fact there was in this same newspaper.
Speaker 1:they were talking about new proteins, they were saying it was the same article or it was the same like okay, yeah, there was this article, a full two pages article, very large, and there was a apart from this article there was a small box where they were saying that to try to solve this problem, the european commission will adopt the use of insect proteins to replace fish meal to feed the fish. You see, so it was a regulatory change saying okay, now, from tomorrow it will be possible to change this and to feed the fish with insects. And I was really involved on my farming ecosystem in Auvergne, in the center of France, and the day after I said, okay, we have to develop a whole value chain, production chain with the farmers, with the byproducts we can use in the area. So I'll tell you about all the byproducts we have here from farming activity.
Speaker 2:But did you know anything about insects? Sorry. Did you know anything about insects? Sorry. Did you know anything about insects at that moment, or it was just like Almost nothing, okay.
Speaker 1:Almost nothing. Well, I'm an agronomist so I quite know how to work with life, with living animals or with living plants. But no, for the Tenebrio and so on. At the beginning I didn't know. I will use Tenebrio, for example. And then, yeah, I had all this view of the ecosystem. I said, yeah, we'll develop a value chain to produce with the farmers, with cooperatives, with the byproducts, and the really really initial idea is to do a really circular farming model where also at the end, the frass so the dejections, also at the end the frass, so the dejections, the manure of the insects will be used to fertilize the soils and really recreate that in this area. So that was really the goal and that's how the idea started.
Speaker 2:Wow, and I think I mean full disclosure. I used to work at Aquaspark, which is an investment fund focused on region aquaculture. When this is out, maybe the conversation with Mike Failings will also be out. But I remember looking at some insect companies in the beginning that's 12 years plus ago probably and different types of insect. But I remember how we didn't really understood it, I think, at the time, or we didn't really understood it to begin with, but then when looking into the models, how important the fertilizer is, or the fertilizer coming out of the insects, the manure or the flask and it's such because, yeah, they absorb, they eat a lot and they poop a lot and it's really, really high quality Like when did you because you mentioned it now as a sort of not saying byproduct, but as a piece of the puzzle when did you realize how important that piece actually of the puzzle is?
Speaker 1:well, I would say almost at the beginning, because really I I would say the um, it was the protein or the insect was not really the end of the story. It was really, uh, create a full circular model where. You see, so when we are talking about byproducts here in this area, we are talking about wheat bran. We have big milleries here that produce flour for human consumption and we have between 10 and 15% of the wheat bran that was not used in the area. So, you see, was exported in other area where there are cattle and so on.
Speaker 2:So disconnecting the animal side from the land.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah exactly, and I see that's one of the main problem we have in animal production. Animal production is not a problem if it's well sought in a circular model or with lands and so on. So we had this problem and the soils in this area were starting to decrease in terms of quality, in terms of carbon, for example. So the idea was really to bring back also cattle in this area. But in this area people didn't want to hear anymore about cows, about pork, about whatever they were just doing cereals. So, you see, and the insect was an idea to bring them back cattle with a different way of thinking.
Speaker 1:And so the frass was really in the circular model I proposed at the beginning to the farmers was really one of the key elements and they were really interested by that because they saw their soils in the long term will continue to decrease in terms of value and so the value of their farm also will decrease. So so we we saw that it was really important and, moving up, uh, with the discoveries, with the research and so on, we saw that the frost from tenebrio, even more, is a one of the top quality we can have with the kitten we have inside and which gives tremendous results in terms of cultivation and in terms of results to the soil. So it's really really important.
Speaker 2:And then so you start to put these puzzle pieces not together, but let's say you started putting them on the table. You started figuring out okay, where does the feed come from for this mini livestock? Large livestock probably is not possible yet, or not possible because it's just moved out of the region and it requires too much work to bring that back. So mini livestock could work. The frost coming from this, mealworms is amazing, so that's a really good hook for for the farmers.
Speaker 2:And where did that final step come from? And saying I'm not going to build a large centralized facility where I collect from the mills or next to the mill, for instance, I collect all the leftovers that normally would be exported to livestock elsewhere, but I'm going to decentralize this and build this on a number of farms itself. What was the click there? What was the decision there? Which probably, in hindsight, is really good but also really challenging, because decentralization sounds always nice but it brings challenges as well. But we're going to talk about that further on. What was that realization like? This needs to be a decentralized approach and not a large centralized factory, insect factory next to a mill where I have access to all the the feedstock and life quote.
Speaker 1:Unquote would be easy yeah, that was a long reflection, just to let you know. Maybe the day after, after reading the newspaper, I started to own a centralized model like the others, to say, okay, we'll be close to the millery, and so on. And after you start to think about how to organize the other production system, for example for chicken, for example for pork, even for cows, and you say, well, in fact, the farmer has a role into that, because I think there is no better uh person or way of doing than having a farmer to grow animals. I think it dates back from the domestication and we are not ready yet to replace the farmers by large factories for any, any kind of animals. And I was really on this kind of reflection and saying, well, I think the and at this time I didn't know if it would be mealworms or black soldier fly I said I think really we have to put the farmer into the production.
Speaker 1:I didn't know which phase was the best, but in general it's the fattening, because it allows many things. One, you have the responsibility of the farmer and I think the farmer, the grower, is a better eye than artificial intelligence or whatever. Two, you limit the risk. So, you see, you limit the risk because sanitary, in terms of sanitary risk, when you put many different buildings into the countryside, you have less chance that there is, if there is an epidemic, that all of them well die at the same time. You always have production at different sites.
Speaker 2:This is risk, it's just much lower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is risk really much lower. And the third point was doing that also. You don't need to invest 100, 200, 500 millions in a large factory, where you don't know if the scaling will be efficient, but you can build step by step in a large factory well, you don't know if the scaling will be efficient, but you can build step-by-step or block-by-block building first a first farmer, then a small facility to give him the baby larvae, then a second farmer, a larger facility, and so on. And that's what we did, In fact scaling each time with moderate ratio. So we were scaling two, three times the production every year, instead of saying, well, I produce one, and tomorrow, with my large factory, I'll produce 10,000 times one.
Speaker 1:You see, it's just a bet. This is a bet that is at present showing it's not efficient. So that's what we did. And putting all the pieces into a paper, into a paper shell, and say, okay, the best model we have to deliver is really the decentralized model, because we'll be able to scale like this and even more and even more important, we'll put the farmer at the heart of the model. And putting the farmer means also put all the ecosystem agriculture, ecosystem putting the cooperatives, putting the end users the cooperatives are also end users, putting the millery, putting the byproducts, the frass and everything. And now we are all organized like another production chain, like the chicken. I often make the comparison with chicken. We are all really organized the same and the more we advance and the more we are closer to this organization because I think it's the most efficient. Finally, you see, we are producing the reproducer at the same site than the reproduction and we saw it was not efficient, so we removed the reproduction of the reproducer to another farming production site and now it works perfectly.
Speaker 1:It's exactly like chicken. So you see, I think what we forgot sometimes when we talk about innovation is really to see what has been done in the past and for the organization of this kind of production system. I think we really have to learn about that and sometimes be't need confident, maybe, on what we can do.
Speaker 2:And I see the opposite. I see the opposite.
Speaker 1:We say okay, and we were optimistic on the inside and every time we scale it was complicated but anyway, because we are scaling moderate times any time it was possible, and now we are really producing a lot with the farmers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fascinating lot with the farmers. Yeah, it's fascinating to see the model. Even still, like you said, 2, 3x production and scaling is not easy at all. But of course, 10,000, especially with living systems and living animals, is just very, very risky. It's a bet and we see that now with some large insect companies. Why insect? Of course, in your country I don't know the latest. We're recording this the end of January in 2025. So go and Google if they're still around, but they're definitely in trouble. In trouble Large, large, centralized, and livestock basically.
Speaker 2:And you're saying, yeah, we've figured out a way to grow livestock and it's mostly decentralized. To a certain extent. There are sweet spots, there are things, of course, but like, let's not innovate. Already, growing mealworms at scale is not easy. It's enough innovation to and at figuring out genetics and feed and heat and cold and all of that. Let's also not innovate on putting hundreds of millions of these together, because the risk is just quite, quite large.
Speaker 2:And so when you put this on paper or on a computer, like how do you find your first farmers? Like how do you go out there? Because this isn't, let's say, an offer that I don't think many farmers would have gotten, like saying we want to use milling residue that will come from the meal that you probably work with, but we want to use um milling residue that will come from the meal that you probably work with. But we want to grow mealworms on your farm, um and reintroduce mini livestock and you're going to help us and take care of it and then you get the fertilizer. You can buy the fertilizer. That must have been an interesting, funny conversation at the kitchen table of some of these farmers yeah, you're totally right.
Speaker 1:So when when I presented so I worked this idea at the beginning with the Cooperative Limagra, I knew very well, I worked with them and they had the brand you see, the millery is from this cooperative and I proposed them the idea and they say, yeah, we think it's a good idea. So go and see the farmers. We authorize you to go to see our cooperators, authorize you to go to see our cooperators. And, as you said, the first discussion were really funny, because one I remember was saying it was an old farmer and I was talking to his son, which was around 40, 45 years old, and he was saying the father was saying you know, I spent my life to remove the insects from my farm and you, you want to bring them back to my farm. It's really, it's really stupid, really a mistake and anyway.
Speaker 1:So Jean-Paul decided to go anyway to work with us and at the beginning, in fact. So with all this discussion in the area we selected and we decided to work with three farmers we called the pioneers and with whom we, from the beginning, we were working closely. You see, every month, from maybe now seven years ago, every month or two months, we have a discussion with them because we see, okay, what are you expecting from this production, how do you want to organize the work? And we have always discussions with sort of co-development with them and we had to embark them, the territories, the farmers and everybody in the territory to say, okay, it's the future, it's a part of the future, it's a small part of the future, we have a small part of the solution, but if we work all together we can succeed and we can propose a solution for the farms.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, the discussion were funny at the beginning but we really started quickly with them, first with containers. So you see, on our site we developed one container where we are doing the nursery, and then put three containers at the farms and from that we started to grow with them and to start to improve the production. And from this container, after we moved to a first pilot building at our site and then the first pilot building at the farmer site, and then the second one, the third one, and then we grew like this and now we have a big nursery, large nurseries that can bring at the time to the farmer, to eight farmers, babies and we are able to grow again to 15, 20 farmers in the coming trimester or months, if the market needs more production.
Speaker 2:And so what was the biggest surprise of that first group, of working with that first group I mean there must be many, but the biggest thing you thought would work and didn't or the other way around actually was easier to do something or way more difficult. Like, what was the the biggest surprise in that first phase?
Speaker 1:as a bigger. There were plenty. Uh, I think we we automated quite a lot on the production because it's a production that is made in boxes. Uh, just just on figures, just to describe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could take us to like how does a quote-unquote factory look like? Uh, on a farm? Just I will. I will put your website obviously in the description. People can have a look at the photos and videos, etc. But just to because it's an audio medium. Um, bring us there. What do we see? What do we see, what do we smell, what do we hear when you? Walk into one of your facilities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the journalists really like to come to places like this, to the farm place and even to the nursery, because, yeah, it's really surprising. So first, the facility at the farm, the farm facility, so it's building around 1,000 meters square on which you have two-thirds of the building are taken by boxes, so there are piled boxes On one meter square. You have 30 boxes with three meters height pile and you are able to produce on this meter square every month 60 kilograms, 60 to 70 kilograms of mealworms. So you see it's really efficient. One meter square, 60 to 70 kilograms. It's organized after with the columns. On these columns you have automated irrigation, so we give water to the insects many times a day and the food is given for one month.
Speaker 1:So what happens at the fattening site at the farm level? They're growing the insects on one month's time. They put the food in the box for the one month's time after we give water, and every week the farmer does the same thing. He will harvest one quarter of the building, and so it's all automated. And so he brings the boxes, the pallets to depalletizer and so on, which does everything. He collects the harvest, the frass is separated, the bran which is not consumed is separated as well and we have the warmth at the end of the sieving machine and this warmth then goes to a cold chamber when they stop to grow. And so every week the farmer does that. He brings back then small doses, some maybes, in the boxes, and it goes back to storage for one month when again water is given, and so on About the atmosphere of the building. So you see, the building is quite classical with all these rows and so on, so really efficient in terms of production, around 20 tons of production.
Speaker 2:And in terms of building as well, because they're really classical farm buildings. It's not a big factory, it's not enormously long, it's not a uh, let's say uh it's like a park or it's. It's a normal barn normal building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll see on the website it's like a chicken chicken production site, a bit higher. Uh, with the systems we develop, what is really an innovation we brought to the farm is that it's a zero energy. So you see, from the beginning I was really concerned with all this matter. My innovation were always in the sense of, yeah, proposed solution to climate, to, to energy, to farming, to sovereignty and so on. And from the beginning I said, if we develop this kind of way, we cannot use energy.
Speaker 2:It's not possible because, like you, like every animal, when you digest, you produce energy, heat, a lot of heat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of heat. Even if the larvae is a cold animal, you don't need to eat it to produce heat, you see. And once the building is heated with digestion, you just have to keep this heat. So that was really my idea from the beginning. And then we developed buildings which had no energy on site. Zero energy on site, just the heating from the mealworms that produced the energy for the whole site. So that was the first innovation. Second was to develop systems, climatic systems, which are really low energy. After that, so it's just small replacement of the air and a lot of calculation, a good algorithm to reduce the energy. And then, yes, the organization was really the third innovation, with the automated system, with all this automation that at the beginning raised quite a number of problems because we had to develop machinery, specific machinery dedicated to that sort of harvester for the mealworm small factories of the farmers, and that was really a challenge and why is that?
Speaker 2:why I mean just for people, because, like, how, why was that a challenge? Because I can't imagine you you can buy something, or I can't imagine you can buy something off the shelf. There's nothing, no, so how do you even?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you start from the beginning. So first you have to design the boxes. So that was the first challenge. So design boxes means to buy a mold and to develop a mold. So that's the first step. Then when you have your mold, you have to say to produce the boxes and then to automate all that with robots. So we have FANUC robots, like in car, in in car industry for example, this kind of robots.
Speaker 1:And then so that's in the nursery and at the farm level, we decided to have something which is an automated specialized machine and we you had to design it from scratch. So you say, okay, we've done the thing so many times by hand. So after you can create all your scheme to say, okay, what we were doing, we do it efficiently with the machine and like this. But after you have what you put on paper and the realization, and so we spend quite from the delivery to the machine to the perfect working that we have now with machinery. Seven, eight and nine.
Speaker 1:Well, it was quite a long way. And the farmers at the venue say, ok, you run your machine, we don't want to hear any more about that. Come to the farm and do the harvest, so maybe almost during one year and now after one year we fixed all the problems. It was working perfectly and the prototypes moved to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. Now we are in series. But yes, that was quite a challenge because we couldn't say to the farmers when you have 10,000 boxes in a building, to harvest one quarter every week by hand.
Speaker 1:So you see, taking it, that's still a thousand boxes, yeah, so all that is done by the machinery and we had to stick to a price of the machinery that is compatible, that is, in comparison to the price you're looking for, the end product, which is not that high. Sustainable proteins don't have a really high price.
Speaker 2:So we'll get to that. I want to ask one final question on the. I mean where I can spend. We should do this in person and we walk through one of the facilities, but we'll do that at some point. And I'm just fascinated by because you mentioned before, like the farmer or a person is a better observer, or in your uh, your then um, ai at this point, or ai in general, and but it does doesn't mean, as you're, you're explaining that you're not involving technology at all, because you're involving technology in every, in every step. So how is that not saying tension?
Speaker 2:We're also recording this at a moment where ai seems to be in every news article and every uh, like, let's say, stock report. Uh, deep seek just came live. I mean, it was live already for for a year and a half, but, let's say, the technology journalists found out this week and so you saw a lot of uh stocks going down and up, etc. So technology and, and let's say, exponential technology, from from solar to um, to robots and to ai, seems to be everywhere at the moment. And what's your um, not yeah, what's your relationship with that? How do you dance with that tension of automate everything and just press a button and observe the screen, versus now we want somebody to walk through the factory, smell, see, see sense if something is off, if something is going well, et cetera. How do you deal with that tension?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that there are many interests of artificial intelligence for many aspects, even for us. I think at the pharma level it will help at one time to take decision Also, for example, for the growing of the worms and so on. We do some measurements at the moment by hand, like count, the gross curve and so on, and some at one point could be helped by artificial intelligence with image capture and be able to do some specific things. So I think it's important. Anyway, I think you will not replace someone going to the building and checking also a part.
Speaker 1:There are feelings you were talking about the atmosphere of the building. Every building is different and even, you see, for animals we say that the exposition, the position of the building, if there is water below, if there are many things, it will change your production. So I think anyway, the farmers has to go to the building. If there is water below, if there are many things, it will change your production. So I think, anyway, the farmer has to go to the building. After, if we can help him with tools like IA for some aspects, it will continue to improve the production and continue his work. But I think it's really important to have someone following the building, following the growth, having his feelings, because his feelings of grower, of farmer, are really important, and then we have the best combination of the two.
Speaker 2:And are you excited now, like you've been working on this for eight years now and has the technology wave become easier, like the robot side of things and just the compute power to help with certain things? Like, do you see, not saying the hype, but do you see, like, are you more excited, let's say, the last year or two, compared to the five years before or four years before? Or are you saying it's actually like a lot of these things have been there, they're getting better, but it's not exponentially better at the moment. What do you know? Are you more excited at the moment, like we're in 2025, than you were in 23? Or how? What do you see?
Speaker 1:no, I'm I'm not more excited. I think, yeah, there were a lot of investments in all these technologies. Uh, personally, we don't see the change at our level now and we spend quite a lot of time to develop specialized way of production and special machines and so on, so we will not change from one day to another. For some aspects, yes, we see what we can do, for example, on the image treatment I was talking of that before that can help decision tools. That could be, that could help from a smartphone or whatever, to train a sort of EA to say the growth is okay of your worms and so on. But yeah, it's not now. It will be in the close future probably.
Speaker 1:But anyway, I think we spend too much money on artificial intelligence while we have concerns that are now. We have concerns of, as I was saying, sustainable proteins, of producing sufficient food, not penalizing the environment, on agroecology, of regenerating family. I think there are more topics that, unfortunately, are a bit put apart from EA and too much money is going on that, while we have real, really concerned problems for humanity, which is, which are really concerning people, yeah, the living of people and and so looking at, okay, we've covered the production, I mean there's a lot to share there.
Speaker 2:But then you're producing protein, sustainable protein. You've've done lifecycle assessments. It's extremely sustainable. We'll get to that and a lot of, let's say, fertilizer, manure, a lot of frost, that is really valuable for the farmer. How was it to develop those markets? Or how was it to okay once the first three farmers started producing every month like quite a few, not, um, crazy amounts. But you're starting to have tonnage of stuff coming in and then you need to do something with that. Um, how did you, how did you approach that approach that?
Speaker 1:yeah, so, as I told you, the initial idea was really to replace fish meal yeah, but we saw, really, almost from the beginning, that it will be a long road, you see, because two things first, the price of the fish meal is really low and we thought when we started the project that the regulation will help at one time to say, okay, it's not sustainable, so we'll put a tax, an environmental tax, on fish meal. It's still not yet on the because that was in the article.
Speaker 2:Like european union allows now to use insect meal. But the second part of that, of course, is okay. If there's a an artificially low price for super unsustainable extractive fish meal, then we need to at least push up that price. So you have something to compete against, but yeah, and we are still yeah, it didn't happen.
Speaker 1:We're still waiting for that. And the inflation, the increase of price of the last three years from Ukraine, war, well, delayed. All these decisions like the Green Deal, like all we need really to have a sustainable future, it's all delayed. So you see, we are still facing on the lack of market on the fish meal. No one from the insect producer can go to this market because it's still the lowest possible. And the worst thing is that boats are going to more and more zones and regulating, even regulating now, and they still extract more and more. So the price is still the same. Until there will be no more fish in the ocean, it will go to the price to 10, 50. No more fish in the ocean Until it collapses, it will go to the price to 10, 50 times the price In one year. It can happen. So that's really the problem.
Speaker 1:So from the beginning we saw that this market would be difficult and we did not have enough, also material, to go to these factories because they are using thousands of tons every year to transform into fish, transform into fish meal. So from the beginning we developed specific markets for people like you, like me, general public, who have some chicken in the garden, who like wild birds and feeding the wild birds, who have reptiles and after who have pets, cats and dogs. And we developed all our brands at the beginning because we had this production of the farmer and we had to valorize it. We developed all our brands to go to shops, so specialized shops. We are now in a number of shops in France, it will be 3,000 this year, so 3,000 shops.
Speaker 1:And the idea was also to explain to the consumers that insects are a part of the food chain. They are part of the food chain for the chicken, for the fish. Even a cat eats more crickets than beef in the nature. I've never seen a cat fighting against a beef. So you see, so it's all these things say okay, it's really a part of the food chain.
Speaker 1:And tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll be able us in this, to produce, instead of fish meal, insect meal, to be able to fish the trout, to feed the trout, to feed the chicken and so on, and to put sustainable proteins and natural proteins into the regime of these animals, so which will be also interesting for the global health. So that was really what we did from the beginning, and now so eight years ago I would say, unfortunately, we are still really, really involved on this market because our natural market of fish meal is not, is not here, not yet, because you're in a region, even of trout farming, right like you have a natural market next door and they keep importing, obviously because everybody does and there's no price.
Speaker 2:They keep importing cheap uh soy and cheap um fish meal and while they have a sustainable insect meal, producer producers, let's say under their feet.
Speaker 1:That is too expensive. It's a problem of price when you are the only one in the market. Let's say, my troll producer, which is 50 kilometers from here, says I would like to use your production, of course, but you are two, two and a half times more expensive than a meal made with insects sorry, with fish. So I will not be competitive. So it all goes down. All that is when you have inflation. We have many things. You see, in France we've seen organic market going down, but very strongly. Organic market, local market, even producing in France was a bad word. When you were saying I produce sustainable, I produce in France, the buyer was telling to you you are too expensive, even before you set the price when you produce local. You see and we had this last two years, from 2020, mid 22 to now that inflation, the increase of price, was so strong that the buyers of any markets of Commodity yeah commodity.
Speaker 1:We're just saying okay, we buy price, whatever, wherever it comes from, we buy price, that's it. And if you're sustainable, we don't care. We don't care about that. You see, and that's what all the discussion about CSRD at the European level, about the Green Deal, about everything, in fact, was not helped. It's just the buyer who decides.
Speaker 2:And on the other side, with the fertilizer, did that help? Because those prices went through the roof as well because of the Ukraine war, the invasion of Russia and basically gas prices going up and of course, most of this fertilizer, or the non-organic one, is made with fossil fuels. Did that help your sales pitch to sell the fertilizer? Because at the end, what we said at the beginning, it's almost more, it's not more important, but it's a bigger quantity, like the fertilizer that comes off these facilities, compared to the protein.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was really good for our farmers because they keep the fertilizer. So on our side it was an excellent operation because they were saying of course, the manure we have it's a replacement of the fossil fertilizer we were buying. So it was really good for them and we were not selling any fertilizer because the regulation was not ready fertilizer because the regulation was not ready. So you see, we have an exceptional fertilizer available for farms, for horticulture, for what you want, but we still cannot sell it because the regulation is still not ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 8 years after. It's just incredible, you see, we're still waiting for 3 years now than a text authorizing the FRAS so it's called the FRAS the manual from the insects to be put into the market in Europe. We're still waiting for it Three years after we made the world discussion with the European Commission. But you always have something. Okay, there is that, there is inflation, there is the war, there is no commission, we have to elect a parliament, and then there are other topics and really we have a real problem in Europe. That is in terms of regulation. We want to regulate, we have regulation and everything, which is, in one way, quite good, but after you cannot stop.
Speaker 1:When you have innovation like this and it's in many, many aspects of the agri-tech and so on you need to push innovations that are good for the environment. It's not the case at the moment. So, yeah, no, so we cannot sell it, but the farmer can use it and that's a good way. So the farmer use it. They have benefits from it. We are really happy to see that we are even able to take them carbon credit for that, because it's storing. You can store carbon with this fertilizer and some recent publications show that, but it was not on our business, it was on the farmer's business.
Speaker 2:And so does that change, let's say, the contracts you make with the new farmers that come on board to reflect that, because of course you have to be in business. You cannot sell the insect protein to the market. You want to. You sell it, but through other channels, but still not, not ideal. And the fertilizer you cannot sell either you. You can give it to the farmer, you can keep it on the farm and you're saying we, we're onboarding new farmers where we're growing from eight to I don't know how many, but like does that change the negotiations? And saying, okay, you get the fertilizer, but there needs to be another conversation about how do we decentralize this business model.
Speaker 1:Yes, in fact, from the beginning the manual was on their business model. You see, when they were developing a farm, in fact there was a value given for the manual and this value was around, let's say, 100 eurotons value for the farmer before the Ukrainian war. During the start of the war it went up to the real value, the real value of the product, to 250 euros, almost in terms of nitrogen and so on. But it was for them because the value I decided was 100. So we make a lot of economies of gain with this manure.
Speaker 1:Now the new farmer we are signing, we propose them to buy them a part of the manual, and some they don't have enough surface, they don't have enough area to put it in the farm, and also the regulation went higher. We have to regenerate and so on. So it's complex to the farm. So the three new ones say we sell you almost 100% of the manual. Oh, wow, yeah, because it's too complicated after to use on the farm and so on. So we prefer to buy another organic product and we sell you that because I give them a good value also for that.
Speaker 2:But it's crazy. So they are forced to buy something else off farm because it's easier than to use it because of regulation. Yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make any sense and sometimes we want to say to the regulation people come to see how real life is, please come, come to our farm, come to see and observe. I can say many, many stories about what the insects were doing, about organic. We still don't know what is an organic insect, for example. Does it have to eat organic byproducts. Some regulators are saying it has to go outside, Like they were adapting the chicken cahier des charges, a production system for organics, saying the insect has to do the same.
Speaker 2:So you're going to take your insects for a walk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, open windows while they are living in dark, so you see that sometimes they are just totally out of scope. So, yes, regulation is really a pain and at the farm level, yes, we cannot use it like this. So you have to eugenize, you have to use it with complexity. So now we buy and, yes, they could bring it back to the farm if they want or buy something else, and, by chance, the regulation. So at least we should be able to put it in the market in June. So we are expecting for the commission this final regulation and then from that, yeah, we have some markets that we develop where we can go for what we call the sustainable organic fertilizer, where we have a carbon footprint which is almost zero, really low carbon footprint. Second point I want to tell is, by chance, the markets we are developing now are quite good value. You see, it's small niche markets, like for pets and so on, but by chance we can extract sufficient value to pay the farmers at the right level.
Speaker 1:So that's really important, which is not the case if we go now to the fish, where we lose money. So, we continue to develop step by step on this market where we are able to pay the farmers. Stay in business, yeah stay in business and we have other markets that we are planning on human nutrition for example, with really specific nutritional interest of the mealworms, where we'll be able to start more farmers in the coming years to these specific markets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the best, not the best. One of the ways to to consume is obviously, in the west, we start eating more insects. That would be, uh, it's not easy. I I wouldn't recommend anybody starting an insect brand in terms of snacks yet. No, um, but it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a very logical next step yeah, it's a logical, and so we are not going directly to the nutrition side. Well, it's nutrition, it's not food side, it's really specialized nutrition, like, for example, many publications show that the protein from mealworms are highly digestible. You see, for example, for elderly people, when you talk about denutrition, when you're starting to lose your muscles, you need to supplement your food with proteins. And in general, the proteins we give to elderly people are peas or proteins from milk and they're not high. They are digestible, of course, but not the highest level possible. And mealworm is really higher.
Speaker 1:So that's the first interest. It's really meat yeah, it's a sort of meat proteins and the second one in the fat of mealworms. You have some vitamins and one which is present in only few species, which is vitamin D3. And this is really important for all people, for animals and so on. And this has market. We are starting to work with with another company with a strong partnership to go to this nutraceutical markets to supplement the food of people wow, and shifting gears a bit and asking some questions.
Speaker 2:We always like to ask what. Let's say, we do this in, uh, in in a theater in clément foran or in paris, and there's a room full of um investors, so people that either manage their own money or other people's money um, what would be your main message? Of course, we show imagery, we might eat some insects, we have an evening, a live evening. That that is is really fun, informative, relevant, etc. But if people should remember only one thing, what should investors remember from? What would you like investors to remember from, from that evening?
Speaker 1:yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I would say we, we have to think a lot about global health. I think that's really a key. Uh, we cannot say a chicken eats a soya, it doesn't eat soya in the nature. A pork eats soya, it's the same. You see, diversify, it's the same for a. It doesn't eat soya in the nature. Pork eats soya, it's the same. You see, diversify, it's the same.
Speaker 1:For soil doesn't have every year the same cultivation system. So the global health starts from the soil to after what we consume and to what all the animals or the plants or everything consumes. And I think that was one of the ideas also of the mealworm production is to be at the right level of the food chain. You see, to say OK, we are part of the global health because we think about the soil. When we put the material on the soil, we reinforce all the life of the soil. When we put carbon and so on, the life of the soil, when we put carbon and so on, then after when people, when we will mealworm, we'll feed the fish or the chicken or part of the pork. It's natural regime. So the pork will be in good health. So after when it will be eaten by the people, people will have also product of good health and so on. And it's all this global thing. And after going to the specialized nutrition or nutraceutical, I just want to say that 3 million people eat insects almost every day.
Speaker 2:So we are the weird people. We are the weird people.
Speaker 1:We are the weird people and so it's because I think, yeah, it's just, it's a, it's a delicatessen for people in Africa when they are crickets, when in Asia also, you see, they are part of their food. So, of course, for mine it's a part of nutraceutical or it's a part of special nutrition, but I think it's a part of all the food chain we have around us, even if we don't eat them at the end. But they have to be eaten by the chicken, by the fish, to have a sort of global health. And that's really what I said to the investors Take a holistic approach. We are a small part, a piece of part of all the production food system, food production system, but, yeah, we are all part of solving or proposing a solution. And be careful in your investments and take all the paths together. That's really what I would like to say.
Speaker 2:And how difficult was it to raise funding for this, especially as some investors might have like these decks of very centralized facilities? Because you were raising at a similar time, I think because there was sort of an insect hype at the moment, or insect not bubble wave like a lot of companies were popping up left and right and and of course people compare the different ones in yours was much more moderate, seems to be at the moment much more successful, but of course, on paper you can say anything like how, how difficult was the fundraising, or how did you approach the fundraising and how much education did you have to do? Or how did you manage to raise the, the funding for the first bit, but also of course now yeah, it was complicated.
Speaker 1:It was complicated to be in front of giants, uh, who were, yeah, we're raising hundreds of millions and saying, okay, the solution is industry, in industrial, it's large scale, it's well, for me it's ideas from the past, it's really we are, we are on third revolution. It's small models now it's it's more my, the model we. We are pushing within. That. That is solution territorial sovereignty, all these kind of things. But yeah, investor was not saying about tokyo, it was too complex for them to. Okay, you have a big industry, you have a commodity market. Easy, you draw a line and I will fund insect, I will fund agronutrients, I will fund inovafeed. That's a simple way of doing it. You with the cooperative, with the farmers, with your decentralized way. You are too complex and they didn't even go to start to understand sometimes. But anyway, we found some funds, finally, which were more territorial, I would say, which were more on impact, impact for farmers, impact of territory, of the economy of the territory. And we raised funding with, I would say, the sort of bank and agricultural ecosystem, french ecosystem, french ecosystem, and even, you see, we have Avril Foundation, which is a big company on proteins, which invest also to to develop new production systems that are part of the future. They're still thinking, anyway, that it's a part of the future.
Speaker 1:And I also have the French state. I remember when they decided to come to my company they said there are plenty of models developing, all are industrials. You have a really clever model. They were saying that we want to. And they came to me and said we want to enter into your shares, to have some shares of you, because at the end there will be one winner and it could be you. You see, because this system and yeah, and you didn't say but the second company is really bad. In France, agronutris, which is also an industrial farming system. And yeah, maybe they were right. I think I hope that other industrial systems will work, and in BSF I think it can work, but in Tenebrio, no, in Tenebrio you need for me, you need a small, decentralized model.
Speaker 2:You're saying that maybe other insect types, like black soldier flies, could work more centralized and industrialized Probably the wormworms you're using, or maybe, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1:Probably yeah, it's working anyway for some companies like Protix, like InnovaFit.
Speaker 2:I think they're succeeding.
Speaker 1:After we don't know the perfect size. You see, it's the same for chicken. It took 50 years to say, okay, we don't go above 1,300 meters squared, because if we go bigger then we have a sanitary risk which is really really large and you can kill everything if you have a small disease coming. I think for the farms they are building at the time, we still don't know what is the correct size.
Speaker 2:You see, yeah, so probably the approach of going modular and piece by piece. You will find your correct size for this type of insect in this context and they might need to go down from a much bigger one. But that's of course very capital intensive. You're saying we're going to build a factory at 1000 and it turns out that the ideal size is 500 or 250, like that means it's.
Speaker 2:That's messy, let's say um yeah yeah, and what if you would be in charge of a, an investment fund, let's say a billion euros, and you had to put it to work long term? Um, could be long term, could also be short term, but I'm guessing it will be long term. And what would you focus on?
Speaker 1:well, it's a complex question, I would say.
Speaker 1:That's why we ask it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's a work on the all the production food system.
Speaker 1:I think it's important, but from the roots, so from the roots, from the soil, or all the single regenerative system, how to understand how the soil is working to be in the perfect health. I think it's really important that we have solutions on biostimulation, or even on microorganisms, all these kinds of things. Or, yeah, not to use any more pesticides and so on on the soil, to go back to natural solutions, how to be efficient if we have many combinations of plants, microorganisms, so all this kind of thing on the soils, then on the production system as well, on the health of the system, so animals and plants, and after, of course, on the part of humans. So I will reinvest a lot on how to have efficient food chains, not focused only on the price of the production, but also on the price you will save at the end for the consumer, for example, for the environment, for all these kinds of things, and on decarbonization of all these production systems how we can produce with less carbon, using less fuel, using less machinery, using less many things.
Speaker 2:Because you have done some lifecycle assessments on the protein and the fertilizer. Yeah, just give us an idea of how much more sustainable this is. Oh yeah it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've done that. So from the beginning, we were working to have the yeah, I would say the highest impact possible on our production with the shortest possible air production side, where it has to be really close to everything. And so we've done our lifecycle analysis last year with real data from the farms, from our nursery, from the transformation, and when we finalized this LCA and obtained our final carbon footprint, we were really, really impressed. We are really low. It's 0.2 kilogram of CO2 produced by kilogram of dehydrated larvae, so kilogram of proteins, almost. Well, if you take the same comparison for chicken, for example, and so if we talk about dehydrated chicken and what we don't eat, but to have the same comparison, it would be 12 to 15 times higher wow, you see, chicken is normally considered the most efficient I'm not saying sustainable, because there are a lot of different areas, but at least the most efficient, exactly protein production.
Speaker 1:Wow so 10 times, we are 10 times less if you compare to bovine, to cows. It's 2025, so it depends how you make your calculations fish, obviously, as well, but it's wow that's uh.
Speaker 2:So it's really pretty if you yeah, it's massive.
Speaker 1:So if you eat it, it's just impressive. It's just impressive. Unfortunately, people don't eat it, sorry. Yeah, we try. Yeah, it's more, it's more for fun, always when we have visits, when we have people, of course with the algorithm, because it's the taste is the taste is okay, it's like chips, in fact, for aperitif it's quite fine. And even if you take a powder, if you make, for example, like meatballs I was looking for one If you make meatballs with mealworm or you make meatballs with pork or chicken, you make the same spices, everything, the main texture. You don't see any difference, wow.
Speaker 2:It's basically a meat, a meat replacement.
Speaker 1:It's exactly a meat replacement. It's exactly the same, sincerely, and you produce it with low carbon footprint. Uh, it's massive, you can produce a lot and it's cheap to produce. It's cheap to produce because we are talking about the protein when dehydrated and you need at least three kilogram of fresh meat to make one kilo dehydrated. But if you take the fresh meat, it's really cheap. You can feed all the students scholars and so on.
Speaker 2:Are you looking into that market? Are you developing or looking into that market?
Speaker 1:unfortunately, this market is highly regulated, so we cannot sell the new, we cannot sell to human nutrition, so you need another food, european, which is like, if you want to block the market, you cannot do something better. So, no, we are not looking for this market, we are talking about it. We have, at the moment, I have a young people who are planning to develop a company in that, in that field, so meatballs and so on because, but they're waiting for regulation, they're waiting for the good moment. Uh, but yeah, it's. It's really an interesting solution which could help, uh, europe to stop importing, for example, chicken from argentina, from brazil, to put in the scholar canteens. You see, you can have a solution which is really efficient, which is okay, which is good, which is a replacement of meat when you don't want to find the interest of meat in terms of taste, for example. Otherwise, yeah, for taste, I prefer personally to eat a good piece of meat, a good piece of chicken or beef, less often, but have very good production coming from around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Fascinating. Again there I mean, it's the theme of the conversation. Regulation is definitely hindering us, and if you could it's a question we love to ask if you could change one thing overnight and you have a magic wand. So tomorrow morning it might be regulation, but it might be something completely different. So tomorrow morning, one thing has regulation, but it might be something completely different. And so tomorrow morning, one thing has changed, but one thing only. It could be global, it could be subsidized, pesticide ban consciousness, like you can think as wild and crazy as you want because you have the power, but it's only one thing. What would that be?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it would be around sustainability, to give the real price of the things in terms of the impact to the environment, to the society, to everything. We cannot. Personally, I cannot accept. So we are facing a strong competition at the moment on our products from Chinese products why they don't have the same rules, why they don't have the same condition of production, why they don't care about the environment way of producing. The same for fish meal.
Speaker 1:And I would say, if I have a magic wand, I put a strong regulation, a strong tax here, I stop the OMC, which is a stupid thing, the trade organization sorry, I was saying in French to say, okay, now, tomorrow, it's not an open trade with anything, with all the rules you want and so on, it's just sustainability is taking the large part of the price of the product You're producing sustainably. Also for human production. To say, if you produce in China, like, for example, maybe you have that in France, temu and Sheen, these brands of the extreme fast fashion, extreme fast fashion, extreme fast, waste shit and everything you have coming with no regulation in Europe is a nightmare.
Speaker 1:So we stop that. Put really strong taxes and always the evaluation of products in terms of sustainability. Hours are produced and that would be.
Speaker 2:I think it will be the only way to really take care of the environment and our living in the next 50 years strong, strong regulation and enforcement, because there's a lot of regulations and too much regulation in some places, obviously, but if it's not enforced, it doesn't serve. It doesn't serve anything. I want to thank you so much for for coming on here and and share your journey. Of course, thank you for the work you do and and also be conscious of your time. So, wrapping up, uh, thank you for for sharing a mini light or a small spotlight into a world we don't really talk about often in uh, in the podcast, of course we talk about proteins. Of course we talk about livestock. Of course we talk about proteins. Of course we talk about livestock. Of course we talk about soil, but not necessarily around mini livestock and insects and mealworms, even though it definitely deserves. And decentralization plus technology, plus AI. I mean we covered quite a bit here. So, thank you so much for being here and sharing your journey. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.
