**2. Insects as food and feed**

The present COVID-19 pandemic has shown how Europe is hostage of the international feed market, and as far as nutrition is concerned, protein is a huge problem to be solved. However, society continues to waste food products, contributing to a very inefficient agriculture vale chain in which more than 25% of food products can be lost.

Based on a one hundred percent circular economy-based approach, vegetable by-products can be converted into high valuable nutrient sources for both animals and plants. Insects can be the key for the transformation of this otherwise lost nutrients into new nutritional solutions not only for both humans and animals, but also for plants.

In a very short period, insects can convert a very large range low value byproducts into high value insect protein and oil for animal and human nutrition and insect frass, and organic fertilizer for plants. With this process, now completely industrialized and at a full-scale level, it is possible to reduce the Europe dependency from the international feed and food markets, contributing to a local and more sustainable food production.

As mentioned, nowadays, feed producers face several significant global challenges to find suitable resources to produce compound feed for livestock, aquaculture, and pets. On the one hand, the growing demand for animal products, and thus for animal feed, associated with the need to find resources with reduced environmental impact, has led to the development of novel feed ingredients, and moves to decrease dependency on common resources, such as soybean meal, maize and fishmeal. The current use of these resources is assessed as being unsustainable therefore driving the need for alternative ingredients to maintain the balance between food, feed and biofuel industries. Land degradation, water deprivation and drastic climate change are additional challenges impacting on livestock production, aquaculture and the pet food industry.

On the other hand, recent events have illustrated the need to reduce our dependency on imported resources, specifically from other continents, strengthened by consumer opinion exerting pressure to provide more 'natural' food production for humans, livestock and pets. Accordingly, the development of novel sustainable raw materials plus improved efficiency of resource use play, and will continue to play, a vital role in ensuring the sustainability of feed manufacture.

Significant relevance is now placed on the development of new feed resources based on environmentally friendly approaches, circular economy solutions, and the use of natural resources. However, it is not likely in the near future to be feasible to completely replace existing feed ingredients with novel ones, leading to a focus in the sector on improving efficient use of existing ingredients, thus decreasing demand.

Some novel food and feed ingredients have the significant advantage of making use of available agri-food co-products and transforming them locally into new nutrient sources. Insects are one such ingredient that has the capability to convert low value vegetal co-products into a high value nutritional solution, while also aligning with the environmental drivers that are prompting the food and feed revolution.

It has been estimated that food waste accounts for 23% of arable land and 24% of freshwater resources used for crop production [2]. Thus, it is relevant to evaluate the use of insects in feed from a circular economy point of view. Insect rearing can potentially be used to upgrade low-value organic food waste streams increasing the efficiency of natural resource use and animal production.

Several livestock production companies in the world operate vertically, producing feed for the animals, raising and processing them before market. Co-products include manure and other animal and vegetable co-products as well as former foodstuffs. Insects could be an invaluable tool for such organizations, as they can provide a perfect link between nutrient loss in vegetable co-products, and the protein supplement needed for animal feed.

Therefore, insects have a perfect spot in certain value chains, where, more than creating value, they contribute to natural resource use efficiency through nutrient bioconversion. This might be the greatest contribution of insects to the food value chain, as they have the capability to be integrated perfectly in present day market chains, whilst also converting wastes and less desirable co-products into high value nutrient resources. When applied with the right infrastructure, such systems could contribute to animal production efficiency, environmental sustainability, and supply chain profitability. Furthermore, insects, as for other novel food and feed ingredients, offer the potential to decrease dependency upon foreign products imports, creating new local products, and thus helping to shorten supply chains.

Thus, there is growing interest regarding the use of insects as an alternative ingredient source for both food and feed production. The use of alternative ingredients in animal diets can be optimized in terms of their nutritional characterization, their safety and technological quality, in order to achieve better performance as well as facing the challenges of increased feed demand in volume as well as quality and sustainability factors.

Insects can supplement traditional feed sources such as soy, maize, grain and fishmeal, with several different species of insects considered for use as a partial or total substitute of traditional feed sources [3–6]. Many trials have been conducted

#### *The Insects as a Workforce for Organic Fertilizers Production – Insect Frass DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100144*

with different animal species, both terrestrial and marine, with the challenges associated with the use of insects in these animals changing, dependent not only on the animal species being fed, but also on the insect species being used, and the rearing substrate on which it was grown. However, it has also been demonstrated that different organic substrates can be used to rear insects, such as Black Soldier Fly (BSF), without significantly affecting its amino acid composition, the profile of which has been shown to be similar to that of fish meal and soybean meal [3, 7]. By contrast, when considering fat and ash composition, both can differ substantially according to the rearing substrate [8]. Thus, insect nutritional and technological properties are linked to the species, rearing system adopted and especially to the substrate used [8].

On the other hand, the so produced novel plant nutritional source, entomocompost, can contribute to a wide range of soil solutions, from drought resistance and plant nutrition to even pest control and sprouting promotion.

However, this novel sector still faces several challenges, from legal to consumer acceptance and to industrialization and growth. Although the legal framework is changing and adapting to this new reality, consumers still have to prepare for it, and insect producers have a lot to learn from other livestock and industrial sectors. Besides that, the use of insects as a tool to other applications is still in its infancy, as insects can be used from bioremediation in garbage disposal systems, to the production of new plastic solutions.
