Insect meal and fish feeding cost: a case study in Italy

This proposal aims to estimate the economic effect in the aquaculture farm structure cost deriving from the introduction of a new sustainable meal into the fish diet. By previous studies that trialled increasing levels of Tenebrio molitor flour in the diet as to evaluate physiological effects in the European sea bass, economic outcomes were simulated into an Italian specialised offshore farm. A balance sheet analysis was first applied to assess cost structure and incidence of the feeding cost (giving traditional meal). The findings were secondly used as the status quo scenario to estimate economic effects according to the possible introduction of different percentages of T. molitor flour in the diet and to more feed prices levels. Findings suggest that the current feeding cost amounts to about 60% of total farm cost. Simulations based on different technical and market scenarios indicate that feed cost would increase if insect flour were included. However, any outcome was carried on the supply side. Therefore, we cannot understand the implications in revenues and profits. This is because knowledge, as it stands today, does not allow us to estimate the retail fish prices. On the demand side, finally, we hypothesise that possible increase of farms' plants and the adoption of strategies to grow their bargaining power toward the meal suppliers would generate a consequent insect meal price decrease.