Data from: A steady-state system for farming black soldier flies to convert agri-food waste into frass and other value-added products

The black soldier fly (BSF), Hermetia illucens L. (Diptera:
Stratiomyidae), is an insect decomposer used to valorize food and
agricultural waste. Until now, large investments have been directed
towards developing industrial-scale insect farming systems. Although there
is potential for BSF farming to be adopted also by small and medium
farmers, agricultural cooperatives, food processing facilities, and
university campuses, an affordable and easy-to-adopt BSF farming system
has not been developed yet. Here, we designed and tested a modular
steady-state BSF rearing method for the rapid conversion of cafeteria
waste into residual decomposed matter known as frass, a product made of
insect excrements, residual undigested organic matter, insect exuviae,
mineral nutrients, and a rich microbiota. We used the prepupae output (PP
kg/m2-day) to track the efficiency of the system and compared it between a
minimal and a multimetric monitoring approach. This comparison
demonstrated how monitoring moisture, temperature, and pH in the system
can produce a continuous, reliable yield of prepupae and frass, which
increased by 47 % and 42 %, respectively, after the start of monitoring
these metrics. The enhanced recovery of both outputs constitutes a
potential source of revenue to offset operating costs. By enabling adult
reproduction and egg laying to occur in the same space as larval
fattening, and removing the need for rearing BSF in batches, our system
can save on space and labor costs relative to established rearing options.
This will increase BSF farming accessibility for smaller-scale users with
limited resources and diverse waste management needs.