SPEAR

Poultry production is vital for improving the diet, income, and food and nutrition security of rural populations (Alders & Pym, 2009). However, low productivity levels characterized the poultry sector in Ghana (see Amanor-Boadu et al., 2016). Access to good quality feed and the high cost of feed contributes to the low productivity levels. Access to good quality and affordable feed is therefore crucial for improving productivity, profitability (Makkar, 2016) and reducing poverty. For instance, due to food-feed competition, feed ingredients that are used for human consumption such as soybean and fish are expensive and contribute to increasing the costs of feeds (Shumo et al., 2019). In Ghana, the cost of feeding poultry is very high, contributing about 60%-70% of the cost of production (USDA, 2017).
Thus, there is a need to successfully address the feed constraint by finding alternative sources of feed ingredients that are cost-effective and can replace the conventional protein sources used in poultry feed and meet the nutritional needs of poultry. In this regard, insects have been identified as valuable alternative protein sources for feed to the conventionally used nutrient sources due to their rich nutrients content and can grow on different organic waste substrates (see Pinotti et al., 2019; Shumo et al., 2019; Spranghers et al., 2017).
In recognition of the urgent need to improve the productivity of smallholder poultry value chains, the CSIR-Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI), through the LEAP-Agri SPEAR Project and with support from the CSIR-Animal Research Institute, organized a training workshop on “Insect Larvae Meal Production for Poultry Feeding” for poultry farmers on 25th November 2021 at the CSIR-Animal Research Institute in Accra.