Food & Beyond blog: Insect startup Volare aims to radically reduce the environmental impact of feed and pet food industries

For instance, the demand for edible fish is growing steadily, but the global wild catch reserves are already facing severe limitations. Aquaculture production is increasing rapidly, but the challenge is to secure enough feed with low environmental impact.

Volare was founded to fill the need for new sustainable protein sources. Insect proteins are a prominent solution to this challenge, as they can significantly reduce the environmental load of the animal feed industry. In commercial fish feed, they can replace for example soy protein, a source of significant adverse environmental impacts, such as excessive land use, deforestation and green house gas emissions. Insect proteins are also a solution for other industries in need of new sustainable protein sources. In the pet food industry, insect proteins can replace animal proteins that require excessive amounts of water, land and energy to manufacture. To give an idea of the comparison scale, the emissions of Volare protein production per ton are 1/150 of fish meal and only 1/45 000 of soy.