Santarém is positioning itself to be the gravitational center of a bioeconomy that responds to the shortage of protein for animal and human food. And by using insects as tools to transform waste, the circular economy is also being promoted.
Santarém is mobilizing to put together a central ecosystem for the insect production industry at a national level, with aspirations to become a world leader. In the next academic year, the world’s first degree course in the bioindustrial production of insects will begin at the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém, which will be led by the Egas Moniz School of Health & Science.
The training will support the investments planned for the region. “By the end of 2025, the region will have another factory producing products derived from black soldier flies for animal feed, one producing products derived from Tenebrio molitor and one producing crickets, the latter two both for human consumption. Other investments will also be made, such as the creation of a unit to transform chitin into chitosan and a logistics center,” explains Daniel Murta, president of the executive committee of the InsectERA Mobilizing Agenda, a national consortium of 42 partners to promote the industrial production and marketing of insect-based products.
This is a new sector that is developing based on research and development (R&D), where new products are tested and created for animal and human food, for use in organic fertilizers, in bioplastics or in cosmetics and the pharmaceutical industry, thus opening up new business opportunities. This is an emerging area where Portugal “has already taken solid steps”, which could put the country “in a leading position”, points out Daniel Murta. “By cementing our leadership position in R&D, we will certainly be able to lead this new sector, an opportunity that the country cannot afford to miss”, he stresses.
But the country won’t be starting from scratch. In Portugal, this new sector already has several companies and a full-scale plant capable of producing several thousand tons of insect-derived products a year, with an average of one truckload of fertilizer per day, one truckload of protein every three days and one truckload of insect oil per month. “A scale that, although still modest, already demonstrates an industrial capacity based on national technology and innovation,” according to InsectERA’s CEO.
InsectERA was created precisely “to make Portugal a world leader in this new bioindustrial sector”, and Santarém was the area of the country chosen to create a “cluster” that brings together the different stakeholders. “It is possibly the European city that stands out most in the sector, both in terms of the number of companies and workers and the strategy applied,” he said. Daniel Murta also says that “Santarém will be the capital of the insect bioindustrial sector and possibly the first in the world to have a circular economic zone, in which raw materials do not enter, but by-products from other agro-industries and value-added products are generated”.
As well as being a source of food and other products, insects can also be used as “tools” in the service of the circular economy. “The fact that they consume few resources in their production process, such as water or energy, and can be fed using agricultural by-products, some of which are even an environmental problem, such as olive pomace, makes them true circular economy tools, transforming by-products that would otherwise be wasted into new raw materials for incorporation into products such as animal feed, fertilizers or cosmetics,” explains Carlos Magalhães e Silva, project manager at P-Bio – Associação Portuguesa de Bioindústria.
Carlos Magalhães e Silva highlights the added value of Portugal already investing in this area. “Given that it’s an emerging sector in Europe and practically everywhere else in the world, and in which Portugal has been one of the frontrunners, it’s one of the few sectors in which the country can become a world reference by investing early,” says the head of P-Bio.
Barriers to overcome
Although insects are used in a wide range of products and services, there are cultural barriers in the case of human food.
Even so, with the increase in the global population, insects have been mentioned as an alternative source of protein to meet growing food needs, while having a low environmental impact. “Compared to livestock farming, insect production is much less demanding in terms of ecological resources,” not least because it requires “less water consumption, lower greenhouse gas emissions, a smaller production area, low environmental contamination and greater food efficiency on the part of the insects,” explains Liliana Sousa, member of the Portuguese Nutritionists’ Association. Regarding the nutritional value of insects, “they are considered a good source of proteins (apparently of good quality, but without much data yet), fats and minerals, however, the nutritional content varies depending on the type of insect,” she points out.
And how can cultural barriers be overcome in order to introduce this food into the human diet? “The strategy is above all to incorporate insects into food in their processed form, as this will remove a lot of the resistance that consumers may have, which mostly comes from seeing the whole insect,” says Carlos Magalhães e Silva. “As products containing, for example, insect flour, reach the market in tasty, healthy and sustainable formats, a change in consumer attitudes is expected,” he adds.
According to the Order of Nutritionists, insects are consumed worldwide by more than two billion people. In the case of Portugal, it is already possible to typify the consumer of these products: they are between 40 and 50 years old, have some purchasing power and are concerned about the environmental impact of their food choices.
As is the case in other countries, “accepting the consumption of food containing insects is not easy”. That’s why, in order to overcome cultural barriers, “it’s important to define a concerted strategy that combines awareness-raising, consumer education and marketing strategies,” says Liliana Sousa. In addition, “it’s important to provide information that these insects are reared in controlled environments and are exclusively for human consumption,” she recalls. Even so, “it may take at least another generation for the consumption of insects to take root in our eating habits,” she says.
Informing and training is therefore one of the challenges of the InsectERA mobilizing agenda, which recognizes the numerous barriers that a new sector has to overcome. “It will be necessary to overcome barriers ranging from technology and industrialization, to the validation of processes, products and services, to their acceptance, and that of the sector itself, by the public and the market,” stresses Daniel Murta.