Young men in the Zebilla district of the Upper East region survive on what people term as waste. In view of this, they have come out with a project called “Neat Eco Feed”. Neat Eco Feed uses houseflies which feed on a mixture of spoiled or leftover food, manure and abattoir waste. It houses billions of flies that feed on more than 50 tonnes of rotten food and waste every day to produce maggot. Maggot meals have proven to be a good alternative for fish and soybeans meals in organic poultry and aquaculture.
Mr. Abuska Andrew, Technical Director of Neat Eco Feed, expressed the excitement on how he and his partners were able to start developing a plan which have been with them for six years, and the kind of help it will give to farmers in Zebilla district and Ghana as a whole.
He stressed that the vision for the project is not only to make profits from waste but to create a safe and free environment for all.
He continued that the lack of a locally grown protein feed with a sufficiently high content of sulphur-containing amino acids is a major challenge for organic poultry farmers. Which sometimes make farmers to either produce a little or nothing at all.
“Since synthetic amino acids are not permitted in organic production, organic poultry producers rely solely on animal protein sources with a favourable amino acid profile such as fish meal and soybeans. But these too are in limited supply and therefore there’s the need for farmers to find alternatives which is maggot and it gives better growth rate for fish and poultry”.
He concluded with a hope that farmers will begin to embrace maggot for feeding of their poultry and fish. “Doors are always opened for students and individuals who have the passion to learn maggot farming”.
The guests who were from Growth Mizik in Accra laud the young men for the inspirational achievement and how they are able to prove to Ghanaians especially farmers that there is more hope in farming. “We think government has to focus on these men if only it’s serious about 1D1F”.
