On the outskirts of Nairobi, in the central part of Kenya, lies Insectipro, a company founded in November 2018 by Talash Huijbers, a passionate young agripreneur.
With a mission to provide a cheaper and more practical solution to the food crisis, Insectipro grows Black Soldier Flies, which are used as the protein component in animal feeds production.
The company also aims to elevate human nutrition through crickets, upcycling 30 metric tonnes of waste in the process.
At the helm of Insectipro is Talash, who leads a young and ambitious team that is thriving by injecting change into the animal feeds and human food value chains using innovation.
"You will hardly find us using traditional methods of farming that are very tedious and less fruitful," Talash explains. "We use modern technology to come up with ways of making farming sustainable and profitable for ourselves and for farmers."
Through partnerships with organizations like IDH, Talash and her team are working to coalesce knowledge and bring much-needed change more urgently, creating more space for innovation and driving forward sustainability.
"We cannot do this alone," Talash says. "With IDH, we have increased our knowledge about working with farmers through farmer schools. We also got our first grant from IDH, and it is a great thing to have such a partner who is not thinking about aid but putting trade first and looking at how it can improve the livelihoods of people."
Talash believes that people ought to be the change that they want to see, and if this change cannot begin at a personal level, then one should not expect any change to happen.
"Part of the change that we lead in is the use of sustainable inputs like waste products and the insects for the feeds translates to sustainable output," Talash explains. "We are at the forefront of contributing to the achievement of SDGs two, nine, 12 and 17 on zero hunger, industry and innovation, responsible production and consumption and building strategic partnerships for the global goals respectively."
