Securing Our Future Food Economy And Sustainability With Insect Farming

When in 2017, Mante Sidlauskaite, founded her Lithuania-based Cogastro–the leading software solution for managing and optimizing insect farms–she banked on the country’s reputation as a center for “Fintech and digital innovation.” The company’s IT team of engineers and developers are from the local IT talent pool, while its 10 large-scale insect farm production customers are based across Australia, Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe. The company plans to double its five-member team in the near future, adding colleagues from the U.S. and other continents.

“I experimented on farming operations and had the first prototype of Cogastro in 2017,” says Sidlauskaite, CEO of Cogastro–which combines the first two letters of Cosmos with Latin word for stomach and food, ‘gastro’. The company officially launched in 2019 with successful traction from its first pilot customers and by 2020, Cogastro software was enabling operations in 10 large-scale insect farm productions globally. While pre-Covid customer onboarding was all done in person–now, it’s done virtually.

At an annual growth rate of 27.8%, insect farming provides competitive options to conventional protein sources, is a sustainable animal feed, and protein for human consumption. The insect protein industry is projected to reach nearly $8 billion by 2030 (Meticulous Research). With the rising global population, predicted to reach 9 billion people, increased demand for food and feed output from existing, yet depleting, agro-ecosystems will not only further tax our environment but won’t be sufficient. The diminishing global arable land, water, marine life, forests, and other biodiversity resources has made insect farming an integral part of the global food economy as an ideal alternative source for animal protein.

As a data aggregation and analysis software as a service (SaaS), Cogastro expedites knowledge access, optimization, and control of insect farms’ daily operations and insect life cycle for the farmers while increasing revenues. The software assures traceability, automating critical data aggregation process allowing farmers to automate insight and analysis of their farms’ health. For large-scale insect farms, Cogastro software is integrated with sensors and devices via cloud-based data warehousing, which allows farmers a full dashboard view to analytics, based on the aggregated data. Farmers can access and monitor their entire insect farm operations remotely expediting their data-driven business decision-making. 

Having spent her early childhood in nature, environmental sustainability became part of Sidlauskaite’s “core values and priorities in life.” Witnessing the drastic changes in climate and the biological ecosystem–from “destroyed landscapes, intense deforestation, lack of fresh air and water, and plastic pollution in most remote areas of our world,” inspired her to focus on insect farming realizing an integral part of proteins in the food consumption chain and the insects’ contribution to the sustainable production of high demand ingredients.

Cogastro raised $180,000 from Baltic VC Fund, 70Ventures, private angel from the Netherlands and risk capital fund Co-investment Fund. When the New York-based Baltic American Chamber of Commerce (BACC) promoting advancement and guidance of business relations between the U.S. and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) learned about Cogastro, they invited the company to join as a cohort in BAJ Accelerator–a collaboration between BACC, Orion Worldwide Innovations LLC and Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech.

BAJ Accelerator’s partnership with 2,000+ VCs, Micro VCs, Single and Multi-Family Offices and Angel Syndicates facilitates unique investment opportunities and a network of strategic investors with its cohort companies helping secure the ideal capital with the right terms and at the right time.

“BAJ proactively seeks talented women entrepreneurs and CEOs for our program from companies offering solutions that solve critical society problems. Cogastro’s environmental solution, at seed stage is at an ideal growth time for our program–and scaling of its solutions globally, with a focus on the U.S. market, makes it a perfect candidate for our accelerators,” says Emma Arakelyan, CEO & Founder of Orion Worldwide Innovations, LLC.

Carbon Negative Insect Farming Is Changing Food Economy 

“Depending on the insect type and processing method, farmers can use insects as animal feed and/or feed additive. We can use whole insects and parts as food and/or food ingredient. Rich in proteins and oils, insect-derived oil is a far better alternative to palm oil because of its composition and environmental impact,” Sidlauskaite explains how in addition, chitin extraction out of insect is a commonly used cosmetics ingredient.

As insects convert their body mass not only to protein, but to frass, they become ideal organic fertilizers for the agriculture industry. With the ability to convert organic waste, insects become a natural part of a circular economy model–emitting less CO2 compared to the conventional livestock farming producing the same amount of protein. Since “insects feed on waste” insect farming doesn’t require production materials–and insect-derived fertilizers store more carbon compared to mineral fertilizers, making insect farming a carbon negative operation.

While there are various types of insect farming, currently the Cogastro software specifically meets the insect farming needs for crickets, mealworms, and black soldier flies–which make up most large-scale farmed species. But the software can easily adapt to the needs of other species farming. While some insect farmers sell their feed to livestock farmers, there are now farmers and companies considering insect farming for their own livestock, says Sidlauskaite.

With high global demands for proteins, most feed and food producers are incorporating insect derived products and or ingredients in their production or distribution channels. Supporting the insect farming industry’s growth positions Cogastro’s market competitive advantage with rising insect-derived protein prices providing far healthier benefits for customers–and an environmentally positive impact. Insect farmers aiming for stable heightened supplies can scale and reinvest in further development with Cogastro, which enables insect farms to facilitate feed demand while expediting their ability to scale and produce larger quantities.  

“With our guidance and support, farmers use Cogastro software to fully manage their insect farms’ digital transformation process,” Sidlauskaite explains how the product’s market advantage is its growing community of market experts using their platform. “Our solution will soon offer additional knowledge and intelligence exchange services between parties and create an even greater value-add for users. “Cogastro is not only a software or hardware solution, but it enables valuable data-driven insights for insect production growth, which is the future of our world’s sustainability.”

For farmers lacking an infrastructure to monitor and manage their environment with sensors and hardware, Cogastro offers advice on selecting best hardware and equipment options. The team also assists farmers with hardware installation and set-up and offers a pre-integrated package customized for the individual farm. For farms with existing hardware infrastructure, Cogastro software easily integrates with current equipment and hardware regardless of the provider or equipment manufacturer. Once the infrastructure is integrated, farmers start managing their operations via their mobile devices–Cogastro app is an essential part of the software.

Cogastro’s annual license fees, providing access to data monitoring and analytic platform, depend on the size and the needs of each insect farm. With BAJ accelerator assisting with fundraising process, Sidlauskaite’s core team now focuses on daily business operations, vision, and goals with hopes to use the additional funds to expedite global expansion and offer additional solution capabilities to its customer base. The new funding will also accommodate new hires of engineers, international expansion activities, and customer support services.

“We have many new projects in our pipeline which will lead to the expansion of our customer base,” Sidlauskaite is hiring new customer support talent to meet current and future customers’ growing needs as insect farming becomes popular, sustainable farming worldwide.