Fruit flies are little buggahs, but 300 million a week ain't hay. The problem, says Jang, is that the government is leery of endorsing just anything for feed for animals producing meat and milk. The heptachlor problem on Oahu decades ago has not faded from memory. So for years, the leftover fly feed was either dumped in a landfill, sent to a nearby biomass converter or taken by pig farmers. The converter business bothered the neighbors, the dumping charge kept rising and the arrangement with the pig farmers was just casual.
Hawaii ranchers use.
An Oahu rancher who is feeding his beef cattle on fly chow is very happy with the results, Jang says, but now that fly chow is proven safe, there are even more lucrative possibilities open. The stuff probably could be pelletized and sold to aquaculturists, as koi chow. For a long time, says Jang, it was cheaper to dispose of spent fly chow than to go through the tedious and unprofitable work of finding a use for it. But imaginative techniques, he suggests, are going to have to be found more and more if Hawaii agriculture is to thrive. And the future will not depend merely on on-farm innovations.