David Tavernor grew up on a dairy farm, spent a year at Peter Jones' Enterprise Academy when he was 18 and studied agri-business management at Newcastle University. He then spent 8 years in food retail, with the majority of it spent buying vegetables for Tesco. In 2022, Tavernor started Fly2Feed, a black soldier fly producer based on the family dairy farm and has spent the past 2 years learning the basics of insect rearing and breeding.

David was awarded a Nuffield Farming Scholarship in 2024, where he was enabled to travel the world studying his chosen agricultural topic. This was titled "Practically and profitably diversifying you farm business with black soldier fly production". He visited 4 continents over 4 months of end-to-end travel and spoke to leaders of business, research, government and investment, who are all actively or passively involved in black soldier flies. This gave Tavernor a broad understanding of the industry, good and bad, and the tools required to succeed.

Black soldier fly farming around the world

Black soldier fly insect farming is done differently around the world. What external factors should you consider when designing your business model and why (or, why not) might we be practising insect farming wrong in the western world.