Why companies are racing to build the biggest bug farm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/11/12/biggest-insect-farm-record/

by doener • 3 years ago

29 73 3 years ago

washingtonpost.com

xkekjrktllss• 3 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231112210338/https://www.washi...

ipsento606• 3 years ago

What are the common types of food waste that can be feed to insects but not directly to farmed animals?

pvg• 3 years ago

Poop. But it already takes piles of infrastructure to handle.

swatcoder2• 3 years ago

I don't know what they use at industrial scale, but you can already do this at home scale.

Soldier fly larva will happily crunch away all the moldy or rotting household food waste you throw into a cold compost, but good luck getting a chicken to voluntarily eat much of it (and they'd probably get sick pretty often if they tried).

I assume industrial operations work essentially the same way, making use of the countless waste streams that livestock either won't consume or can't safely consume.

The bigger question for me is how they harvest at that scale. The hearsay I carry around in my head is that they just drown insect crops in chemical pesticide to harvest them, which I'm hoping is not the norm.

BWStearns• 3 years ago

The bigger question for me is how they harvest at that scale

What about just heating up or cooling down the space they're in beyond their tolerances?

gorlilla3• 3 years ago

They're grown in factory conditions much like how we grow fish in closed synthetic systems.

Your concern isn't so much about how they do it, it's about the regulations and how well they end up being enforced.

Admittedly, humans have a poor track record for getting that stuff right the first go-'round

janj• 3 years ago

good luck getting a chicken to voluntarily eat much of it (and they'd probably get sick pretty often if they tried)

I've had a cold compost as a part of my backyard chicken coop for many years. All kitchen scraps, as well as all yard waste, ends up there. Moldy fruit, veggies, breads, literally everything including things like turkey carcass after Thanksgiving. I've never had a chicken get sick off it and the food scraps are quickly either consumed or dug into the pile, no rotting mess. Every spring I dig it all out for the garden. It works out great.

dkjaudyeqooe• 3 years ago

Think about where you find maggots.

gorlilla3• 3 years ago

I would imagine that opportunistic, omnivorous eaters have a higher likelihood of passing a parasite over some insect that only feeds on live/fresh plant materials.

oconnore2• 3 years ago

I will not eat the bugs, but I would eat fish or poultry that has been raised on insect protein. It's an interesting use case because fish farms (for common non-herbivore fish species) are traditionally fed on fish meal, which means that the protein is ultimately coming from the ocean one way or another.

I wonder if [plants -> bugs -> fish -> human] is more or less efficient than just traditional [plants -> {cows, pigs, sheep, goats}]. Also, the bug protein could be an additive to mostly plant based diets for traditional farm animals.

Pet_Ant• 3 years ago

What if ground crickets were added to like 75% ground beef? You'd never know and it be healthier and have less impact on the environment.

oconnore2• 3 years ago

I apologize if this seems blunt and incurious, but I think I can speak for MANY people when I say: absolutely not.

ohdannyboy3• 3 years ago

I'd wait until some longer term studies come out on the meat. Humans have no tradition of eating them (edit: looks like i was wrong on this point). I'm not conceived it's healthier and I'm totally convinced the people pushing it don't care about us.

I'd also like to see the ultra-wealthy social planners eat bugs, at least at the opulent summits where they plan it for our class of people. As long as they're eating steaks it's a bad look (same as them owning yachts, taking a private plane to an event then biking the last two blocks and talking about how private car ownership needs to be abolished).

jplrssn3• 3 years ago

Beef production (as well as meat produced from sheep and goats) is one of the most environmentally costly ways of producing food, because of methane emissions [0]. I don't imagine substituting bugs for grass would make much of a difference there.

I myself would quite happily try a bug-derived Beyond Meat burger or similar.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221214-what-is-the-lowe...

Detrytus2• 3 years ago

I thought that this methane emission was easily counteracted by some food additive, was it seaweed?

EDIT: yes, it was:

https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/case-studies/seaweed-suppleme...

wyager5• 3 years ago

All of these "beef is bad for the environment" articles are written by vegan activists, seventh day adventists, or other extremist groups who have a political agenda against meat.

The amount of methane emissions from all beef agriculture today is within a factor of like 3 of the natural methane emissions from American bison prior to colonization of the Americas.

All of these analyses completely ignore the base rate of methane emissions in the absence of cattle, whether from preexisting natural ruminants, from e.g. the fungal decomposition of plant matter that would have occurred on grasslands anyway, or from "meat substitutes".

Even if the methane emission was 10x the absurdly inflated figures that anti-meat extremists try to claim, it would still be overwhelmingly worth it for me to consume it for the health benefits. It would be better for society to spend Manhattan-Project-plus-NASA levels of our GDP on methane catalysis/capture technology, if it were actually necessary, than to stop eating ruminant meat.

darth_avocado3• 3 years ago

Bugs are very common additives to chicken feed in smaller farms. Not sure about commercial operations. As a backyard chicken owner, meal worms are a regular thing I feed to my chickens.

oooyay• 3 years ago

I keep a compost pile going in my chicken run to supplement the chickens food. They can't survive on only bugs though, there's a lot of minerals they need that come directly from plants. Some people may be surprised to learn that chickens will eat just about anything, including you.

some_random• 3 years ago

I wonder if [plants -> bugs -> fish -> human] is more or less efficient than just traditional [plants -> {cows, pigs, sheep, goats}]. Also, the bug protein could be an additive to mostly plant based diets for traditional farm animals.

The trick here is that the bugs can (at least at the current scale) be fed using food waste which almost certainly makes it more efficient

ValleZ• 3 years ago

I thought it’s about software )

throwawaaarrgh• 3 years ago

This is sad because it means they've checked the numbers and don't expect large scale animal farming to shrink. Was really hoping humanity might reduce its addiction to animal farming this century. We need better quality fruits and vegetables and more of them, as climate change continues to make farming more costly. Meanwhile animal farming continues to damage the environment and exacerbate climate change, all because we really like cheap burgers, fried chicken & eggs

pajko• 3 years ago

" and in 91 (30.33%) cases, parasites were potentially pathogenic for humans" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6613697/

Not for me...

sonofhans• 3 years ago

I’m not trying to get on a soapbox or advocate for veganism; I honestly am curious about this, and I do eat meat myself.

It’s amazing to me that as a society we’re so attached to animal protein that we’d rather farm bugs than just eat vegetables. If we stopped factory farming animals then we’d have more than enough food. We could grow a fraction of what we do now, on a fraction of the land, since such a huge proportion of grain grown now goes to feed animals. Everyone’s familiar with these arguments, of course.

So rather than reduce the animal protein in our diets, we’re determined to farm insects to supplement it. I know some people make this choice already, and others will do so in the future. Yet many people express immediate loathing at the idea, unapologetic about it.

Is meat addictive like sugar? We all know (for some definition of “we”) how bad regular, large doses of sugar are, yet continue to consume it. Are meat and sugar so overwhelmingly pleasurable to us that we’ll _as a society_ accept any cost for mass consumption of them?

vacuity• 3 years ago

At the very least, you'd think more people would be willing to, say, keep a consistent meat consumption of 50% their current level.

galangalalgol• 3 years ago

My understanding has been that genetic traits common in Asia make processing plant proteins much more efficient, and that without those traits, uptake is always suboptimal. That said, I've read that arthropod protein has much the same problem.

munificent• 3 years ago

It’s amazing to me that as a society we’re so attached to animal protein that we’d rather farm bugs than just eat vegetables.

I think we generally feel equally strong attachments to almost every facet of behavior that is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. We're animals and we evolved to want to do certain behaviors. Birds want to fly, moles want to dig, lions want to hunt.

If anything, we should be surprised that our society can remove us so far from the obvious fact of our animal nature that we consider these behaviors surprising. We're omnivores and meat is calorie dense. Of course we like eating it, just like we like exploring, sex, grooming each other, eating fresh fruit, etc.

Apes gonna ape.

That doesn't mean we have to do these things. But it should certainly be entirely unsurprising that we want to do them.

swatcoder2• 3 years ago

Livestock are highly optimized mobile nutrient concentrators and animal husbandry is an inconceivably ancient, nearly universal tradition. In traditional practice, they collect nutrients in environments where human-edible crops aren't possible or efficient, can synthesize essential nutrients not available in local crops, and can store and supply nutrients when crops or stockpiles fail.

All of those things are valuable and ecologically low-impact ways to provide resiliency to total human food supply.

The motivating factor for stuff like this is not meat consumption itself, but the problems invented by industrial meat production, which falsely promises cheap, uniform meat to everyone everywhere -- promises just as falsely made by industrial agriculture. The idea of scaling industrial agriculture to displace industrial meat production (yours) is not really all that different than what's suggested in the article. It's still just a patchwork fix to a much bigger problem, which is that industrially producing Modern Western Diet for the entire world is an unsustainable idea in itself.

If you want to advocate an environmentally conscious social change, it'd be to restore more geographically appropriate menus and not worry about whether people in (say) mountainous arid climates are eating local meats that could have been replaced by diesel-freighted Digicorn 3.0 shipped from Iowa.

tick_tock_tick• 3 years ago

I'd guess it's something "deeper" since humans wouldn't have existed without meat.

kdmccormick• 3 years ago

I'm not saying this justifies the ethical problems and environmental impact, but I think we cannot dismiss the emotional significance that meat-eating has to many cultures.

Cooking is a major way in which families bond and connect with their ancestors. Traditional cuisine in Italy, France, the American South, etc. all prominently feature meat.

I remember talking to my mother about the ethical issues of animal farmimg once (we're both meat-eaters). She looked like she was going to cry as I explained to her that all the recipes she'd learned from my grandmother and then lovingly cooked for us for years were rooted in dystopian animal misery and environmental destruction.

I have huge respect for vegans and vegetarians. From a moral point of view, you folks are doing the right thing. That said, I'm more interested in reducing my meat intake and sourcing meat from hunters and small-scale local ranchers than I am interested in eliminating my own meat intake.

celeritascelery• 3 years ago

So rather than reduce the animal protein in our diets, we’re determined to farm insects to supplement it.

Protein is really important for our diets. Many adults even in the first world are not getting enough of it. It's not some "luxury" macromolecule the we should just consume less of (like sugar). Most peoples diets (at least in the US) have too many carbs and sugars (plants) and not enough protein (meat). You can get the protein you need from plant based sources, but you have to be really intentional about it and work hard at it. Meat contains every nutrient your body needs besides vitamin C.

uses• 3 years ago

This sounds like letting perfect be the enemy of good. Insect protein would be a new addition to the protein supply and the food supply. It would provide an additional alternative to meat. It might actually reduce the demand for meat, which would be good. I guess I don't see why the option of insect protein would be bad. In fact, it seems it would be good.

wyager5• 3 years ago

It is critical for optimal human health that we eat large quantities of meat.

Food is not fungible. Proteins are not fungible. Fats are not fungible.

There are dozens of chemically and metabolically significant differences between what you get when you eat vegetables vs fruits vs bugs vs chicken vs beef. Protein uptake ratios, SFA/MUFA/PUFA ratios, indigestible protein (chitin etc.) ratios, etc.

It is, quite simply, not feasible to maintain the standard of health and vitality that I personally require while eating vegetables (or bugs).

Is meat addictive like sugar?

No, it's addictive like water.

Are meat and sugar so overwhelmingly pleasurable to us

Sugar is pleasurable because it's an unnatural hyperstimulus that we aren't well-adapted for. Meat is pleasurable because it's one of the most nutritious possible foods for humans (perhaps second only to milk). It's not a hyperstimulus at all; your body is accurately reflecting its nutritional value.

Terr_• 3 years ago

It’s amazing to me that as a society we’re so attached to animal protein that we’d rather farm bugs than just eat vegetables.

Hold up, are you suggesting consumers want to buy processed grasshopper-protein over of processed vegetable-protein because they're so very emotionally attached to it coming from a squirming insect?

That seems like quite an unnecessary reach.

Surely a much simpler answer is that those options are simply not the same when it comes to culinary-science and/or manufacturing requirements.

ekianjo• 3 years ago

So rather than reduce the animal protein

Dont forget the meat lobby and the government incentives in place. Its not just driven by consumers

dave333• 3 years ago

Animals can be very useful workers that fertilize and till the soil to make vegetable growing more productive. Bugs are probably best used as a supplement to the diet of chickens. WP article is paywalled so I haven't read it.

earleybird• 3 years ago

A long food chain is a good food chain.

randomdata• 3 years ago

a huge proportion of grain grown now goes to feed animals.

That doesn't mean that humans want to eat those grains, even if they were to consume the same kinds of grains.

You've probably noticed that human-grade grains are considerably more expensive. It is in the interest of the farmer to produce those higher quality grains for the sake of profitability, but sometimes the Mother Nature just doesn't play nice.

Sometimes all you can produce is animal-grade food. Being able to also capture those calories helps feed the large and growing human population.

diamondfist25• 3 years ago

eating bugs is gonna be the new trend where wokies in Bay Area are gonna champion eating bugs together with tree barks, all in accordance to WEF’s studies and charters.

Ppl had been promoting Beyond Meat as meat replacement, and it tastes worse than dung

sophacles• 3 years ago

Humans have intentionally been eating insects as delicacies for as long as humans have existed. Every time the prime-number cicadas emerge there's long lines at shops serving them in various ways (commonly chocoalte covered, often other ways as well).

I'll trust your judgment on Beyond Meat vs dung. I'm sure you have much expertise on the nuances involved in dung's flavor, and certainly much much more experience than me in tasting it.

wyager5• 3 years ago

Animal proteins and fats are not fungible.

If you habitually eat large quantities of non-digestible insect proteins like chitin, it will in all likelihood severely damage your digestive system. Insects also have an extremely unfavorable protein:fat ratio, and any supplemental fat is likely to be other industrial fats like rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, etc. which have extremely poor chemical properties like {S,MU,PU}FA ratios.

zingababba• 3 years ago

I just want to know how long until I can carve the genetically enlarged Thanksgiving grasshopper.

Why companies are racing to build the biggest bug farm

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