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I went deep down the rabbit hole for almost a month trying to figure out how to farm escamoles[1] in an industrial ant farm. They sell for $40-100 per kg and ar

I went deep down the rabbit hole for almost a month trying to figure out how to farm escamoles[1] in an industrial ant farm. They sell for $40-100 per kg and are apparently delicious (still haven't had the chance to try them myself). I decided I didn't want to spend the effort involved in trying to set up the world's first industrial ant egg farm but all the research did convince me there should be a market for insect protein, although I think the effort should be directed at feeding livestock. Chickens are an obvious option but what really stuck out to me was the opportunity for feeding farmed fish. Farmed fish need protein to grow (duh) and the protein they are fed is generally fishmeal made up of smaller "worthless" fish caught by commercial fishing vessels. The problem is that it takes 5 lbs of fishmeal to grow a pound of farmed fish. Not very sustainable if farmed fishing is supposed to protect wild fish populations. Fishmeal fetches a price between $1500 and $2000 per metric ton [2], so there is a market for a viable replacement. In the end, I realized I was basically redesigning a company that a fraternity brother had started several years earlier - Grubbly Farms [3]. All this is to say that I think insects as a protein source are very exciting and I look forward to seeing how the industry evolves. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escamol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escamol 2 - https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=fish-meal&months=120 https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=fish-meal&... 3 - https://grubblyfarms.com/ https://grubblyfarms.com/

natalyarostova 7y ago
That's a lot of work and a strong opinion for having never tried it, lol.
- fernandopj 7y ago
  It's what I'd expect from an experienced entrepreneur to do: sense an opportunity, investigate market deeply, and make an impassioned decision about starting a venture or not, if the business model makes sense & they'd be ideally positioned to make a run for it. (edit) gender neutral
  - natalyarostova 7y ago
    By try it, I meant actually try the food. I'd expect a experience entrepreneur to know the details of the product, e.g. taste, mouthfeel etc.
the8472 7y ago
> Chickens are an obvious option Chicken are fed with soybeans. What would you feed ants so you can feed them to chicken in turn that would be more efficient? The fish aspect seems more reasonable, if we can't figure out how to feed farmed fish with plant products.
- tantalor 7y ago
  > What would you feed ants...? Garbage. What do they eat? Only the highest quality pre-consumer food waste will do. Rather than using animal by-products, we link up with juice bars, bakeries, breweries, and the likes to divert their food waste. While a mushy banana may not seem appetizing to you, our grubs would happily do the honors. https://grubblyfarms.com/pages/faq https://grubblyfarms.com/pages/faq
  - the8472 7y ago
    And it's not possible to feed it to the chicken directly or mixing it into their soy feed?
    - tlb 7y ago
      You can feed chickens most food scraps, but some stuff harms them. Avocado and potato peels are toxic. They tolerate less salt than humans, so too much canned food causes trouble. Anything that's started fermenting (as any sugary food left out will) will contain alcohol which they don't tolerate well.
    - ianamartin 7y ago
      It totally is. Chickens will happily eat anything. Especially other chickens. I grew up on a chicken and sheep farm. Between letting the chickens roam the vegetable part of the farm area and eat bugs (bonus: we didn't need pesticides) and feeding them our organic food waste, we basically spent nothing on chicken feed. I found out about chickens being zealous cannibals accidentally when I was a kid taking the trash out to feed them. We'd had fried chicken for dinner, and I wasn't thinking about it and just threw all the bones into the feeder like I always did with the food trash. They went berserk over those chicken bones. They absolutely loved them. It was a shark-style feeding frenzy. I was weirded out by that for a while. It was a pretty small operation though. OP's idea for chickens might make sense in a factory farm situation where there's no space to let them roam for bugs. And maybe the logistics of getting them fresh trash don't make a ton of sense.
viciousvoxel 7y ago
I can attest that escamoles are indeed quite good. They can be found at a lot of trendier restaurants in Mexico City. As someone who also has an interest in permaculture, I'm interested in your idea. All practicalities aside, I think the largest hurdle would be developing new markets. As it stands, I believe escamoles aren't that popular outside of Central Mexico. Edit: Wanted to add that for a while I've toyed with the idea of using BSF larvae to feed trout in an aquaculture/aquaponics system. The biggest issue for me is that trout require a much lower stocking density than most other fish suitable for aquaculture. I'm just not into tilapia.
- evilolive 7y ago
  I would be really interested in trying out escamoles! and the idea of a business around that sounds quite appealing (even though, yes I imagine it would be hard to convince the average red-meat fed american). Any idea where to find this delicacy in California?
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> [Escamoles] sell for $40-100 per kg > what really stuck out to me was the opportunity for feeding farmed fish. Farmed fish need protein to grow (duh) and the protein they are fed is generally fishmeal made up of smaller "worthless" fish caught by commercial fishing vessels. > Fishmeal fetches a price between $1500 and $2000 per metric ton [2], so there is a market for a viable replacement. You want to replace $2,000 / ton fishmeal with $100,000 / ton escamoles? How are you planning to convince anyone to do that?
- zamadatix 7y ago
  > You want to replace $2,000 / ton fishmeal with $100,000 / ton escamoles? How are you planning to convince anyone to do that? You make 2 assumptions here that don't really make sense in context of the comment: 1) That escamoles are 1:1 replaceable with fishmeal in terms of feeding fish. 2) That the price of escamoles would not go down if industrially farmed

natalyarostova 7y ago

That's a lot of work and a strong opinion for having never tried it, lol.

fernandopj 7y ago
It's what I'd expect from an experienced entrepreneur to do: sense an opportunity, investigate market deeply, and make an impassioned decision about starting a venture or not, if the business model makes sense & they'd be ideally positioned to make a run for it. (edit) gender neutral
- natalyarostova 7y ago
  By try it, I meant actually try the food. I'd expect a experience entrepreneur to know the details of the product, e.g. taste, mouthfeel etc.

the8472 7y ago

> Chickens are an obvious option Chicken are fed with soybeans. What would you feed ants so you can feed them to chicken in turn that would be more efficient? The fish aspect seems more reasonable, if we can't figure out how to feed farmed fish with plant products.

tantalor 7y ago
> What would you feed ants...? Garbage. What do they eat? Only the highest quality pre-consumer food waste will do. Rather than using animal by-products, we link up with juice bars, bakeries, breweries, and the likes to divert their food waste. While a mushy banana may not seem appetizing to you, our grubs would happily do the honors. https://grubblyfarms.com/pages/faq https://grubblyfarms.com/pages/faq
- the8472 7y ago
  And it's not possible to feed it to the chicken directly or mixing it into their soy feed?
  - tlb 7y ago
    You can feed chickens most food scraps, but some stuff harms them. Avocado and potato peels are toxic. They tolerate less salt than humans, so too much canned food causes trouble. Anything that's started fermenting (as any sugary food left out will) will contain alcohol which they don't tolerate well.
  - ianamartin 7y ago
    It totally is. Chickens will happily eat anything. Especially other chickens. I grew up on a chicken and sheep farm. Between letting the chickens roam the vegetable part of the farm area and eat bugs (bonus: we didn't need pesticides) and feeding them our organic food waste, we basically spent nothing on chicken feed. I found out about chickens being zealous cannibals accidentally when I was a kid taking the trash out to feed them. We'd had fried chicken for dinner, and I wasn't thinking about it and just threw all the bones into the feeder like I always did with the food trash. They went berserk over those chicken bones. They absolutely loved them. It was a shark-style feeding frenzy. I was weirded out by that for a while. It was a pretty small operation though. OP's idea for chickens might make sense in a factory farm situation where there's no space to let them roam for bugs. And maybe the logistics of getting them fresh trash don't make a ton of sense.

viciousvoxel 7y ago

I can attest that escamoles are indeed quite good. They can be found at a lot of trendier restaurants in Mexico City. As someone who also has an interest in permaculture, I'm interested in your idea. All practicalities aside, I think the largest hurdle would be developing new markets. As it stands, I believe escamoles aren't that popular outside of Central Mexico. Edit: Wanted to add that for a while I've toyed with the idea of using BSF larvae to feed trout in an aquaculture/aquaponics system. The biggest issue for me is that trout require a much lower stocking density than most other fish suitable for aquaculture. I'm just not into tilapia.

evilolive 7y ago
I would be really interested in trying out escamoles! and the idea of a business around that sounds quite appealing (even though, yes I imagine it would be hard to convince the average red-meat fed american). Any idea where to find this delicacy in California?

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> [Escamoles] sell for $40-100 per kg > what really stuck out to me was the opportunity for feeding farmed fish. Farmed fish need protein to grow (duh) and the protein they are fed is generally fishmeal made up of smaller "worthless" fish caught by commercial fishing vessels. > Fishmeal fetches a price between $1500 and $2000 per metric ton [2], so there is a market for a viable replacement. You want to replace $2,000 / ton fishmeal with $100,000 / ton escamoles? How are you planning to convince anyone to do that?

zamadatix 7y ago
> You want to replace $2,000 / ton fishmeal with $100,000 / ton escamoles? How are you planning to convince anyone to do that? You make 2 assumptions here that don't really make sense in context of the comment: 1) That escamoles are 1:1 replaceable with fishmeal in terms of feeding fish. 2) That the price of escamoles would not go down if industrially farmed