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Startups are using insect larvae to produce protein-rich animal feed
- gerontological 7y agoI'm guiding myself in life after this saying: There’s actually no such thing as waste. I totally agree that that kind of industry could help feed a growing human population in a way that’s less damaging to the environment. We are making progress!
- fyfy18 7y agoWhy not just feed cows on grass, which is what they traditionally eat? In the UK cows usually graze outdoors in fields during the summer, and in the winter they usually stay in barns where they are fed on hay and silage (usually from fermented grass).
- Nasrudith 7y agoLogistics and relatedly prices I believe is why. The tradition there was because grass was cheaper to grow than hay to feed them. Now it is the opposite and has probably been so for a while. Grass takes more time to fatten them for slaughter and it being cheaper to bring the feed to them than to cattle drive them around to even cheap feeds. Maize (the winner of the local grain corn title) is a type of grass technically but one whose mutated seed size and height are way up there and given that it is human edible (even the field corn variants which are terrible tasting) the trophic layer issues become egregiously obvious.
- mirimir 7y ago> You Might Not Want to Eat Bugs. But Would You Eat Meat That Ate Bugs? Ummm. Free-range chickens love insects. Trout also eat lots of insects. And pigs. Well, I'm not going into what pigs will eat.
- microcolonel 7y agoAFAICT, chickens also eat any rodents stupid enough to go near them. If chickens were our size they'd be terrifying.
- omosubi 7y agoThat's basically what an ostrich is. They're chickens that can kill you.
- harimau777 7y agoNow that I think of it, I suppose that makes sense considering the whole "birds are dinosaurs" thing.
- ryan_j_naughton 7y agoIf only the 9ft tall terror birds [1] from South America hadn't gone extinct 1.8 million years ago, we would never have thought Dinosaurs went extinct in the first place (or said differently, the fast that birds are dinosaurs would have been obvious from the start). [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae
- mirimir 7y agoIf they were our size, they'd be velociraptors.
- ineedasername 7y agoIf rotisserie velociraptor is as good as chicken, I think I could endorse the risks involved with a revival of the species.
- Nasrudith 7y agoCarnivore meats aren't generally considered as good or trophically advisable given bioaccumulation. Fish are one area we tend to ignore that perhaps because of how obfuscated the ecosystem has been historically - we didn't see what they ate.
- wheelerwj 7y agoHN Title: > Startups are using insect larvae to produce protein-rich animal feed Article title: > You Might Not Want to Eat Bugs. But Would You Eat Meat That Ate Bugs? Sentence from article: > AgriProtein is among a _small number of start-ups_ that are using insect larvae
- spodek 7y agoI just posted a podcast episode, 222: Why Eat Insects http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-and-monologues-volume-7 http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-and-monologues-vo..., on why we're seeing all these clever new ways to create food: bugs, vertical farming, fake meat, in-vitro meat, etc. Why didn't we think of them before? Not because now we're more clever. Because we had better options. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Few meat eaters choose crickets over steaks and hamburgers, but we've squandered what was once plenty. We've become more efficient, but we've lost abundance. With a lower population we could keep abundance.
- ineedasername 7y agoIn terms of global hunger, the world has never had it as good as it is now. [0] Yes, people still starve, so "good" is highly relative, but even with rates on a plateua, we're significantly better off when compared to prior generations. What you're seeing isn't lack of choices, it's the cross section of market forces and a growing cultural change that wants what they consider to be ethical, sustainable food. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment
- thrower123 7y agoThere's a lot of money chasing meat-alternative startups. And that means a lot of PR and PR dollars. It's hard for me to imagine we are scraping the bottom of the barrel when pork chops are 99 cents a pound in the grocery store.
- jdc 7y agoYeah, probably not. But then there is a lot of government intervention in American farming.
- nitwit005 7y agoThe last hundred years have been a constant churn of new ideas and technology in agriculture, and food in general. Seeing a bunch of clever ways to make food on the horizon isn't some recent change.
- stevespang 7y agoSomeone attempt to make a case for me for how raising insects for protein can ever compete against farming duckweed. Duckweed has no negative associations with eating insects, it doubles in volume every 2 or 3 days,it produces high levels of proteins with several vitamins including D, it can be grown from sewage if needed, it cleans up polluting waterways, the list goes on and on. No need for cages, artificial lights, heaters, smell, special insect feed, etc.
- lgats 7y agoThanks for the comment! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemnoideae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemnoideae [Duckweed]
- jlawson 7y agoThe first scene in Blade Runner 2049 takes place in a 'protein farm'. The farmer grows parthogenic worm-like creatures in pits filled with some sort of nutrient goo. Parthogenic means they can reproduce asexually, and they're all clones of each other. Indeed, the few animals that reproduce like this can do so extremely fast.
- byproxy 7y agoExactly what I was thinking of. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we go from insects->livestock->humans to insects->humans as shown in Blade Runner 2049.
- jlawson 7y agoI believe in the movie it is implied that the protein is used on replicants of humans, or of animals which are then consumed by humans. Though it's never really that clear, I suppose.
- adrianN 7y agoI'd eat insects as soon as they're available in my local supermarket at an acceptable price. I've seen insect burgers in the supermarket, but they were about twice as expensive as beef.
- imvetri 7y agoAnd movie screen writers are not fiction story tellers. They talk to people while travelling across countries, know their cultures and mix and match. Tada - scene ready. Pay detail attention to movie scenes, it speaks of truth.
- carapace 7y agoMeanwhile, in China... "Cockroach farms multiplying in China" (2013) https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-china-cockroach-20131015-dto-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-china-cockroach-20131... > Wang Fuming ... is the largest cockroach producer in China (and thus probably in the world), with six farms populated by an estimated 10 million cockroaches. He sells them to producers of Asian medicine and to cosmetic companies that value the insects as a cheap source of protein as well as for the cellulose-like substance on their wings. > Since Wang got into the business in 2010, the price of dried cockroaches has increased tenfold, from about $2 a pound to as much as $20, as manufacturers of traditional medicine stockpile pulverized cockroach powder. > "I thought about raising pigs, but with traditional farming, the profit margins are very low," Wang said. "With cockroaches, you can invest 20 yuan and get back 150 yuan," or $3.25 for a return of $11. > China has about 100 cockroach farms, and new ones are opening almost as fast as the prolific critters breed. But even among Chinese, the industry was little known until August, when a million cockroaches got out of a farm in neighboring Jiangsu province.
- Zarath 7y ago150/20 = 7.5 =/= 11/3.25?
- Fjolsvith 7y agoChinese accounting?
- Nasrudith 7y agoThat is surprising given the appetite for pork in China and their high prices.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoAnd, given that cockroaches are expected to survive nuclear holocaust, you won't have an Asian Roach Flu epidemic wipe out your business.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoSo, what would an intrepid startup rancher feed a herd of roaches?