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I am the angel investor of a small startup trying to scale insect larvae production. The idea is to use larvae as a more eco friendly animal feed. I am still co

by kfk 4y ago

I am the angel investor of a small startup trying to scale insect larvae production. The idea is to use larvae as a more eco friendly animal feed. I am still collecting numbers, but I was wondering if planting biomass to grow insect protein for humans is a good idea or not, it should be multiples better than growing crops to feed animals as a source of protein. I am just saying, dedicated biomass can mean a lot of different things, no?

adrian_b 4y ago
Chicken protein is quite cheap. Divided by the protein content, the price of chicken breast is only 2 to 2.5 times higher than that of beans or lentils. To have any chance on the market, the price per protein content of the insect larvae must be at least twice lower than that of chicken meat. Therefore it must be about the same as for legumes like beans or lentils. To be able to judge whether investing in such a thing is worthwhile, you need a very accurate prediction of the production costs, to determine whether it is possible to match the legumes in price per protein content. I would be very wary about the risk that the estimation of the future production costs might be exceedingly optimistic. Currently some cereals are the cheapest source of proteins suitable for human consumption, but they cannot provide much more than a half of the daily protein intake of a human, because they lack lysine, so they must be combined with a more expensive source of proteins, like meat, legumes, or perhaps insect larvae.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Some people object to eating insects. Some object to eating meat. Nearly nobody has an objection to eating legumes (I am ignoring, among other things, people on ultra-low-carb diets, specific allergies, and Ashkenazi Jews during Pesach), so an improved yield of legumes, or a reduction in water usage, or a tolerance for greater temperature extremes, or... would be extremely valuable.
  - belorn 4y ago
    I would think there is plenty of people who objects to eating legumes based on culture and taste. Culture has always been the dominating factor in influencing people to eat different kind of food, and its fairly common for one country to have food that people from other countries wouldn't touch. As a person living in Sweden, we have candy that people from other countries find as torture to eat.
- tinco 4y ago
  Chicken protein is not as cheap when farmed sustainably and even if farmed sustainably it is rife with problems and risks. Where I live "ethical" (less densely farmed) chicken is 12 euro/kg and "organic" (sustainably farmed) chicken is 24 euro/kg (both thigh fillet) so there's a factor 2 right there. If they could come to be just the same price as "ethical" chicken that would be amazing. I think it's been shown that there's not much market for meat replacements at a premium (like impossible and beyond). But I can't imagine there's not an insane market at the parity. I know I would buy insect burgers for my family at least once or twice a week if they had comparable quality to chicken and similarly priced.
dinkleberg 4y ago
As biomass is the only source of fuel for us biological machines, I don’t think anyone is questioning it in regards to food. But biomass being converted into electricity is horribly inefficient.
- beefield 4y ago
  > But biomass being converted into electricity is horribly inefficient Even in CHP?
  - dinkleberg 4y ago
    The thing you need to consider with biomass is the efficiency of photosynthesis, which is incredibly poor. The upper limit for most plants is like 2% efficiency, many are significantly worse than that. Whereas photovoltaic cells are much higher, ranging from 15-20% or even higher. And this continues to improve. And that optimistic 2% efficiency for plants is just the energy conversion to grow the actual plants. Then to convert it into electricity requires it to go through a power plant which often have lower efficiencies of say 30%. If it is in a co-generation facility, it may have upwards of say 80%. Which sounds nice, but when you multiply those efficiencies and end up with in the best case, something like 1.6% efficiency which is terrible. And that is to ignore the other major factor which is that burning biomass causes major pollution. Fossil fuels are just convenient biomass that have been given the luxury of hundreds of millions of years to compress into dense hydrocarbons which make a convenient fuel source. We don't have this luxury when it comes to creating new biomass. The best aspect of biomass is that it is freely available to everyone. Anyone can gather sticks to burn. However, the parts of the world that still heavily rely on these methods for heating their homes and are used for cooking unfortunately suffer the consequences of breathing all of the smoke in over the years.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  The phrase "biomass" is misleadingly vague. The article is aboit dedicated biomass for electricity production, which given the cheapness of solar and wind is a little like dunking on steam-powered cars. I'm not aware of anyone arguing for that as an approach. We did these sums a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, wwste food, sewage, manure, and various other things that would become methane are useful to capture as it can be GHG negative comparrd woth letting it rot. That is also "biomass".
Spooky23 4y ago
I think it depends on your starting point from a principles perspective. Nerdy people on message boards will adopt extreme positions. The argument against meat is that animal fodder is inefficient and everything would be better if we just ate soy, peas and beans. The same argument would be made against your idea. I think it’s dumb to grow crops to stretch the viability of ICE engines in cars. But growing crops to produce upstream value, whether that’s steak or food for my steak isn’t an issue for me, and probably isn’t a problem for 98% of people once they get over the “yuck, bugs”.
colechristensen 4y ago
Watch the waning success of plant-based meat substitutes like beyond meat. If they’re having problems selling passable meat simulations, imagine the problems you have convincing people to eat bugs. On top of that, food margins aren’t huge and you’re aiming for the low budget market, not a lot of money to be made there. And the optics aren’t great, lots of people will find your product repulsive and at a low price it will look like you’re trying to feed bugs to the poor. If insects as food ever becomes significant, it probably won’t be the first to market that will succeed but a later breakout learning how to be successful after somebody else tries and fails several times.
bjelkeman-again 4y ago
There is a lot of waste in our food supply chain. Use that for feeding the insects, instead of taking resource that humans could eat. For example the remains from beer brewing is good insect feed. There are many other resources that today become waste, compost or biogas instead. I work with creating efficient closed loop food production systems.
- kfk 4y ago
  For animal feed we will start with that, but I am finding hard to imagine that clean organic waste is not being used already in some other way? Meaning, probably we need to pay for it?
  - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
    It depends on the waste handling in your region. In many places (EU for example) the disposal of organic waste is regulated and you have to pay for disposal. There is a lot of inefficiencies in the current linear system.

by kfk 4y ago

adrian_b 4y ago

Chicken protein is quite cheap. Divided by the protein content, the price of chicken breast is only 2 to 2.5 times higher than that of beans or lentils. To have any chance on the market, the price per protein content of the insect larvae must be at least twice lower than that of chicken meat. Therefore it must be about the same as for legumes like beans or lentils. To be able to judge whether investing in such a thing is worthwhile, you need a very accurate prediction of the production costs, to determine whether it is possible to match the legumes in price per protein content. I would be very wary about the risk that the estimation of the future production costs might be exceedingly optimistic. Currently some cereals are the cheapest source of proteins suitable for human consumption, but they cannot provide much more than a half of the daily protein intake of a human, because they lack lysine, so they must be combined with a more expensive source of proteins, like meat, legumes, or perhaps insect larvae.

dsr_ 4y ago
Some people object to eating insects. Some object to eating meat. Nearly nobody has an objection to eating legumes (I am ignoring, among other things, people on ultra-low-carb diets, specific allergies, and Ashkenazi Jews during Pesach), so an improved yield of legumes, or a reduction in water usage, or a tolerance for greater temperature extremes, or... would be extremely valuable.
- belorn 4y ago
  I would think there is plenty of people who objects to eating legumes based on culture and taste. Culture has always been the dominating factor in influencing people to eat different kind of food, and its fairly common for one country to have food that people from other countries wouldn't touch. As a person living in Sweden, we have candy that people from other countries find as torture to eat.
tinco 4y ago
Chicken protein is not as cheap when farmed sustainably and even if farmed sustainably it is rife with problems and risks. Where I live "ethical" (less densely farmed) chicken is 12 euro/kg and "organic" (sustainably farmed) chicken is 24 euro/kg (both thigh fillet) so there's a factor 2 right there. If they could come to be just the same price as "ethical" chicken that would be amazing. I think it's been shown that there's not much market for meat replacements at a premium (like impossible and beyond). But I can't imagine there's not an insane market at the parity. I know I would buy insect burgers for my family at least once or twice a week if they had comparable quality to chicken and similarly priced.

dinkleberg 4y ago

As biomass is the only source of fuel for us biological machines, I don’t think anyone is questioning it in regards to food. But biomass being converted into electricity is horribly inefficient.

beefield 4y ago
> But biomass being converted into electricity is horribly inefficient Even in CHP?
- dinkleberg 4y ago
  The thing you need to consider with biomass is the efficiency of photosynthesis, which is incredibly poor. The upper limit for most plants is like 2% efficiency, many are significantly worse than that. Whereas photovoltaic cells are much higher, ranging from 15-20% or even higher. And this continues to improve. And that optimistic 2% efficiency for plants is just the energy conversion to grow the actual plants. Then to convert it into electricity requires it to go through a power plant which often have lower efficiencies of say 30%. If it is in a co-generation facility, it may have upwards of say 80%. Which sounds nice, but when you multiply those efficiencies and end up with in the best case, something like 1.6% efficiency which is terrible. And that is to ignore the other major factor which is that burning biomass causes major pollution. Fossil fuels are just convenient biomass that have been given the luxury of hundreds of millions of years to compress into dense hydrocarbons which make a convenient fuel source. We don't have this luxury when it comes to creating new biomass. The best aspect of biomass is that it is freely available to everyone. Anyone can gather sticks to burn. However, the parts of the world that still heavily rely on these methods for heating their homes and are used for cooking unfortunately suffer the consequences of breathing all of the smoke in over the years.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The phrase "biomass" is misleadingly vague. The article is aboit dedicated biomass for electricity production, which given the cheapness of solar and wind is a little like dunking on steam-powered cars. I'm not aware of anyone arguing for that as an approach. We did these sums a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, wwste food, sewage, manure, and various other things that would become methane are useful to capture as it can be GHG negative comparrd woth letting it rot. That is also "biomass".

Spooky23 4y ago

I think it depends on your starting point from a principles perspective. Nerdy people on message boards will adopt extreme positions. The argument against meat is that animal fodder is inefficient and everything would be better if we just ate soy, peas and beans. The same argument would be made against your idea. I think it’s dumb to grow crops to stretch the viability of ICE engines in cars. But growing crops to produce upstream value, whether that’s steak or food for my steak isn’t an issue for me, and probably isn’t a problem for 98% of people once they get over the “yuck, bugs”.

colechristensen 4y ago

Watch the waning success of plant-based meat substitutes like beyond meat. If they’re having problems selling passable meat simulations, imagine the problems you have convincing people to eat bugs. On top of that, food margins aren’t huge and you’re aiming for the low budget market, not a lot of money to be made there. And the optics aren’t great, lots of people will find your product repulsive and at a low price it will look like you’re trying to feed bugs to the poor. If insects as food ever becomes significant, it probably won’t be the first to market that will succeed but a later breakout learning how to be successful after somebody else tries and fails several times.

bjelkeman-again 4y ago

There is a lot of waste in our food supply chain. Use that for feeding the insects, instead of taking resource that humans could eat. For example the remains from beer brewing is good insect feed. There are many other resources that today become waste, compost or biogas instead. I work with creating efficient closed loop food production systems.

kfk 4y ago
For animal feed we will start with that, but I am finding hard to imagine that clean organic waste is not being used already in some other way? Meaning, probably we need to pay for it?
- bjelkeman-again 4y ago
  It depends on the waste handling in your region. In many places (EU for example) the disposal of organic waste is regulated and you have to pay for disposal. There is a lot of inefficiencies in the current linear system.