Insect Farming

Insect farming rears insects in numbers, the way a holding rears any other animal. The species usually kept are black soldier fly larvae, mealworms and crickets, and they are fed on organic material that would otherwise be waste. What comes off is concentrated protein, used mainly as animal feed and in many places eaten directly: more than 1900 insect species are eaten somewhere, so this is an old food system rather than a new idea.

The case for it is feed conversion - how much an animal must eat to build a given amount of its own body. Crickets need about twelve times less feed than cattle to produce the same weight of protein, and they use less water and land and emit less than most other animal protein. Dried insect meal has replaced part of the corn and soybean in a broiler ration without hurting growth or feed efficiency. What governs whether a bin works is the substrate - the organic material the insects are fed on - with temperature and moisture. All three differ by species, so a routine written for mealworms does not transfer to crickets.

It sits between a waste stream and an animal and needs both ends: substrate arriving reliably, and a creature downstream that would otherwise eat bought protein. One trap is legal. A feed regulator approves insect meal insect by insect and animal by animal rather than in general, and the list changes over time and between countries, so what may lawfully be fed has to be checked. The other is that the colony, not the bin, is the asset. Rearing runs continuously rather than in a season, so a lapse in feeding, warmth or moisture does not merely reduce a harvest: it ends the breeding population, which must then be restarted from bought stock. Substrate also decides whether the product is safe, because insects reared on manure or mixed waste concentrate whatever is in it. Escapes turn a rearing bin into a pest problem.