
Entrepreneur raises millions of bugs to tackle food waste problem (2017) - apo
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1066448.shtml
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contingencies
Interesting. Jinan is the modern center of Shandong province, one of China's
oldest continuously inhabited provinces according to the traditional view of
the growth of Chinese civilization. It is pretty much denuded after 3,000
years of intensive agriculture, so any means to reuse food waste is welcome.
If anyone has the chance to visit, the nearby town of Linzi has a musuem of
_cuju_ [0], an ancient Chinese game which FIFA recognized as the earliest form
of association football. The ancient capital of Qingzhou[1] is fascinating,
with some of the oldest mosques and most important Buddhist statuary as well
as carved Buddhist grottoes on nearby mountains and a huge picturesque park-
valley dividing in the middle of town. And the nearby town of Dezhou[2] holds
the tomb of a Philippino Muslim sultan who is thought to have been murdered by
the Chinese after failing to display appropriate deference to the Emperor.
Then of course there's the home of Confucius - Qufu[3], the old German treaty
port of Qingdao[4], etc. Not a bad province for those with historical
inclinations!

On the subject of food waste, we are planning to collect and recycle from our
food robots but this may be hampered by regulations frustrating importing food
waste across the Chinese/HK and Chinese/Macau borders. We shall see.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuju](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuju)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingzhou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingzhou)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dezhou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dezhou)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qufu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qufu)

[5]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingdao](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingdao)

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jazzyjackson
What kind of food robots do you have?

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contingencies
Scary awesome ones that make noodles. :)

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URSpider94
Black solider flies (BSF) are another popular food composting insect. Their
larvae are absolutely ravenous, and chickens go bananas for them. Their
castings are not that nutritious, but they make a good bedding for worm
composting. As an extra plus, unlike cockroaches the adult flies are not pests
- they don’t bite people and they won’t stay around unless there’s rotting
food. I would NOT want a cockroach farm anywhere near my home, while I would
be just fine with a BSF farm in my own yard.

Video: [https://youtu.be/5M6u9ZX5ecE](https://youtu.be/5M6u9ZX5ecE)

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GistNoesis
Isn't there an issue with biomagnification ? I mean the waste probably went
into contact or already contain toxic molecules. How can it be a good idea to
feed it to chicken again ?

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colbyh
This sounds like pure marketing to me. Statements like "Cockroaches are also a
raw material in traditional Chinese medicine, known to be able to promote
detoxification" and "found that chickens fed with the powder were not only
healthier but also grew stronger and faster than normal chickens" without
citations sets off all sorts of alarm bells.

And I don't know a ton about this area in general but it seems like if you are
separating the organic compounds from trash then compost centers would be the
real alternative (rather than landfills)?

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jazzyjackson
Don't know about the chinese medicine, but insects chewing organic matter can
be better than compost if you don't have a lot of dry carbon (paper, twigs,
leaves whathaveyou). If you just let lots of fruit rot, you get anaerobic
decomposition, which is slow and releases lots of methane (greenhouse gas) not
to mention smells like rotting fruit. Can't compost meat without some real
disease issues either.

I've got a friend with Black Soldier Fly larvae eating his leftovers of all
kinds. Raw meat, pineapple, it all gets turned to dirt. Insects are magic.

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sekasi
This reminds me heavily on the 'perfect food' issue primarily in western
countries. Every apple that's not pretty, every cucumber that's not straight
and so on. All just goes from the supermarket into a bin.

It's a really horrible amount of waste that easily could solve many issues
around poverty and hunger, but yet, very little action. Good to see more
momentum around food waste.

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debacle
It's also horrible because, in the quest for the perfect _looking_ food,
flavor and nutrition are often the first thing to go.

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randomdata
The science suggests that food is becoming less nutritious because of more
abundant carbon dioxide, not directly due to farming practices.

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whatshisface
You could just breed it back down to being slower-growing if that was the
case, if that was what any big farmer wanted...

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randomdata
Realistically, what the farmer wants is irrelevant. A farmer who grows what a
farmer wants is a farmer that is no longer in business. You need to have
customers to stay in business, and so the customer always dictates what is
grown. Customers don't buy product they don't want – why would they?

If the customer desires a slower-growing plant, the customer will get a
slower-growing plant (assuming the tech companies are able to make the science
work, but that's outside of the hands of farmers). Although knowing the
average consumer, there is a good chance they would never accept a slower-
growing plant as it may cause autism or some other story that they start to
spread around.

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deepGem
Looks like the protein can be consumed by humans as well, since many people
eat roaches. Can't the protein powder be used like whey isolate powder? If
yes, that's a massive industry to tap.

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gus_massa
The food for farm animal for human consumption is heavily controlled. You
can't give them any crap. They also need strict veterinary controls.

But if the roaches are farmed to produce food that is given to animals that
are consumed by humans, the extra level of indirection makes everything more
easy.

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yesenadam
_The food for farm animal for human consumption is heavily controlled. You can
't give them any crap._

"poultry litter or broiler litter is a mixture of poultry excreta, spilled
feed, feathers, and material used as bedding in poultry operations ... it is
now also used as a livestock feed as a cost-saving measure compared with other
feedstock materials, particularly for beef animals."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poultry_litter#Use_as_cattle_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poultry_litter#Use_as_cattle_feed)

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toomanybeersies
I do not regret my decision to stop eating meat. That's disgusting.

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easytiger
the plants you eat are consumers of cow and other animal excreta

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kristianp
Ok, so they've found all these bugs, but who is going to pay to fix them? This
is the problem with open-source.

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m3kw9
Something doesn’t add up, the roach eat but they need to shit and roaches
don’t grow after reaching certain size. So at the point they’d be just eating
and shitting. The shit can’t be used as protein, so there still need to land
fill that waste correct? The article isn’t telling the whole story.

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GW150914
As oh_sigh says their castings can be used as compost, and the roaches
themselves can probably be used to make fish or animal feed. In fact their
poop might too. People might hesitate at the prospect of eating roaches, or
shit, but pass it all through some tilapia and they’re thrilled.

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acheron
_People might hesitate at the prospect of eating roaches, or shit, but pass it
all through some tilapia and they’re thrilled._

Yeah, but that’s normal. People don’t want to eat grass either until it’s
passed through a cow or a sheep.

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m3kw9
Must be one of the worse place to work on earth too

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petre
Yeah, imagine if the cockroach containment breaks and they start to roam
freely into neighbouring factories, office buildings or worse, homes. Expect
properties near _cockroach food recycling factories_ to be quite cheap.

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m3kw9
I googled pics and the place in hallways is just overrun by roaches, not sure
how they can contain those things. Back to topic, they say they grind up the
rotting food and feed it into a massive glass container, imagine the smell
along with all that

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acct1771
Why do I feel like the stuff they're eating is going to work itself back into
our food supply somewhere down the line?

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PakG1
Sustainable business cycle! :)

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cryptozeus
At first I thought the title of this post was wrong or satire :)

