
Startups are using insect larvae to produce protein-rich animal feed - Osiris30
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/climate/insects-animal-feed-climate-change.html
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carapace
Meanwhile, in China...

"Cockroach farms multiplying in China" (2013)

[https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-china-
cockroach-20131...](https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-china-
cockroach-20131015-dto-htmlstory.html)

> 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.

~~~
Nasrudith
That is surprising given the appetite for pork in China and their high prices.

~~~
Fjolsvith
And, given that cockroaches are expected to survive nuclear holocaust, you
won't have an Asian Roach Flu epidemic wipe out your business.

------
mirimir
> 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
AFAICT, chickens also eat any rodents stupid enough to go near them. If
chickens were our size they'd be terrifying.

~~~
mirimir
If they were our size, they'd be velociraptors.

~~~
sohkamyung
I think you mean Utahraptor [1]. Velociraptors are about chicken sized [2]

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

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

~~~
mirimir
Fair enough.

Present day, I'd say mainly watch out for eagles. At least, if you're a child.
Ostriches too, but they won't hunt you.

------
spodek
I just posted a podcast episode, 222: Why Eat Insects
[http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-and-monologues-
vo...](http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-and-monologues-volume-7), 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.

~~~
thrower123
There'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
Yeah, probably not. But then there is a lot of government intervention in
American farming.

------
jlawson
The 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
Exactly 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
I 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.

~~~
miketery
The world in the movie was quite devoid of animal farming / husbandry.

As an aside Snowpiercer had a related concept - grinding cockroaches to make
protein bars...

~~~
jlawson
Not animal farming. Replicants of animals.

Remember the snake and the owl in the original movie?

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wheelerwj
HN 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

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Fjolsvith
So, what would an intrepid startup rancher feed a herd of roaches?

------
stevespang
Someone 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
Thanks for the comment!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemnoideae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemnoideae)
[Duckweed]

------
gerontological
I'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
Why 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
Logistics 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.

