Tiny Farms Raises Seed Round as Cricket Farming Heats Up | Hacker News Reader

Tiny Farms Raises Seed Round as Cricket Farming Heats Up

agfundernews.com

43 pointsDanI-S55 comments

As someone who once owned geckos and fed them with crickets, the memory of the smell alone is enough to deter me from ever eating any cricket-based product.

Seafood can be quite stinky also and yet lots of people have no problem eating it.

Exactly. And honestly, if you've ever eaten a whole, unpeeled shrimp or prawn before, it's not too much of a stretch going from there to something like crickets. They are both arthropods. They are distantly related. They look kinda-sorta-not-too-dissimilar in their natural state.

The key difference is size. There's a lot more meat in your typical prawn, and this allows you to peal and prep it in a way that distances you from its natural appearance. There's less meat inside the cricket, so you pretty much have to eat it whole, shell and all. The resulting texture is less meaty and more mealy/crunchy.

In my experience eating crickets, I've always been aware that I'm eating crickets. There is no fantastic way to mitigate the texture and the mouthfeel, shy of grinding up the crickets into a powder and reconstituting them in some other form.

(The texture doesn't bug me per se, but it sure does seem to bug a lot of people who've tried crickets. No pun intended.)

It's possible some crickets are less stinky than others. But man, that smell... Shrimp, etc don't stink like that.

Sure, but I honestly can't think of a seafood product, raw or cooked that smells quite as bad as crickets do. Even when cooked they somehow retain the smell (I accidentally tried a "grashopper" taco once--turned out it was actually crickets--one bite was too much.)

If there really isn't a way to do even small scale fish or eggs efficiently then we don't need to eat insects if that isn't part of our culture. There are plenty of other satisfying ways to get adequate protein, such as nuts and beans. Hundreds of millions of people live healthy lives without meat or insects.

An approach to making it more tractable to meet food needs is to integrate it back into our urban/suburban environments and take advantage of advanced indoor farming which can be carefully monitored and tended by humans or robots, which can dramatically reduce resource usage for agriculture and greatly improve land use.

http://tinyvillages.org

I can not wait to see a 2000 pound cricket, bred for size by conventional means...;)

Sorry to step on your harmless joke, but big insects can't breathe:

https://bioteaching.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/gigantism-in-in...

While that exact realization did make me stop being freaked out by giant spiders in movies, technically "they can't breathe" in earth's current atmosphere. Presumably, if it was worth the expense involved, you could grow giant insects in closed biomes with higher oxygen levels and (I assume) higher atmospheric pressure.

Also: Jurassic Park is BS for the same reason. The T Rex would not function in earth's current atmosphere -- at least not without tampering with their physiology and/or some kind of extra support system.

Even then they probably didn't get much bigger than a cat.

http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/10-prehistoric-bugs-that-cou...

The huge dragonflys were still only somewhere between a crow and raven in size.

Well, I don't know what the limits would be on size, but you seem to be presuming that historical limits are hard limits. I think that is as much a mistake as assuming current sizes are hard limits. It might take crazy levels of oxygen and pressure or it might be undoable, but if we were to create environments for this purpose, hell, why stick to recreating historic earth conditions?

What if we raise them in a pure oxygen environment?

heh heh heh

Yes, I am well aware of the spiracular limitations of existing insect breathing and blood, but a fictitious mechanism to modify the insects can also adapt their blood and oxygen circulation system to the larger sizes. Grasshoppers have nice hams - can you imagine herding 1000 pound gigantism adapted grasshoppers? What would you ride? Why Kangaroos - of course...;)

Chocolate dipped crickets actually doesn't sound that bad. It could be a hipster's crunch bar in a few years.

Unfortunately for them this reminds me of pigeons! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/magazine/the-pigeon-king-a...

IIRC it's been shown that cricket farming at scale is no more effective than cow/chicken farming

You're probably thinking of "Crickets Are Not a Free Lunch" [1]. For reference, the search terms to find that study were 'cricket farming efficiency' :)

[1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

I'm one of the founders of Tiny Farms. I think you're probably recalling an article published in PLOS ONE last year that suggested the sustainability of crickets might not meet the hype.

We were obviously very interested in the study! It turns out that the paper missed some crucial factors that make insects a sustainable, efficient protein source.

I guest-wrote this post with some details; do take a look if you're interested.

http://blog.exoprotein.com/crickets-vs-chicken/

Sooo tl;dr: is that chickens use more water, produce more manure, and tend to be butchered away from the farms, but the study was still correct in it's food to protein conversions being almost the same between poultry and crickets?

I guess I'd summarize the feed conversion part as follows:

- Crickets are slightly better than poultry at converting poultry feed into protein.

- Crickets are great at converting processed grocery store waste into protein; poultry can't do this at all.

- Both species are awful at converting low quality food waste (a mix of chicken poop and straw) into protein.

- The efficient feed conversion of modern poultry comes only after years of research, development and breeding; the efficient feed conversion of insects comes "out of the box" and will only improve over time.

> Both species are awful at converting low quality food waste (a mix of chicken poop and straw) into protein

Wait - what? Do farmers really try to feed their chickens with chicken shit?!

That's pretty much how we got Mad Cow Disease [1]

    A British and Irish inquiry into BSE concluded the 
    epizootic was caused by cattle, which are normally 
    herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle 
    in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which 
    caused the infectious agent to spread

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

They were giving the cows feed that was salted with protein sourced from ground up sheep, of which there were trace amounts of neurological tissue containing the prions.

It's not unusual for farmers to add amino acids as a supplement to feed. It's one of the targets for high-nitrogen (amino acid) GM corn.

Vegetarian protein is also way more efficient than any animal-based protein. Why do we need crickets then? (honestly curious, no criticism)

Criticizing a peer-reviewed study is both healthy and welcome, but it really should be done with peer-reviewed studies of one's own. Respectfully, all I see here are extraordinary claims without any evidence, extraordinary or otherwise.

Are we reading the same "critique"? I don't see much in the way of extraordinary claims. In fact, most of the claims come directly from the paper! None of that post was criticizing the paper -- it was primarily clarifying the one sided news coverage.

The study says that crickets are not that much more efficient converters of plants->protein. The "clarification" accepts and applies the information from the study. It then takes into account an understanding of current processes in chicken cultivation to argue that overall impact on the environment would still likely be substantially reduced, especially with better technology.

I guess another factor is space.

For one thing you can go more 3D with crickets, whereas with chickens you would have to build additional levels if you wanted to 'stack' them.

Also, many people care about the welfare of the animals they eat, such as making sure they have space to roam and live some kind of life before they are slaughtered. I doubt anyone will care if you cram crickets in so tight they can barely move. So at least in terms of space, I imagine you're going to need much less land for a cricket farm.

Don't lump chickens and cows together (the study doesn't). Beef Cattle are much less efficient in both water and grain usage than chickens.

http://www.care2.com/causes/cow-versus-chicken-the-true-carb...

I think if they are going to sell at volume, it has to be as animal feed. I just can't see enough people wanting to eat crickets themselves - but most of those people probably don't care what the animals they are eating were fed with.

> Farms raise seed round

Pun intended??

GMOney cricket !

> The tiny insects have been eaten in developing nations for centuries, but now consumers in the Western world are increasingly accepting them as an efficient and sustainable source of protein.

Every food has protein in it. Bananas have protein. Tomatoes have protein. All plant foods have a complete amino acid profile fit for human consumption. In fact, protein is the easiest macronutrient to get enough of, provided caloric needs are being met. So it's perplexing why eating insects is billed as a 'sustainable source of protein'. Is it more sustainable than say, rice or potatoes?

When you want to eat protein, what do you eat? Meat. It usually comes from livestock (chicken, pork, beef, fish, etc). Crickets are far more sustainable than those conventional sources of protein.

As I had explained in the parent comment, all food has protein, so it's not necessary to specially source it from a particular food. Especially when that food appears extremely unpalatable (or am I the only one who doesn't salivate at the sight of crickets?).

The article talks about harvesting them by freeze drying them and milling them into a flour. Ultimately this is protein as a dietary supplement.

People are willing to pay high prices for meat because meat is tasty and features in numerous delicious recipes, as well as being a source of protein. Crickets would have to be much, much cheaper than meat if the intended market is cricket flour for protein supplementation.

All food may have protein, but all food does not have essential amino acids (which cannot be made by your body) in the quantities required to maintain health. This is why non-meat eaters must be sure to add certain foods (or certain combination of foods) to their diet if they want to stay healthy. Not bagging on vegetarianism, but the idea you can get sufficient protein by just eating any old plant is.... wrong. And animal protein is a far easier and certain way to get essential amino acids. This from a guy who was a vegetarian for a number of years.

> All food may have protein, but all food does not have essential amino acids (which cannot be made by your body) in the quantities required to maintain health.

> the idea you can get sufficient protein by just eating any old plant is.... wrong.

You're quite mistaken. If what you say were true, a warning of it would be clearly made by medical and nutritional authorities. Alas, no respectable organization says it, precisely because it's a myth. You can easily search on Google to find evidence which contradicts your post. Here are just the first two results I found when looking at potatoes as an example:

> The high nutritive value of potato protein can be understood when its composition is compared with that of whole wheat (Table 2). Apart from histidine, it contains substantially more of all the essential amino-acids ; this superiority is particularly striking for lysine, the amount present being similar to that in a typical animal protein.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13536266

> For a 120 pound adult, five potatoes (960 calories) supply over 100% of the recommended intake for all essential amino acids.

> It's pretty difficult for an adult to eat a plant-based, vegetarian diet that doesn't provide all EAAs, as long as caloric needs are met.

> Finally - The pool of AAs that our body uses to manufacture its own proteins isn't limited by what we eat. Normal daily turnover of our cells provides a substantial pool from which to draw amino acids. Bacteria that line our colon also manufacture AAs, including EAAs, that we can utilize.

> It is a misconception that plants provide "incomplete protein", regardless of what Ms. Lappe advanced in her 1971 book, "Diet For A Small Planet."

http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-all-you-ate-were-...

for a 120 pound adult....

But I weigh over 200 pounds. So 9+ potatoes a day from me to get all the essential amino acids. That's a pretty high starch to protein ratio and would be nearly my whole intake in calories to get a bare minimum of amino acids. Essentials aside, is that enough protein? Also at that point I would have fulfilled my daily requirement of calories but be still be short vitamins A, K, E, calcium, selenium, fatty acids and who knows what else.

That aside, potatoes are one plant. I don't dispute you can eat certain plants or combinations of plants to get all essential amino acids. To restate "the idea you can get sufficient protein by eating just any old plant is... wrong". It is. You'd be in serious nutrition trouble if you tried to live on just broccoli or lettuce. You have to carefully balance your diet as a healthy vegetarian and it is far easier just to add some animal protein.

For the record I still eat a "mostly" vegetarian diet. But not completely. And I feel a lot better and have more energy than when I did ate a full vegetarian diet.

I never want to eat protein. I do, however, often want to eat meat. It has nothing to do with meat being high in protein and everything to do with it being tasty as fuck.

It's a good source of relatively pure protein. Brown Rice is 8% protein by weight, whereas Crickets are ~70%.

Okay, but human nutritional needs only call for 10-15% of calories from protein. Why would you go for 70%? There are risks associated with excessive protein consumption, too.

That may be true, but your assumption is that we would have an all cricket diet

Percentage was by weight, not by recommended daily allowance.

You're basically dismissing all protein-rich foods.

Americans are just plain obsessed with protein.

All plant foods have a complete amino acid profile fit for human consumption.

That's a really weird phrase. I guess suggestions that a protein complete diet is easier when eating meat are also a bit overwrought, but it's possible to eat plants and end up not getting all essential amino acids which is usually what is meant when "complete" is mentioned together with protein.

> it's possible to eat plants and end up not getting all essential amino acids

No, that isn't possible. You could eat nothing but potatoes, or even mangoes, and still get enough protein. There isn't a single whole plant food which is completely lacking in any essential amino acid. How could it? Plants can't "hunt" and "eat" other plants - they must synthesize all amino acids themselves. The "complete protein" myth is one which has been debunked for decades, yet somehow refuses to die.

Because plants are not animals, and we are? "Nearly all foods contain all twenty amino acids in some quantity... Proportions vary, however, and most plant foods are deficient in one or more of the essential amino acids."[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein

Deficient means there are lower levels of certain amino acids, but they're not missing entirely. It wouldn't make any biological sense for plants to be missing amino acids. If you read the actual cited source, you will find this:

> Usual dietary combinations of plant proteins are complete; specific plant proteins may be low in specific amino acids

> There is no evidence that amino acid imbalances per se are important; possible imbalances can be created by inappropriate amino acid supplementation, but this is not a practical problem.

> You could eat nothing but potatoes, or even mangoes, and still get enough protein

And probably diabetes too!

Oh, come on - you don't really think so, do you? How many people do you know with diabetes as a result of eating potatoes or mangoes? Check out Starch Solution by John McDougall, if you're being serious. Here's a small tidbit on it - https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/july/glycemic.htm - the guy literally uses potatoes and other starchy vegetables to treat diabetes.

> there is little evidence that total carbohydrate intake is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes. Rather, a stronger association has been observed between total fat and saturated fat intake and type 2 diabetes

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/9/2266.full

> The available data support the idea that consumption of diets high in total carbohydrate does not adversely affect insulin sensitivity compared with high fat diets. Animal data suggest that simple sugars, in particular fructose, have adverse effects on insulin action, but adverse effects have not been shown conclusively in humans.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11584106

That's pretty much what the Meji era Japanese Navy told themselves and that didn't turn out very well.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost...

Beriberi is a nutritional deficit in vitamin B1, not protein, which is ironically easily remedied with potatoes.

nope

Reply on news.ycombinator.com