How to Farm Insects at Home | Hacker News Reader

How to Farm Insects at Home

modernfarmer.com

46 pointsDanI-S41 comments

a minimal initial investment in a cricket colony could absolutely feed a family of four

I've tried to raise crickets to feed a pet bearded dragon. I followed all the guidelines, but generally could never even keep them alive let alone get them to reproduce. I don't think this is quite as easy as it's made to sound.

It's odd because you see crickets everywhere in the wild, they must be pretty hardy, but I utterly failed trying to "farm" them.

Crickets are one of the worst insects to breed. It's hard to keep a stable colony, they smell awful, make noise, and constantly jump out and escape.

I breed Guyana roaches to feed my pet tarantulas. They are hardy and easy to breed, plus they don't smell or make noise and they can't climb walls. They give live birth and don't infest homes. I keep them in a large storage bin with a screen lid filled with egg crates, and feed them fresh fruit and dry cat food once a week. I live in a small apartment and guests don't even know they're there unless I point them out.

I know this happens with every animal bred for food production, but I was taken aback when I've read that those roaches can live up to two years. If I had a choice I would want the animals I keep to live at least a greater part of their lifespan before killing them.

How the FUCK do you manage to do this? As someone who grew up in Guyana, I can't even stand the memory of those things, let alone imagine touching them again. They can't climb walls? What kind of walls do you have? They climbed everywhere and happily flew into your face when I was a kid.

There is absolutely nothing I can think of that I'm afraid of, but those bugs give me the shudders! Ugh!

Props to you for being able to do that!

As my wife pointed out to me, reading this over my shoulder, it was always used in the context of her refusing to eat something she didn't like, as in "In some parts of the world they eat bugs!"

That said, in San Francisco the grasshopper tacos were banned [1] even though people did like them and people back in Oxaca apparently suffer no ill effects from eating them.

So given that good marketing (grasshopper tacos) can overcome western sensitivities, it offers the possibility that farming bugs for human consumption can in fact be a worthwhile endeavor.

[1] http://boingboing.net/2011/06/09/grasshopper-tacos-ba.html

Maybe crickets and mealworms would be a good diet for prisoners but I'd personally rather eat rice and beans if I was on a limited income.

Maybe have these farms available for very poor countries?

I just don't see the desire to eat crickets and worms.

And forget about a social life or dating once they find out you raise and eat crickets and worms, doesn't matter how good you are at explaining the concept.

Am I missing something?

Good source of protein and fats, and often plentiful in the absence of agriculture. It's mostly a cultural aversion. Eating insects is/was common in hunter-gatherer cultures.

Vegetables are a better source of protein and healthy fats, and they're more efficient. Insects are just animals that inefficiently convert calories into animal protein. On top of that it's not ethical to eat animals.

Can you elaborate on why it's not ethical to eat insects?

Insects can feel pain and it's unethical to kill animals unnecessarily.

I find eating to be necessary. YMMV.

I wonder if it would be possible to only eat as much of the animal as you will consume in one sitting, leaving the animal alive and just removing extremities piecemeal for consumption.

There are a lot of unethical spiders out there....

Humans raise meats for no other reason that they're tastier than vegetables. If we're going to eat meat, we might as well choose the most efficient source of meat, such as insects, at least until meat-in-a-vat becomes reality.

Could I have a grass fed mealworm rib-eye steak please? :)

>Vegetables are a better source of protein and healthy fats, and they're more efficient

not necessarily, otherwise there wouldn't be carnivores/predators. And vegetables may be not very well available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4H8JHoSrSs

>Insects are just animals that inefficiently convert calories into animal protein.

somebody converting calories into animal protein saves a carnivore a need to have longer/bigger/heavier gastrointestinal tract than it otherwise has to have. Thus carnivore can have more efficient body for movement (and thinking - apes started to become humans ones they started to scavenge and eat meat about 2 million years ago, though it is not meat eating alone or primarily, the primary trigger was scavenging and later hunting activities that caused our ancestors to pick a stone and stick as a weapon )

Note: personally moving toward vegetarianism (mostly for ethical reasons), not there yet, as of now have completely dropped beef, lamb, pork and am eating more vegetables and fish.

> On top of that it's not ethical to eat animals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipse_dixit

Have you ever stopped to wonder just how many insects are wiped out when a farmer protects (re: pesticides) and/or harvests his crop of vegetables?

What is the more ethical way for an insect to go? Mass starvation? Mass graves created from pesticide use? Or being grown for human consumption?

The best pesticide is an army of biological robots evolved to hunt down insects. Aka, the Chicken!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy#Environmental_benef...

Insects are far more efficient than livestock. Also, you can feed them things that humans can't eat (like rice stalks and husks) so they can be an environmental net win.

> Insects are just animals that inefficiently convert calories into animal protein.

Non-sense. Insects, like other animals, are calories condensers that the human body can actually absorb. We don't have a rumen.

> Am I missing something?

It's a normal food in many parts of the world.

Apart from that, you're right about it having a big "yuck" factor for most people. At the moment it's going to be brave early adopters, finding out what's nice, and what's got too much exoskeleton. (Chitinous legs stuck in your teeth is off-putting.)

Cereal volume 3 has a nice article about the various types of bugs and where they're eaten. (http://readcereal.com/magazine/)

I might be about to raise and eat insects, but my child definitely will. (Consider that children often eat bugs from the garden, and it's only the reaction from horrified parents that stops them doing it!)

I think some better marketing will be needed as well.

It might seem strange and off-putting to eat bugs but eating lobster, shrimp and crawdads has similar challenges and these have become commonplace - even delicacies - for most.

How long until we have a Squeaky Cricket or Brown Roach right next to Red Lobster?

And don't forget oysters. Nature's oil filter. And they look like snot. But damn they are good.

Actually, I rather eat crickets than Red Lobster. That place scares me...

Well they're both arthropods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod

Crickets and worms I don't know, but if you ever get a taste of ants or tarantulas you will think why the hell are people not eating it.

I looked into selling insects as food last year. There's definitely a market for it, but I'm not sure what would stop a well-established existing insect farm from getting into the business the moment it looks viable and crushing everyone as they're already equipped for huge amounts of production, shipping and handling.

There were some disappointed people when I ran my test and they tried to buy crickets or mealworms just to find out I didn't actually have any.

Ultimately I decided not to mess with it because I'm not very excited by eating insects myself. I've tried a few things (crickets and mealworms) and while they didn't taste bad, they didn't taste like much of anything... I foresaw the eating of many insects in order to make it succeed and it's pretty tough to get excited about :)

Perhaps you could raise them on gourmet coffee beans or genetically engineer them to taste like blueberries or something.

I live a mile from Hotlix and the kids & I often incorporate one of their bug products when we play card/board games ("loser eats a chocolate covered cricket").

If anyone wants to try something let me know. The store has blemished items cheap and I could mail some out this week.

Do your kids end up enjoying the treats, despite the fact that they're associated with the negative act of losing?

Eating insects actually looks closer to the norm outside of McDonald's land, so farming insects should definitely be an option.

It's only taboo because people never tasted it. I ate ants [1] here in Brazil and it's delicious. In Vietnam, apparently, fried tarantulas is another delicacy - tastes like lobster. The article mentions crickets, but by the smell of it I don't think they make a good appetizer.

[1] http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com.br/2011/11/recipe-ica-fa...

How do you convince a person like me who thinks it's gross to eat insects? Esp. Out of fear they (or the parasites they bring) might "become alive and crawl up to your brain or start a colony inside your bowel".

I would think you typically cook them or prepare them in some way, not just pop them alive into your mouth like a bird.

+1 to this.

Ate toasted grubs as part of an outdoor survival class once, nobody would think that those were alive. There were also some battered and fried mealworms but I don't recall having any of those.

Put half a pound of crickets in food processor. Two teaspoons starch (for binding). Add 4 small sliced green chili peppers, some grated ginger, 2-3 thinly shredded kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, teaspoon of fish sauce (for the msg!). Form into patties, deep fry until golden brown.

I think i had something like that from a food stall in Thailand, not far from Cambodian border O_o

Peer pressure works. I had some chili dried grasshoppers in Mexico. My sister forced me to eat them. They weren't that great, but weren't bad, either. Sort of like eating sunflower seeds. I'll admit I don't know how one would psych themselves up to eat a plate of grubs on their own. Maybe drop some hallucinogens first?

Add hallucinogens and they start to crawl... :(

Have you guys considered a career with the CIA?

Would it help if they were prepared in such a way as to make them unrecognisable? I know plenty of people who will happily eat mince, chops, etc., but who find it offputting if there are signs of where the meat came from, (e.g. a hog roast, fish/poultry with the heads still on).

Convenient. I just finished reading "How to Eat Fried Worms" to the kids.

Off to find some nice night-crawlers...

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