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Will you be eating insects soon?
- Global insect consumption is projected to become frequent within 10 to 20 years, with insects likely appearing as components like pasta and flour rather than whole insects.
- The global insect protein market is predicted to grow from a current value of $1 billion to $8 billion by 2030.
- The Aspire facility in Canada, situated on 12 acres with over 90,000 bins each holding approximately 30,000 crickets, is scheduled to come online next year to produce 12 million kilograms of crickets annually.
- Dr. Erica McAllister anticipates that efficiency improvements in insect farming will occur significantly faster than the 50-year timeline required to quadruple chicken sizes in the 1950s.
- Valala Farms in Madagascar plans to open a new facility in 2022 to mass-produce cricket powder containing 54% protein per 100 grams, with a model capable of supporting five million people across Africa.
- AI and automation are expected to be critical for developing self-optimizing indoor farming environments that regulate temperature, humidity, sound pressure, and light intensity.
- Insect farming has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as crickets produce roughly half the carbon dioxide per kilogram as chicken and do not emit methane.
- The current combined industry output falls short of the thousands of metric tons required by major food companies for product launches, presenting a scalable supply challenge.
- Insect farming in Western regions requires industrialization and the construction of numerous additional factories to achieve necessary scale.
- The EU's 2021 permission to consume mealworms is expected to serve as a precedent for subsequent regulatory decisions to open the global insect food market.
- By 2050, the planet's population is projected to reach 10 billion people, creating resource constraints that insect farming solutions aim to address.
- Industry advocates cite the 1970s shift to sushi as a potential precedent for significant global changes in consumption habits regarding insects.