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.
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.<p>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.<p><a href="http://tinyvillages.org" rel="nofollow">http://tinyvillages.org</a>
Unfortunately for them this reminds me of pigeons! <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/magazine/the-pigeon-king-and-the-ponzi-scheme-that-shook-canada.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/magazine/the-pigeon-king-a...</a>
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.
> 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.<p>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?