Meanwhile, in China...<p>"Cockroach farms multiplying in China" (2013)<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-china-cockroach-20131015-dto-htmlstory.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-china-cockroach-20131...</a><p>> 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.<p>> 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.<p>> "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.<p>> 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.
> You Might Not Want to Eat Bugs. But Would You Eat Meat That Ate Bugs?<p>Ummm. Free-range chickens <i>love</i> insects. Trout also eat lots of insects. And pigs. Well, I'm not going into what pigs will eat.
I just posted a podcast episode, 222: Why Eat Insects <a href="http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-and-monologues-volume-7" rel="nofollow">http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-and-monologues-vo...</a>, on why we're seeing all these clever new ways to create food: bugs, vertical farming, fake meat, in-vitro meat, etc.<p>Why didn't we think of them before?<p>Not because now we're more clever. <i>Because we had better options.</i> We're scraping the bottom of the barrel.<p>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.<p>With a lower population we could keep abundance.
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.<p>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.
HN Title:
> Startups are using insect larvae to produce protein-rich animal feed<p>Article title:
> You Might Not Want to Eat Bugs. But Would You Eat Meat That Ate Bugs?<p>Sentence from article:
> AgriProtein is among a _small number of start-ups_ that are using insect larvae
Someone attempt to make a case for me for how raising insects for protein can ever compete against farming duckweed.<p>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.<p>No need for cages, artificial lights, heaters, smell, special insect feed, etc.
I'm guiding myself in life after this saying: There’s actually no such thing as waste.<p>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.<p>We are making progress!