Hello all, thank you for reading this week’s Sunday Post. This week we will look at the use of insects as a food source. As you may have heard, meat is a significant source of carbon emissions, accounting for about seven percent of global carbon emissions, and if society could reduce its meat consumption by even a little bit, it could cut millions of tons of CO2. Not only that, meat is more land, water, and resource intensive than vegetable crops. Compared to pork and chicken, beef requires 28 times more land and 11 times more water and emits 5 times more carbon emissions to produce the same amount. Compared to crops, it requires 160 times more land and 11 times more carbon emissions. As a nation becomes more industrialized, its agriculture processes do become more efficient, but cows will always have some inefficiency in converting food to cow. Plus, as most corn and grain are grown explicitly for feeding cows, and not humans, there is additional wasted land. Cutting meat out of diet completely could cut daily carbon emissions per person by half, and even reducing it by a few days a week could be substantial over enough people over a long enough period. Further, as the population will grow to 9 billion by 2050, the current method for cultivating beef won’t be enough to feed everyone in low- and middle-income countries. Then, what is the viability of insects as a protein source? Admittedly, for those in the West, this idea is not so appealing, but it is a food source for people in Asia and Africa. Insect products, though, have already started to become more popular as mealworm and cricket flours, candies, and other foods. Social insects such as locusts, grasshoppers, termites, etc can gather in large enough numbers to provide sufficient protein and nutrients, but use less land and water to cultivate the same amount as any other animal. One kilogram of feed produces 12 times more insect than beef, and insects can even eat organic waste. Some insect species are even drought-resistant. However, insects still need to be carefully integrated into the food system to make sure they are sustainable because they are still more resource-intensive than fish or soy.
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March 2019
"There is nothing in which the birds differ more than man than the way that they can build and yet leave the landscape as it was before." |