How many people are we on this blue planet?
Around 7.6 Billion Humans live in the world.
By the year 2050 we will be roughly 9.8 Billion people.
In 82 years, 2100 we will be 11.2 Billion humans.
82 years, that is than the average life expectancy in Canada today. Not considering all future medical science improvements.
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http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/, here you can see the more accurate number. Fascinating to think that these ever changing digits represent life and death.
But wait, this article is about insects. Why are we taking about population and life expectancy?
To put it in simple terms: More people equals the need for more food and the problem is,
todays agricultural production system does not produce enough food to feed the world in a sustainable way.
In a more complex terms:
An exponentially growing human population and expected wealth growth (see growing middle class in china) inevitably will place heavy pressure on the already limited resources such as land, water, oceans and energy. If we do not change the agricultural system, it will continue to increase GHE emission (more greenhouse gas), deforestation (less trees), overfishing (dead, empty oceans) and the general environmental degradation (more droughts, floods and famines). Here are certain crucial elements broken down and an explanation how switching to mini-livestock might partially offset the consequences of todays agriculture.
Land use
It is expected that the demand for livestock will more than double in the next 50 years (229 million tonnes to 465 million tonnes). 70% of all agricultural land is used by livestock production to date. This equals to 30% of all ice-free surface of the world.
If we assume that the demand will rise another 50%, without any changes in livestock production practices, we are looking at 60% of all the ice-free surface of the world.
To put it in numbers: Today we use roughly 38 million km2 fertile land for livestock production, a 50% increase results in 57 million km2, which is almost 6 times the size of the united states of America.
We can already understand by this alone that we need new innovative solutions.
Switching from conventional livestock to edible insects is one of them. Due to the insect’s smaller size and feed requirements they use much less land than cattle, beef or chicken.
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Land use due to the production of one kg of edible protein. Results from this study depicted in green. Minimum (blue) and maximum (red).
(http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051145)
Greenhouse gas emission
Global warming is still a controversial topic. But we can agree that lowering greenhouse gas emission is a good thing.
Livestock is responsible for 14.5% of all human-induced Co 2 emissions (measured in 2005). The roughly 20 Billion domesticated food-producing animals are responsible for 5.6 to 7.5 Gt Co2 equivalents per year. Cattle alone is producing 64 - 78% of these emissions. Depending on the source.
Mini-livestock farming results in lower emission of greenhouse gases compared to conventional livestock. For example, broiler chickens are associated with
32 - 167% higher emissions compared to mealworms on an edible protein basis. Beef cattle emits even 6 - 13 times more Co2 than mealworms.
Similarly, poultry production in Thailand is associated with 89% higher greenhouse gas emission than crickets. As with most subjects, additional research is required to provide a more complete picture, but form what we know today, mini-livestock is certainly emitting less greenhouse gases than conventional livestock.
Overfishing
Marine fisheries are an important global food source, but there are concerns that current fishing practices threaten marine species with extinction and depletion. Many of the largest commercial fishing methods, trawling, longlining, and seining, unavoidably catch many species simultaneously, even if only one species is used the rest of the catch turns into food waste. With this practices we threaten biodiversity, long lasting food supply, the livelihood of all involved parties and the marine ecosystem.
There are two ways a commercialisation of edible insects can play a part in saving the oceans.
Part One: Insect protein as fish feed. Edible insects have a great potential to be used as feed for fish, and other livestock for that matter. If used in a broad scale, insect protein can substitute the use of fish to feed other fish and support fish-farms by providing cheaper feed. Both of this would take considerable stress of the overfished oceans.
Today we are basically catching fish nobody wants to eat to create the fish everybody pays for. This is especially true for salmon. The Netherland-based company Protix is working on replacing salmon feed with black soldier flies with considerable success since 2014.
Part Two: Insect protein as a substitute for fish or, “crickets are the new sushi”.
As show in my previous article (https://steemit.com/food/@espressodopio/why-we-should-eat-insects) insects have similar (if not better) nutritional value than fish. This is especially important for landlocked and underdeveloped areas of the world. Instead of relying on expensive fish (not to mention environmental costs of transport) for the omega-3 and -6 supply, enhancing the diet with edible insects could solve this malnourishment.
Water use
It is common knowledge that conventional livestock not only uses a lot of land but also water. How much water is used to produce one kg of meat varies greatly amongst sources. From 100'000 litres to 1500 litres. It is a lot either way.
To put it in perspective, it takes roughly 150 litres to fill a bathtub for your weekly bubble bath.
Depending on where you are based, you have experienced some form of water scarcity. Did they tell you not to water your lawn for a certain time? For example, in Italy or California. You are not alone, a total of 2.7 Billion people find water scarce for at least one month a year. We are not even talking about the lack of water for adequate sanitation or drying up bodies of water such as rivers, lakes and oceans.
Micro-livestock farming has a much lower water use. 50% less water is required for one gram of mealworm protein than for chicken. Beef is even worse. It uses 23x more water than crickets.
)Energy / Feed conversion
Insects are suggested to be very efficient in converting food to body mass. They are surely more effective than conventional livestock. A large part of the environmental impact of animal production systems is coming from the feed production for said animals. Again, actual numbers vary due to research methods, feed quality and the production system.
Think, feeding cattle only the highest quality, natural food and keep it outside with more than enough space to roam around vs. only the cheapest, low nutritional quality food and keep the animals locked up inside. That, of course, makes a difference in how much food the animal needs in order to grow.
Anyway, a few examples of different studies:
Poultry (with optimal diets) convert 33% of the dietary protein intake to edible body mass.
Yellow mealworms utilise 22 – 45%, black soldier flies 43-55%, and Argentinean cockroaches 51-88%
(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-017-0452-8#Sec12)
Feed conversion rate (FCR) for concentrate feed for poultry is 2.3 and 8.8 for cereal beef.
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22440097)
If your really interested in the research, have a look at the sources on the bottom of the article.
Generally, we can safely assume that insects are much more effective in using their food to grow. The main reason insects have a higher FCR is because they are poikilothermic.
Which basically means their body temperature varies. Usually the insects body temperature is very low and its primary heat source is the environment. When heat is produced, different temperatures are maintained in different body parts. What we really need to know is that insects use less energy to keep up a high body temperature. Therefore, more energy is available to grow.
Organic Waste
Have you ever seen these garbage trucks and were astonished on how much trash we produce each day? Globally we throw about 1.3 billion tonnes of food away. That is the same weight as 710 Boeings 747 airplanes. The food waste is estimated to be worth 990 Billion USD.
In the easiest way to imagine, about one third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste.
Of course, that is not only the waste from your home but also so called food losses.
The difference is, Food waste concerns only food intended for human consumption which is discarded or left to spoil. Whereas food loss refers to a decrease in mass (dry matter) or nutritional value (quality) of food that was originally intended for human consumption. This is mainly caused by inefficient food supply chains. For example, poor infrastructure, lack of technology, skills or knowledge or simply bad management.
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As discussed earlier the conventional agriculture has negative impacts on the environment but at least it produces food and nutrition for the human population. The food loss and wastage on the other hand is just a net loss in monetary and environmental capital.
There are different ideas on how to reduce food waste. Better technology, incentivising people to use home composting systems, policies for supermarkets and so on.
You already know about which one we will talk: Insects.
Insects can be reared on various organic substrates such as vegetable waste, manures, and food waste, creating value from and reducing waste products. Although there are studies that show the better the quality of the insect feed the more nutritious they are, there is a lot of potential to reduce food waste. Mini-livestock can help reducing food waste in three ways.
Firstly, by becoming a more popular food source. The demand on other livestock decreases and therefore an inevitable decrease in food loss will happen. Secondly, insects itself produce much less food loss as they use less feed and have more edible mass per body weight than other livestock. Lastly, and most importantly, insects can be feed a mixture of organic waste ant therefore create value out of it.
To conclude / TL;DR
Conventional agriculture has a proven negative impact on our environment. Overfishing, greenhouse gases, land/water use, and food wastage are all by products of our current agriculture systems.
These problems can not be solved purely by switching to insect farming but all research suggests that insects use less land and water, produce less greenhouse gases and can be used for fish feed. They also help to tackle the food wastage problem as they can be reared on certain kinds of food waste.
Sources:
In no particular order.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4689427/
http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-017-0452-8
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GB002952/full
http://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/pdf/10.3920/JIFF2015.x002
http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Food_Futures_%20report_0.pdf
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3437e/i3437e.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/40/15943
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34172/title/Why-Insects-Should-Be-in-Your-Diet/
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/water-scarcity
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/salmon-insect-feed-fish-meal-netherlands/#close
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3347e/i3347e.pdf
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051145#pone.0051145-Oonincx1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22440097