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Fast Coexist reports on the Edible Insect Desktop Hive, a kitchen gadget designed to raise mealworms (beetle larva), a food that has the protein content of beef without the environmental footprint. The hive can grow between 200 and 500 grams of mealworms a week, enough to replace traditional meat in four or five dishes.
The hive comes with a starter kit of "microlivestock," and controls the climate inside so the bugs have the right amount of fresh air and the right temperature to thrive. If you push a button, the mealworms pop out in a harvest drawer that chills them. You're supposed to pop them in the freezer, then fry them up or mix them into soup, smoothies, or bug-filled burgers. "Insects give us the opportunity to grow on small spaces, with few resources," says designer Katharina Unger, founder of Livin Farms, the company making the new home farming gadget. "A pig cannot easily be raised on your balcony, insects can. With their benefits, insects are one part of the solution to make currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat obsolete."
Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @04:50PM
I'm not giving up my tastes for prime cut cow flesh, pork chops and bacon, chickens, and endangered sea creatures.
Eating bugs is for bushniggers and Mali scroungers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday November 20 2015, @04:52PM
Technically, every thing that's turned into food is quite endangered.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @08:15PM
And nor should you be forced to give those things up. I am however very happy that regulations and pure market forces will drive up the cost of these things to price most people out of it without coercion. It's a very good thing for all involved when people can't afford to eat meat every day, every meal. When bacon is $20/lb because hogs have to be given x-number of feet^2 to live and can't be cruelly and inhumanely packed closely together anymore, you'll have to cut back--and you'll be healthier for it. You can still be a grumpy, ungrateful, little cry baby though. That's your right.
No need to thank us, btw. Your impotent rage that your unhealthy, unsustainable, lifestyle is being gently disincentivized out of existence is more satisfy enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @08:38PM
Bushnigger guy here. I was born with a rare disorder which allows me to post only in this discussion. I am a native of Chad and my disorder is Fickle Cell Anemia.
The parent should be modded up. I do not agree with them but what xe describes is the future of meat. Those who want to eat meat will have to import it from states undominated by faggots, where fresh kills can be shipped at a huge markup to those like me who are addicted to real meat.
Those without financial access to real meat will take it underground...we will have to settle for canine meat, feline meat, the meat of all rodentia we can catch, fishing, raiding pet stores for hermit crab meat.
But God Damn, I declare, we will not settle for insects! The battle lines have been drawn and I'm hungry for Chihuahua tacos!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @09:13PM
Howdy. Farmer here.
Leaving aside the condescending self-righteousness of your post, and the thinly disguised malice, I would like to address the factual accuracy.
I'm sure it's true that you're happy about your view of the world. Unfortunately, you seem to be a little weak on the underlying agricultural economics. Let's see if I can help.
A somewhat naive, but functional way of viewing agricultural efforts is as a cycle. It's not a closed cycle - you're constantly getting sunlight, rainwater and atmospheric CO2 in, for example, and pulling away agricultural products. If you want more productivity, you need your cycle to run hotter (add petrochemically sourced nutrients and boosters) or more frequently (greenhouses and similar forcing technologies) or more efficiently (permaculture, integrated agriculture, intercropping and so on).
Since the long term trend of gasoline and its petrochemical friends is definitely upwards, and we're exhausting things like mineral phosphate sources, the next place to look is efficiency because most forcing technologies turn out to be quite energy-intensive. Turns out, animals are great in agriculture! Pigs to turn over your soil, ducks to consume pests, and of course sheep for brush control. Not to mention wool, hide, eggs and all the other good stuff.
Oh boy, and will we need a lot of animals. When that there John Deere or Caterpillar gets a little pricey to feed, we'll be needing a bunch of oxen, horses and other critters to keep things going, or you and all your suburban friends won't have your tofu and oatmeal. It don't harvest itself, son. We might even need some scary mexicans who know how to swing a scythe, cause I'm betting that you're a little rusty on your mowing skills.
So yeah, animals as far as the eye can see, and precisely because of the limitations we have. And those animals will end up on the plate and they will be cheaper than you think because their meat is a byproduct of agriculture in the new world order.
That said, I don't see where you combine regulations and pure market forces. They're kind of antithetical to each other. It's more like regulations from the likes of you, and distorted market reactions from the likes of me who have to contend with your idiotic regulations. Idiotic because the hand-wringing suburbanite masses who get duped into voting for these things don't actually grasp the implications of what they're talking about. For example, if I want an acre turned over in a hurry, I will put a few snacks in holes, and pack it with pigs on a density which is bound to horrify people - and then I'll move them elsewhere later. All sound agricultural practice.
Why? What is precisely so great about an environment where the sheer cost of an abundant resource, necessary because of its role in our food supply, is so expensive relative to the general level of income that people can't afford it regularly? We need those meat supplies. We want (or at least I want, I won't speak for you) a prosperous society. What the hell is wrong with you that you want Maslow's hierarchy of needs to become a Tower of Babel rather than a pyramid?
Because sows crushing and eating their piglets is obviously humane! Here's a heads-up for you: farmers do not invest in expensive, complex, large arrangements unless there's a return. Why not? Because it's a business, and if you go broke you are farming nothing any more. Different farmers have different rates of acceptable losses, but I'm here to tell you that anyone peddling the idea of free range pigs is pro pig cannibalism. Maybe not nice to contemplate, but absolutely true. Chickens, too. Chickens regularly kill and eat each other.
I could go on, but I'm hoping that these few words will give you opportunity to reflect on your preconceptions.