Canned crickets that are served as a snack in Myanmar.
Photographer: Harish Shivaraman | Source: Unsplash
It’s hard to ignore the dominance of meat in North American culture and diet, from the ubiquity of advertisements for fast food burgers to holidays where it is a given that the main course will be a turkey or ham (or both). And while Vegetarianism and Veganism exist, they’d be difficult to consider more than uncommon dietary choices, with only 5% and 3% of the population adhering to them, respectively. This love of meat is not exclusive to the West either, with global consumption of meat expected to rise by 1.4% each year until 2023. We can also see this growth in the consumption patterns of places like China, whose growing middle class has resulted in the average Chinese person transitioning from eating 4 kg of meat per year in 1963 to 62 kg in 2013. This is pretty concerning in a world with a looming climate catastrophe. Whether from contemplating the environmental impacts of meat or the ethical implications of raising sentient livestock in inhumane conditions just for our consumption, it may be worth considering alternate diets. This is usually where op-eds like this espouse Veganism and Vegetarianism as solutions to these problems. However, I wish to propose an alternative: entomophagy and insect agriculture.
Entomophagy is the practice of consuming insects as food, while insect agriculture would be raising the insects as livestock for consumption. While entomophagy is relatively rare in Western society, it is already rather common in other parts of the world, with approximately 2 billion people eating insects as part of their traditional diet. As pointed out by Ligaya Mishan from the New York Times, cultures around the world seem to not only consume insects but actually enjoy them. Whether they’re weevil grubs charred over a campfire in Peru or Giant Murder Hornet grubs simmered with ginger in Japan (which sounds like a rather tasty way to deal with that emerging infestation in BC), people take the time to deliberately savor these insects. Yet, the West stubbornly holds onto its fear of “creepy crawlies,” and this cultural taboo is hurting entomophagy’s chances of becoming more widespread globally.
Now, more than ever before, we should reconsider this disdain for insect cuisine and full-heartedly embrace insect agriculture. With the catastrophe of climate change looming ahead of us and limited progress thus far towards meeting our Paris Climate Accord targets, we must consider more drastic measures to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When looking at global GHG emissions, livestock emissions account for 14.5%, including feed and land use. This may serve as a significant roadblock in meeting the emissions reductions needed to keep the climate at 1.5C of warming. A 2010 paper found that five edible insect species had significantly lower GHG emissions, with 4 of them evaluated to emit only 1% of the GHG emissions per KG of mass gained of ruminant livestock. When this is considered in addition to the ability to farm insects without the large space requirements needed for traditional farm animals, insect agriculture provides an incredible opportunity to significantly reduce GHG emissions while offering similar amounts of protein.
This alone provides a persuasive reason to encourage even partial adoption of widespread entomophagy as a part of our diets. However, there are additional environmental benefits associated with insect agriculture over traditional animal husbandry to be considered. Insects require far less food to achieve the same mass increase, with household crickets, for example, having twice the feed conversion of chickens, quadruple that of pigs, and 12 times that of cattle. As stated before, there are significant reductions in land use that can be achieved through insect agriculture compared to animal husbandry. The Food and Agriculture Association estimates that “twenty-six percent of the Planet’s ice-free land is used for livestock grazing and 33 percent of croplands are used for livestock feed production”. Thus, animal husbandry represents a significant land consumption, much of which would have been deforested to develop these grazing spaces and crop fields. Insects generally require far less space, with mealworms requiring less than half the space that chickens and pigs need to grow the same amount of protein and a tenth of what cows need. Much of the area recuperated by transitioning to insect agriculture could be reforested, allowing vast amounts of CO2 to be captured.
“All of this is well and good,” you might be saying, “but I just don’t think people will like the taste of bugs.” Ultimately, this is a valid concern. A significant reason people don’t pursue vegetarianism and veganism is the preference for meat over vegetables after all. The thought of giving meat up for bugs of all things doesn’t sound particularly appealing. Unfortunately, Western society’s lack of experience with bug-eating can make it challenging to persuade people to try entomophagy in the first place. Still, as noted in The Globe and Mail, some studies in Europe point to people liking (and even preferring) the taste of insects once they have had it. Additionally, questions of nutrition can be pushed aside, as many edible species are rich in essential amino acids, proteins, and minerals.
Finally, there may be concerns about the cultural impact of this transition. If we completely replace meat with insects, then many dishes of significant cultural importance would be eliminated or at least no longer be fully authentic. However, it should not be necessary to fully adopt entomophagy. With the drastically lower CO2 emissions of insects, even partial adoption of insect agriculture as a substitute would have significant effects on global emissions.
The world can make a big difference in its environmental impact by embracing entomophagy as a substitute for meat-eating. From governments encouraging insect agriculture to citizens changing their diets, hopefully, we can all take this step together. After all, a whole lot can change for the better if we get a taste for bugs.
コメント