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A worker at Protifly, a France-based insect farming startup, holds black soldier fly larvae. <\/span>Mehdi Fedouach\/AFP\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published b<\/em>y\u00a0Vox<\/a> and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe have to<\/span> get used to the idea of eating insects.\u201d<\/p>\n This proclamation came from, of all people, an insect researcher. Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke pitched eating bugs in his 2010\u00a0TED talk<\/a>\u00a0as critical to sustainably feeding a growing human population, because insects have a much\u00a0smaller carbon footprint<\/a>\u00a0than beef, pork, and chicken.<\/p>\n To make his point, he even featured photographs of what might be a common meal in this bold new future: a stir-fry with mealworm larvae, mushrooms, and snap peas, finished with a chocolate dessert topped with a large fried cricket.<\/p>\n Three years later, the United Nations published a\u00a0comprehensive report<\/a>\u00a0that echoed many of Dicke\u2019s ideas and argued that insects could be a more eco-friendly food source not just for humans, but also for livestock. The report received widespread media coverage and helped to trigger a wave of investment from venture capital firms and governments alike into insect farming startups across Europe, the US, Canada, and beyond, totaling some\u00a0$2 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEvidence is building that there\u2019s a form of sentience there in insects.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n There\u2019s a ring of truth, it turns out, to the conspiracy theory that\u00a0the globalist elites want us to eat bugs<\/a>.<\/p>\n This money was pouring into insect agriculture at a time when investors and policymakers were\u00a0hungry for new models<\/a>\u00a0to fix the conventional meat industry\u2019s\u00a0massive carbon footprint<\/a>. And what\u2019s more disruptive and novel than farming and eating bugs?<\/p>\n You personally might recoil at the thought of eating fried crickets or roasted mealworms, but\u00a0many cultures<\/a>\u00a0around the world consume insects, either caught from the wild or farmed on a small scale. And while grubs don\u2019t feature prominently in current paleo cookbooks, our\u00a0paleolithic ancestors<\/a>\u00a0most certainly ate plenty of bugs.<\/p>\n But the past decade has shown that even if you build an insect farm, the global market may not come. Of the\u00a020 or so largest insect farming startups<\/a>, almost a quarter have gone belly up in recent years, including the very largest,\u00a0\u0178nsect<\/a>, which ceased operations in December.<\/p>\n All told, shuttered insect farming startups account for almost half of all investment into the industry. \u201cThings have gone from bad to worse for the big insect factory business model,\u201d one insect farming CEO\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0late last year in a YouTube video.<\/p>\n And Vox<\/em> can exclusively report that plans to build a large insect farm in Nebraska\u2014a\u00a0joint project<\/a>\u00a0between Tyson Foods, America\u2019s largest meat company, and Protix, now the world\u2019s second largest insect farming company\u2014are indefinitely on hold.<\/p>\n Beyond the financial woes of the insect farming industry, some philosophers worry about the ethical implications of potentially farming\u00a0tens of trillions of bugs<\/a>\u00a0for food, as emerging research suggests insects may well have some form of consciousness and hold the capacity to\u00a0feel pain and suffer<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEvidence is building that there\u2019s a form of sentience there in insects,\u201d\u00a0Jonathan Birch<\/a>, a philosopher at the London School of Economics who leads the Foundations of Animal Sentience project at the university,\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0me last year.<\/p>\n But it looks like they may not have too much to worry about. In spite of the initial hype surrounding the bug farming boom, the insect agriculture industry has learned just how difficult it is to compete with the incumbent, larger animal-based meat industry\u2014and that, perhaps, it never really made sense to try doing so with bugs.<\/p>\n Insect farming is <\/span>similar to other types of animal farming. The insects reproduce, and the offspring are raised in large numbers in factory-style buildings. Many of the same welfare concerns for farmed chickens and pigs are present\u00a0on insect farms<\/a>, like disease, cannibalism, and painful slaughter. In the case of insects, the creatures are killed by a\u00a0variety of means<\/a>. They might be frozen, baked, roasted, shredded, grond, microwaved, boiled, or suffocated.<\/p>\n In 2020, insect companies farmed an estimated\u00a01 trillion bugs<\/a>, and the most commonly farmed species today are black soldier fly larvae, mealworms, and crickets.<\/p>\n While some people might\u00a0tell<\/em>\u00a0researchers<\/a>\u00a0they\u2019re open to adding bugs to their diet, these smallest of animals remain a novelty food in the US and Europe, as opposed to a commodity capable of displacing wings or burgers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe human food market, basically, has not materialized,\u201d Dustin Crummett, a philosopher and executive director of\u00a0The Insect Institute<\/a>\u2014a nonprofit that researches the environmental and animal welfare implications of large-scale insect agriculture\u2014told me. \u201cOnly a tiny fraction of farmed insects are used for human food.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really make sense to buy chicken feed to feed insects to feed to chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n But insect farming startups haven\u2019t only sought to put insects on our plates or grind them into protein bars; many want to sell insect meal (ground up insects) as feed for\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0farmed animals. It\u2019s a sustainable alternative, they argue, to the soy fed to factory-farmed chickens and cattle, much of which is grown on\u00a0deforested land<\/a>. Insect meal could also replace fishmeal (largely composed of small, wild-caught species, like anchovies and sardines), which is fed to farmed fish and\u00a0heavily contributes to overfishing<\/a>.<\/p>\n This approach of farming insects for livestock feed, however, isn\u2019t materializing either, and much of it comes down to cost.<\/p>\n According to a\u00a02024 analysis<\/a>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0Food and Humanity<\/em>\u00a0and co-authored by Crummett, the cost of insect meal is about 10 times that of soybean meal and 3.5 times that of fishmeal, a major cost gap that is unlikely to narrow anytime soon.<\/p>\n Insect meal is so expensive, in part, because feeding insects is expensive. Farmed insects are typically fed agricultural \u201cco-products\u201d\u2014like wheat bran and corn gluten\u2014most of which is already fed to livestock, and so insect farmers have wound up in competition with big meat companies to buy up these ingredients. This simple fact weakens the narrative\u00a0often<\/a>\u00a0driven<\/a>\u00a0by insect farming startups that they are putting food scraps that otherwise would\u2019ve been thrown away to good use.<\/p>\n \u201cOrganic waste from the industry becomes feed for insects,\u201d Protix\u2019s website reads. \u201cThis circular food production mirrors nature\u2019s circle of life.\u201d But this is misleading; Protix feeds its insects ingredients like\u00a0oat husk and starch<\/a>, which are typically used in traditional livestock feed anyway. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really make sense to buy chicken feed to feed insects to feed to chicken,\u201d as one insect farming startup founder\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0AgriTech Insights a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not guaranteed that insect meal will be more sustainable than soy or fishmeal. According to a\u00a0UK government report<\/a>, the environmental impact of insect farming depends on a number of factors, including what insects are fed and whether startups power their farms with fossil fuels or renewable energy.<\/p>\n Energy usage explains a lot of the industry\u2019s cost challenge. Farmed insects require warm temperatures, and in Europe, where so many of the startups are based, energy prices have\u00a0sharply risen in recent years<\/a>.<\/p>\n To lower costs and develop new revenue streams, some insect farming startups have pivoted to become \u201cwaste management\u201d companies, too. Rotting food waste in landfills is a\u00a0huge source of global greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>, and insect farming companies can earn money by taking it off other companies\u2019 hands and letting bugs eat it.<\/p>\n But here, too, the industry has run into obstacles, including\u00a0strict EU regulations<\/a>\u00a0around what can be fed to insects and an inconsistent product. When insects are fed food waste, their\u00a0final nutritional profile<\/a>\u00a0can vary widely depending on what they\u2019re fed, but livestock feed companies need nutritional consistency.<\/p>\n And it turns out that even the largest and most powerful companies in the space can run into hard, economic realities when trying to rear bugs on waste en masse.<\/p>\n In late 2023,<\/span> America\u2019s biggest meat company, Tyson Foods,\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0it had invested an undisclosed sum of money in Protix, a large Dutch insect farming startup. That Tyson was putting its weight behind it seemed like much-needed proof that insects could be the future of food, as so many startups, investors, and researchers had claimed.<\/p>\n The two companies planned to build a massive insect farm together near Tyson\u2019s cattle slaughterhouse in Dakota City, Nebraska. At the insect farm, Protix would raise and kill around\u00a070,000 tons<\/a>\u00a0of larvae annually\u2014what I estimate to be approximately 300 billion individual insects. The bugs would feed on cattle paunch, partially digested plant matter removed from the stomachs of cattle slaughtered at Tyson\u2019s plant. After a few weeks of feeding on the animal waste, the larvae would be slaughtered and ground up into insect meal, destined to become food for pets and livestock.<\/p>\n It was a way for Tyson to \u201cderive value\u201d from its waste, as it\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0CNN.<\/p>\n Now, Vox<\/em> can exclusively report that Tyson Foods has withdrawn its air permit application to build the plant, and the plant itself is \u201con hold indefinitely.\u201d That\u2019s according to email exchanges last December between Tyson Foods and the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment, which were obtained through public records requests by the nonprofit\u00a0Society for the Protection of Insects<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tyson and Protix did not respond to questions for this story.<\/p>\n The companies\u2019 stalled plans aren\u2019t unique in the insect farming space.<\/p>\n In early 2024, Innovafeed\u2014currently the largest insect farming startup\u2014opened a pilot plant in Decatur, Illinois, in\u00a0partnership with ADM<\/a>, the massive food and livestock feed manufacturing company. The US Department of Agriculture awarded Innovafeed a $11.7 million grant to turn insect waste into fertilizer at the plant, but a year and a half after it opened, it suspended operations, citing\u00a0funding challenges<\/a>.<\/p>\n Through a public records request, Society for the Protection of Insects obtained over 600 pages of documents pertaining to the grant, though about half of it is redacted, including much of the environmental review and Innovafeed\u2019s commercial records. Last week, the organization sued the USDA over the heavy redactions, arguing it\u2019s in the public\u2019s interest to fully disclose the details of the deal.<\/p>\n The USDA declined to comment on pending litigation, and Innovafeed did not respond to questions for this story.<\/p>\n The biggest blow to the industry yet came late last year when the largest startup of them all\u2014France-based \u0178nsect, which had raised over $600 million, representing nearly a full third of the sector\u2019s funding\u2014ran out of money<\/a>. And a\u00a0quarter<\/a>\u00a0of that backing had come from the French government. A\u00a0recent whistleblower investigation<\/a>\u00a0alleged severe mismanagement at \u0178nsect\u2019s production facility that led to filthy conditions and health problems for workers. The company didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n As insect farming startups<\/span> struggle to stay afloat, their main trade group\u2014the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF)\u2014is going so far as to\u00a0call on<\/a>\u00a0the European Union to mandate publicly funded food services, like school cafeterias, to buy insect meat and publicly owned farms to buy insect meal to feed to their animals. IPIFF didn\u2019t respond to an interview request for this story, nor did the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture.<\/p>\n As for the outlook of the insect farming sector, more startups will probably go under in the years ahead, and for the survivors to continue on, they may need to\u00a0leave Europe and North America for warmer climates<\/a>\u00a0and lower operating costs.<\/p>\n But the rise, fall, and resettling of the industry isn\u2019t uncommon in the agricultural technology field, Crummett says. Vertical farming, for example, seemed like a great idea on paper, but it\u2019s been an\u00a0economic failure<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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