The industrialized world produces a vast amount of food. During the middle ages, over 90% of the population were farmers; now, that number is less than one percent, and and yet they feed hundreds of times more people. Even so, there are problems with food supplies all over the world, and these problems are probably only going to grow. As the climate changes and sea levels rise, as droughts and natural disasters increase in frequency, it seems likely that our food supply will become more and more uncertain.
What can we do to counteract this? Many projects aim to increase farming efficiency, ranging from borderline barbaric treatment of animals to vertical farming to new types of higher-yield crops. One argument that I've heard supporting vegetarianism is that it takes about eight pounds of, for instance, corn to produce one pound of beef from the cow that eats it. Would it not be more efficient if everyone only ate these higher efficiency foods? It could help, but even putting aside personal opinions on going meatless, there are nutritional and economic issues to this.
However, there is another high efficiency food source rich in nutrients and easy to raise. The only problem is a far greater societal rejection than that of vegetarianism, because this food source is insects.
Various insects are already regarded as delicacies around the world: an estimated 2 billion people worldwide partake of insects as part of their diet. In most western countries, however, that number is almost zero, and shows no real signs of changing anytime soon.
Insects such as grasshoppers reproduce extremely rapidly, reach maturity quickly, require very little space, are high in protein and other nutrients, and have a feed-to-food ratio of less than two. In addition, they produce little waste, no methane (cow farts are actually a rather high source of the greenhouse gas), eat a wide variety of feeds, and are very cheap. The only downside is an almost complete lack of demand in the western world.
For now, sure, maybe insects are neglected as a food source because of a social stigma. But as time goes on, that could change. In many places throughout the US, snacks made from a variety of insects are being sold, and such things are already commonplace in many Asian and African countries. Who knows what could happen with what we want to eat, or even what we need to eat?
