Eating insects does far less damage. For one thing, the habit could help to protect crops. Some 30 years ago the Thai government, struggling to contain a plague of locusts with pesticides, began encouraging its citizens to collect and eat the insects. Officials even distributed recipes for cooking them. Locusts were not commonly eaten at the time, but they have since become popular. Today some farmers plant corn just to attract them. Stir-frying other menaces could help reduce the use of pesticides.

crickets produce 10x the amount of protein a cow does for the same input.
2022-02-03:

Farmed insects could also go straight to human plates. People have practiced entomophagy, or bug eating, for millennia, and some government agencies—including the European Food Safety Authority—have already deemed yellow mealworms safe for human consumption. The grubs are rich in nutrients, containing up to 25 grams of protein for every 100 grams of worm, about the same as beef. And raising mealworms produces lower greenhouse gas emissions than other forms of animal production. Farmers also need far less land to produce 1 kilogram of protein, compared with conventional livestock farming.

Ÿnsect slims down its operations even more by breeding bugs in vertical facilities. In each farm, the worms are reared in robot-automated trays stacked several stories tall, features that save energy and space. It is now completing a third new rearing facility in northern France. When finished, it will be 35 meters high, which the company claims will make it the “world’s largest vertical farm.”

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