Insect farms gear up to feed soaring global protein demand

Global population growth and an expanding middle class have raised per capita meat consumption by 50 percent over the past four decades.

KARL PLUME: ‘Layers of squirming black soldier fly larvae fill large aluminum bins stacked 10-high in a warehouse outside of Vancouver. They are feeding on stale bread, rotting mangoes, overripe cantaloupe and squishy zucchini. But this is no garbage dump. It’s a farm.

Enterra Feed, one of an emerging crop of insect growers, will process the bugs into protein-rich food for fish, poultry – even pets. After being fattened up, the fly larvae will be roasted, dried and bagged or pressed to extract oils, then milled into a brown powder that smells like roasted peanuts…

Global population growth and an expanding middle class have raised per capita meat consumption by 50 percent over the past four decades, fueling fears of a protein pinch. Traditional sources of the key macronutrient are growing increasingly unreliable amid a changing global climate and worries about the environmental impacts of row-crop farms and commercial fishing’. SOURCE…

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