“Dear God, I agree with PETA for once: Crickets for food is stupid. But only because pigs and chickens are more efficient.”
No chickens take 2lbs of feed to make one lb of live chicken mass if which 75% is edible mass not bone and guts and carcass.
Pigs have a FCR of 3:1 and again that’s live on the hoof not in the pink Styrofoam weights.
Crickets like nearly every insect is 1:1 FCR or better and they are 60+% protein vs 30% or below for chickens and pigs even beef is under 45% by mass.
Black soldier fly larvae are nearly 80% complete protein and they have a proven FCR of 1 or under. They also eat waste that humans cannot eat and turn it into high quality complete protein with all 9 essential amino acids. Same for crickets and grasshoppers they too are all 9 essential amino acids in the right order and qualities for monogastrics.
So no you are wrong chickens and pigs are not more efficient not at all they are 2-3 times worse and provide HALF the protein by mass.
That said most people don’t want to eat larvae or crickets but fish will and fish have a nearly 1:1 FCR as well and their carcass mass to meat yield is the highest of any vertebrate species. Lobsters,crabs ,and prawns also will chow down on feed pellets made from insect proteins instead of wild caught fish meal.
This is the way, feed insects and larvae wastes that humans cannot eat they turn it to high quality complete protein than make pellets with it and feed that to things with a very high FCR that we want to eat.
Some insects like termites can eat cellulose/hemicellulose and lignin think wood,grass,stalks,straw things no monogastric can use for energy or nourishment. Cellulose is the largest biopolymer by mass on earth trillions of tonnes in the total biosphere.we can’t eat a single gram of it. They turn it into high quality complete protein and lipids too otherwise known as food. Thus expanding the food webs total KCal base for monogastric s like ,fish,chickens,pigs,humans too.
There is a more efficient path go even smaller and farther down the food web to single cell proteins like yeast ,bacteria and archea. Those can also be fermented or cultivated on all kinds of waste or cellulose/hemi directly. Again something we cannot eat into something we can.
Simple mathematics will show that 8+ billion humans cannot have western meat consumption levels it is not possible on a planet this size with the existing arable land.. 6 billion humans live in chronic protein deficiency there is not enough land to grow grain to feed cows,chickens and pigs to bring those 6 billion to even EU levels of meat consumption flat out mathematically not possible.
So alternative proteins are here to stay and yes some people will eatzzzzzz bugs a couple billion humans already do on a regular basis. It comes down to cost as more and more humans demand high quality protein prices will rise in a market economy the question you have to ask is will you be able to afford to not eat alternative proteins such as SCP or arthropod based proteins in powdered,shake,prebaked bread,noodle,powerbar ect form. That is exactly what will be the determining factor can you personally afford to not eat alternative proteins.
Used as feed ingredients they should help keep the production cost down for industrialized meat production, aquaculture too. So it’s a race to see which wins.
Then you have biotech getting in the game literally turning thin air into high quality complete protein. This means you can turn electrons from any source into KCals the fundamental shift tech like this makes is world changing.
https://foodplanetprize.org/initiatives/air-protein-making-meat-out-of-air/
These guys are growing plants in the dark off electrons. They can also feed the acetate to SCP yeasts or bacteria or algae and make compete protein, lipids and sugars we monogastrics call that food complete food too you could make kibble for.people a compete daily ration in pellet or gruel form for extra dystopian kick the serfs point’s we know the doomers love to get off to that idea.
https://newatlas.com/science/artificial-photosynthesis-plants-grow-dark/
Here again once you can go directly from electrons to acetate you can feed that to lots of things, cows use acetate for 60% of their metabolic processes it is the primary product of the fermentation of cellulose by their symbiosis between their four stomachs and the trillions of bacteria and protozoa that live there. Yes you can feed cows acetate directly, add in urea for nitrogen and some cellulose for binding fiber and bam cattle feed. These last two biotech is how 6 billion get lifted out of protein deficiency not western style meat production that is simply not possible the math is clear on it.
What you’re missing is that pigs and chickens can consume plant matter that is byproduct of human food consumption. I I’m OK with feeding fish with crickets, but this is why fish isn’t cheaper than chicken. OTOH, I’m surprised that fish has become cheaper than beef, so maybe?