Chirp. Chirp. CHOMP!

    Entomophagy, orthoptera, Acheta domesticus — even attempting to talk about eating crickets can make it feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Nevermind trying to stomach the critters themselves.
    While insects are estimated to already be an integral part of over 2 billion people’s diets, the United States is one of just a few countries that doesn’t, as a whole, eat bugs. Some people think that’s about to change though. Already, the popularity of eating crickets is on the rise nationwide.
    Now some brave souls may be ready to pick one up off the ground and roast it on a campfire, but the growing trend is to prepare the crickets in a way more suitable to an American palette. One use is “cricket flour.” It’s made of cooked crickets that have been milled to a flour-like consistency. It can be used in the same way any traditional protein powder is, including as a partial replacement for flour in some recipes.
    For those hesitant to try cooking with cricket flour on their own, ready-to-eat protein bars and the like have started to become commercially available as well. And if you believe a few reporters’ unscientific opinion of an apple cinnamon cricket protein bar, it didn’t taste “buggy” at all.
    
Cricket industry targets beef consumers
    The cricket and the cow. It sounds like a fable or something, right? Well proponents of eating crickets often look to beef for a comparison. Raising crickets is said to be more efficient than raising beef, requiring less land, less water and less feed.
    According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, crickets are 12 times more efficient than cattle in converting feed to meat because crickets are cold-blooded and don’t require feed to maintain body temperature. It is also estimated that up to 80 percent of a cricket is edible and digestible compared to 40 percent for cattle.
    Another touted benefit of raising crickets is that they can be reared on organic side streams. Take Denver’s Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch, the first edible insect farm in Colorado. Its crickets feed on high quality food waste. Such practices are good for both the producer’s bottom line and the environment.
    RMMR also serves as a telling example of how little land and water is required to farm crickets compared to other livestock. The operation is housed entirely in a 40-foot storage container. According to FAO, raising 1 kg of beef requires 22,000 liters of water, when water required for forage and grain production is taken into consideration. Producing 1 kg of cricket, however, takes just 1 liter of water. While space constraints may not be much of a concern for the people of northeastern Colorado, water conservation sure is.
    Critics of the animal sector often point to greenhouse gas emissions as a problem with the industry. According to FAO, 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions come from the animal sector due to fertilizer production for feed crops, on-farm energy expenditures, feed transport, animal product processing, animal transport and land use changes.
    About 35-40 percent of global methane emissions come from enteric fermentation in ruminants and from farm animal manure. Farm manure and urine account for 65 percent of global nitrous oxide emissions.
    Since crickets are more efficient at converting feed, they have significantly lower GHG emissions than traditional livestock. Those looking for a more environmentally friendly source of animal protein may find crickets to be the answer.
    
Beef producers respond
    The thought of cultivating a creature people typically want to exterminate caught several local beef producers off guard, but their raising livestock for human consumption gives them a unique perspective of the cricket trend. Having never heard about cricket farming before, Stacy Fulscher said he can’t imagine doing so himself, but he supposed it would be an alternative for someone who wants to raise animals on a very small amount of ground.
    TAG Farms’ Garry Kramer, who had previously heard of people eating crickets in other parts of the world, said he doubts cricket farming will take hold in northeastern Colorado in the near future, but he did acknowledge that it could happen someday.
    Likewise, Gale and Cynthia Haynes of Haynes Cattle Company had a hard time imagining local people getting into cricket farming. However, with talk of things like “fake meat,” they admit that it’s hard to say what the future of animal protein might hold.
    As for the negative implications cited by advocates of eating crickets, local beef producers seem to be in agreement that the average farmer or rancher knows better than most just how important it is to care for the environment. Failure to take care of the environment — water, soil, etc. — could result in having nothing to produce, Kramer explained.
    Fulscher emphasized that in agricultural communities like Holyoke, producers have a vested interest in the area. As the fourth generation in Fulscher Herefords, caring for the land that he depends on is deeply ingrained. In his experience, most of his contemporaries are conscientious stewards of the resources available to them, too. It’s neither good for business nor the environment to overuse water, fertilizer or any other resource.
    One of the biggest concerns the Hayneses have about people eating crickets is nutrition. They noted that, as a well-established food source, beef has plenty of science backing it. They hope that there would be sound science behind the vitamins and nutrients available from crickets, too, before people eat them. It might take science some time to catch up with the trend, though.
    For what it’s worth, www.insects
arefood.com reports that 100 grams of cricket contains 121 calories, 12.9 grams of protein, 5.5 g of fat, 5.1 g of carbohydrates, 75.8 mg of calcium, 185.3 mg of phosphorus, 9.5 mg of iron, 0.36 mg of thiamin, 1.09 mg of riboflavin and 3.10 mg of niacin. That’s compared to 100 grams of ground beef, which contains 288.2 calories, 23.5 g of protein and 21.2 g of fat.
    
Will crickets be farmed locally?
    If the RMMR’s goal to expand is any indication, there’s a real demand for edible crickets in the United States. At the moment, it’s a young industry, but foods like sushi and lobster are evidence that dietary patterns can change rapidly.
    Whether the shift toward accepting insects as food is driven by rising costs of animal protein, food insecurity, environmental pressures or something else entirely, it will be interesting to see if anyone in northeastern Colorado gets into the business.
    Certainly the thought of livestock that takes less feed, water, space and money to raise sounds appealing, but it might not be as easy as it sounds.

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