Insects may solve food shortage for growing world population

FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] is seriously considering issuing a policy statement recommending the farming and consumption of insects on concerns that population growth is causing shortage of protein from meat sources which high demand can be blamed for environmental damage.

The main rationale behind the initiative is that the production and consumption of meat requires too much land and produce a high level of greenhouse gases and we must seek alternatives, like farming and eating insects.

Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says that the environmental benefits of eating insects are numerous.

"Insects are able to convert food into protein much more effectively than other animals, because being cold blooded animals they do not waste energy heating their body."

"Producing a kilo of beef requires 13 kilos of grass or green matter. But to produce a kilo of cricket, beetle or grasshopper meat one needs just 1.5 to 2 kilos of feed and it produces a fraction of the carbon dioxide emissions”

"The good thing about insects is that they require a lot less food to be raised and they are an excellent source of protein and vitamins,"

"Applying the math is simple. On average, the West consumes about 120 kilos of meat per person. In China the average is 80 kilos per person, but this is growing quickly,"

"If five billion people eat just 100 kilos of beef or pork, we need to grow an average of 6.5 billion kilos of beef or pork feed every year. There is not enough land or nutrients on Earth to support this production. This means that the poor simply will die of hunger."

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