Before We’re Forced to Eat Cockroaches, Let’s Ask Why
“Is there truly nothing else left to eat?” “Snowpiercer was far too prescient!” Just yesterday, after seeing a journalist visit an American cockroach farm and drink a cup of crispy cockroach coffee, netizens voiced this piercing question.
Picture this: alongside the American cockroach, countless yellow mealworms and black soldier fly larvae are wriggling and growing across the planet. Even as humanity sleeps soundly, they are busily feeding and multiplying, destined only to eventually grace your dining table. It is indeed easy to draw parallels with the apocalyptic food rations in the film *Snowpiercer*—the insect protein blocks reserved for the lower classes.
So what exactly is that reason? Are we truly compelled to accept it? Will insects really make a mass appearance on our dinner tables in the future?
1. Insect Protein: A Noble Vision
Today, the primary aim of the emerging large-scale insect farming industry is less about eating the creatures and more about harvesting their animal protein. This fundamentally alters the nature of insect consumption; it is no longer a dietary habit that evolved naturally within a specific region, but a deliberate, engineered practice.
On first encounter, the term ‘insect protein’ might seem slightly odd; after all, no one refers to beef as ‘mammalian protein’. Yet it is a deliberately precise term, referring broadly to finely processed powders derived from edible insects. The raw material might be mealworms or black soldier flies; the processing could range from simple drying and grinding to complex enzymatic hydrolysis.
So what exactly is driving the push to mass-produce insect protein?
The answer traces back to a 2013 report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): *Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security*. Since then, the purported benefits of insect protein have been endlessly recited, and can be summarised as follows:
1. As climate and resource crises intensify, insect farming consumes significantly less water and arable land than traditional protein sources such as soy, fishmeal, and beef or mutton, while emitting far fewer greenhouse gases than conventional livestock farming;
2. Insects can convert kitchen scraps and livestock manure into high-quality protein;
3. Building on these two assumptions regarding sustainability, insect protein is increasingly championed as a viable solution to the impending food crisis and global hunger, driven by the dual pressures of ecological degradation and population growth.
Yet the unstated driver behind the industry’s rush into this sector lies in a long-standing dilemma of industrial livestock farming: chronic feed shortages and severe price volatility. Traditional feeds such as maize, soybeans, wheat, and fishmeal form the material backbone of animal husbandry. Their costs account for roughly 60–70 per cent of total livestock production expenses, with protein being the primary nutritional component they supply.
In recent years, however, the interplay of the pandemic, geopolitical tensions, and extreme weather has disrupted international supply chains, keeping soybean meal prices persistently high. In 2022 alone, prices surged from 3,580 yuan per tonne to 5,630 yuan. Under these conditions, many nations, China included, have been scrambling to secure more stable sources of feed protein. Insect farming, touted for its ability to conserve arable land, has consequently emerged as the primary avenue for exploring feed alternatives.
Industry research indicates that the global insect protein market reached $145 million in 2019, with projections estimating it will climb to $366 million by 2023. China has gone further, explicitly listing ‘expanding insect protein feed production capacity’ as a key objective in its *Implementation Plan for Grain Conservation in Animal Husbandry*. According to industry insiders, China’s insect protein exports are set for a strong run in 2025, driven predominantly by the feed sector.
Insect farming is hardly a novel concept; research into the controlled rearing of yellow mealworms has been conducted in China since at least 2001. Yet around the time the UN Food and Agriculture Organization published its landmark report in 2013, capital began flocking to this emerging insect protein sector.
Unofficial figures indicate that by 2022, the 13 insect protein companies active in the market—including Chinese enterprises such as Nature Creation and Buluoputing—had collectively raised over 6 billion yuan in funding.
II. Ÿnsect’s Bankruptcy and Capital’s Food-Agriculture Fantasies
In reality, many companies in the alternative protein sector are mired in financial losses. In the plant-based meat market—the predecessor to insect protein—Beyond Meat, the first publicly listed meat substitute firm that once proclaimed it would replace all meat, is now on the brink of bankruptcy. Even Impossible Foods, facing revenue pressures, has publicly floated the idea of adding real animal meat to its plant-based products. Economically speaking, whether in terms of growth momentum or market demand, the prospect of alternative protein achieving stable profitability remains exceedingly slim.
Perhaps having learned from the plant-based meat sector’s missteps, insect protein primarily targets the animal feed market.
Only a handful of bold companies have ventured into consumer-facing products like cricket biscuits and insect meatballs, operating on the assumption that every consumer is a Bear Grylls. The market’s reaction has been, predictably, underwhelming.
Yet the animal feed route is fraught with its own challenges. Ÿnsect’s former tagline was “creating a more sustainable global food system”. This vision may sound idealistic, but the very thing that crippled it was the fact that, in practice, its operations ran directly counter to sustainability.
The first fact is that the idealised vision of insect protein farming involves feeding insects food waste or animal manure. In practice, however, in the wake of mad cow disease, European regulations have permitted only plant-based or non-ruminant animal-derived feeds for insects since 2018. This has effectively shut the door on using food waste, while animal manure presents its own significant hurdles. As a result, Ÿnsect still relies on conventional feeds such as soybean meal to raise its insects.
This strikes a deeply ironic note: insect protein is itself an animal feed product, yet the feed supply for industrial-scale insect farming depends on the very same grains that could be fed directly to livestock. When examining Ÿnsect’s failed push into the animal feed market, the tech publication TechCrunch questioned whether this simply meant that “insect protein is merely an expensive additional step”.
In a bid to rescue itself, Ÿnsect attempted to pivot towards the higher-margin pet food market, but without success. The company had already sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into building what was labelled “the world’s most expensive insect farm”, and the heavy debt burden could not wait for new business lines to mature and generate returns.
This presents the second reality that flies in the face of its sustainability credentials: large-scale insect farming relies heavily on industrial and automated equipment. The upfront capital expenditure far outstrips that of conventional feed production, and this also stands as the second reason for its failure to compete in the animal feed market.
III. Popping the Low-Carbon Myth of Insect Protein
Naturally, claims require proof. Such messaging only carries this much weight because it is underpinned by scientific data. Mainstream research consistently points to the strong environmental credentials of insect protein. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s *Edible Insects Report*, for instance, notes that greenhouse gas emissions from insect farming amount to just one-tenth of those from conventional livestock farming.
Other studies offer more precise figures: Research indicates that processing one tonne of organic waste with black soldier flies yields approximately 233 kg of organic fertiliser and 67 kg of insect protein, achieving a net carbon reduction of 55.69 kg. A literature review published in 2023 further reports that the greenhouse gas footprint of fresh insect meat ranges from 0.3 to 3 kg of CO2 equivalent per kilogram – markedly lower than poultry (5.97 kg), pigs (6.95 kg), and cattle (35 kg).
What is concerning is that a closer look at the background of these studies reveals corporate interests behind them. Either the research was conducted by food companies themselves, or the researchers were employed by firms producing insect-based pet food.
Fortunately, agricultural authorities in countries around the world are also paying close attention to this issue, given that the agricultural sector would bear the brunt of the severe consequences of global warming. A research project commissioned by the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, titled *Life Cycle Assessment of Insect Protein Production in the UK: Pig and Poultry Feed*, examined the environmental impact across the entire lifecycle of using black soldier fly larvae powder (hereafter referred to as insect meal), soybean meal, and fishmeal as feed. The insect meal was subdivided into three categories based on the rearing substrate: conventional feed, poultry manure, and food waste.
The findings were entirely the opposite: the climate change impact of insect meal ranged from 12.9 to 30.1 kg CO₂e per kilogram. In other words, producing a single kilogram of insect meal requires emitting approximately 12.9 to 30.1 kg of CO₂ equivalents into the atmosphere.
The reason for such vast discrepancies between studies is that academia still lacks a unified standard for measuring climate change impact. The data obtainable through current technology is limited and insufficient, further constrained by research funding and geographic location. The UK report’s “climate change impact value” went beyond greenhouse gas emissions to incorporate factors such as acidification, water consumption, land use, and marine and freshwater eutrophication, converting them all into “CO₂ equivalents”. It is therefore no surprise that it yields a different conclusion.
Overall, insect flour produced from food waste (FW) has the lowest climate impact of the three types. Producing each kilogram of FW insect flour generates 12.9 kg of emissions, followed by poultry manure-fed insect flour (CM) at 16.0 kg, while the climate impact of conventional feed-fed insect flour (TF) reaches 30.1 kg. Furthermore, all three are substantially higher than soybean meal (2.23 kg) and fish meal (7.98 kg), equating to roughly 5.7–13.5 times and 1.8–4.2 times their respective emissions.
To be more precise, these numerical gaps can be traced back to the production and processing workflow for insect protein. Many people subconsciously assume insect farming is a relatively natural process, unaware that it actually relies on advanced technology and intensive management. Commercial-scale insect rearing facilities are not stacks of wooden boxes, but rather filled with gleaming, automated machinery. Compared to warm-blooded animals like chickens and ducks, insects are far more sensitive to environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and bacterial presence. Since their growth cycle is measured in weeks, it requires not only maintaining environmental stability around the clock, but also adjusting temperature and humidity on demand according to their weekly developmental stage.
According to an executive at a domestic insect protein company, because each species has distinct environmental requirements, the equipment for every rearing facility must be custom-built. Within these farms, insect density can be hundreds of times greater than in the wild. In such cramped conditions, insects not only consume vast amounts of oxygen through respiration and release exhaust gases, but also generate substantial heat, excrement, and water vapour. In nature, flowing air, loose soil and rainfall maintain a dynamic ecological balance. In a controlled farm, however, climate control depends entirely on air conditioning (for instance, black soldier flies will only feed between 25°C and 35°C), mechanical ventilation systems, and the regular removal of waste and cleaning of rearing containers, whether automated or manual. His team devoted considerable effort to redesigning the ventilation ductwork, repositioning larvae of different ages, and making similar adjustments, all to maintain optimal rearing conditions while keeping electricity costs down.
This explains why the UK report found that the carbon emissions associated with insect meal far exceed those of soybean and fishmeal.
Given that variations in the production process have such a decisive impact on environmental footprint, UK agricultural authorities also modelled adjustments to certain production stages to determine whether insect meal could help decarbonise Britain’s livestock sector in the future. Scenarios tested included switching from conventional energy sources to nuclear power, replacing diesel vehicles with electric ones, and filtering and recycling all water used within the system. Under these optimised conditions, the carbon emissions from insect meal could potentially drop below those of soybean and fishmeal, indicating that insect meal does possess environmental potential after all.
In China, the practical hurdle to rearing insects on food waste is that such waste is predominantly disposed of via incineration. An executive at a leading domestic insect protein manufacturer noted that even as a market frontrunner, his company’s volume remains dwarfed by that of incineration facilities. Consequently, waste management firms are far more inclined to feed into incineration plants. In short, the idealised closed-loop waste model for insect protein encounters formidable headwinds in the real world.
It is clear that neither industry-sponsored nor government-commissioned studies have gathered primary data covering the full supply chain’s climate impact metrics. Setting aside potential conflicts of interest (which are hardly negligible), the conclusions drawn from research on insect protein remain largely theoretical and cannot be taken as a direct measure of actual environmental impact.
Even independent studies yield conflicting results. Research funded by the European Union found that insect farming consumes more water than poultry and livestock rearing, whereas a report from UK Agriculture claimed insect flour uses considerably less water than soybean meal. Nevertheless, both studies voiced concern over the unwarranted optimism surrounding the eco-credentials of insect protein.
4. Can cutting-edge food and agriculture tech save humanity and the planet?
Amid the loud championing of so-called ‘alternative’ proteins, there is little evidence that insect protein or plant-based meats are actually displacing beef or lamb. Research indicates that consumed insect protein largely takes the form of snacks—such as energy bars and crisps—rather than staple foods. This represents an incremental addition to diets, not a genuine substitution. By contrast, ecologically friendly ‘extensive grazing livestock farming’ is frequently sidelined on the grounds that it is ‘costly and low-yielding’. Yet it may well be this approach of ‘reduction-led substitution’ that deserves our resources and focus as the genuine path to transformation.
After all, hunger stems not from scarcity, but from inequality.
Regarding the claim that “insect protein can solve the food crisis”: first, evidence clearly shows that a global “protein gap” does not exist. For those suffering from hunger and malnutrition, protein is merely one of many nutrients they lack. Looking at data published by the FAO, the overall tension between global food production and demand has been relatively low in recent years. Yet as of 2024, up to 700 million people still face hunger, driven by regional conflicts, extreme weather, economic downturns, and other factors, rather than supply shortages.
Crucially, a considerable amount of this waste occurs beyond the dining table: vast quantities of crops are diverted into the production of ultra-processed foods, livestock feed, and fuel. It is estimated that in 2022, roughly 15.5% of Brazil’s population faced hunger, while the country simultaneously converts around 70 million tonnes of crops annually into ethanol for fuel.
Meanwhile, in 2022, global households and retailers wasted approximately 1.05 billion tonnes of food, equivalent to 1.3 daily meals for every person suffering from hunger worldwide. Over the past two years, China’s plummeting beef prices have been driven by massive imports from Brazil, yet the unusually low import costs remain perplexing. If we set cost aside and consider stock clearance instead, does everything suddenly “make sense”? To be honest, buying cheap beef has increased my own meat consumption, and a friend had to throw away portions after a year of hoarding. It amounts to producers offloading the burden of food waste onto consumers while pocketing the profits. While we cannot naively reduce the solution to “handing surplus food to the hungry”, we should certainly question the pressing drive to continually ramp up yields and output.
When it comes to sustainability and ecology, framing insect farming and vertical agriculture—the latest cutting-edge agri-food technologies—as a strict dichotomy against conventional industrial agriculture, and assuming the former can solve the problems wrought by the latter, may well be a flawed premise from the outset. What truly demands scrutiny is the shared foundational ethos of both: treating nature as a malleable object to be rearranged and engineered at will. Insect farming artificially concentrates insects within controlled spaces that require precision equipment to maintain, while industrial livestock farming is equally a textbook example of humans arbitrarily reshaping an environment for intensive rearing and feed crop cultivation.
Today, the uneven distribution of food exacerbated by intensive farming models, the transport emissions lingering in the air, slurry pollution, and the devastating ecological damage caused by excessive antibiotic use are no longer secrets. Should we still believe that agri-food innovations, operating on this very same logic, can save us?
Of course, these high-tech food and agriculture ventures were conceived primarily to attract investment, so the resulting inversion of priorities comes as little surprise. Capital demands fresh narratives and growth trajectories, readily disrupting human dietary habits to secure them. It is a familiar refrain in the modern food system, one where we are left to shoulder the costs in terms of food safety, nutritional health, and ecological strain only after the dust has settled.
This time, however, we might yet take the opportunity to understand these unfolding changes more comprehensively and in good time, perhaps even envisaging a genuinely sustainable model for insect rearing ahead of schedule. The caveat, though, is that we must not be swept along by rhetoric designed to court investment and drive marketing; we need to confront the flaws and shortcomings of current insect farming practices with clear-eyed realism.
History marches on. On 20 January 2025, the European Commission authorised the marketing of ultraviolet-treated yellow mealworm larvae powder as a novel food, effective from 10 February this year. At present, many countries, including China, are gradually widening the permitted scope for insect protein additives, testing its viability as a supplement and alternative to animal-based protein sources. Will humanity really be eating insects on a mass scale in the future? As I write this, it becomes clear that this is far from merely a question straight out of a science fiction movie.
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