Graphic: Polygraph Design
Thinking Space Nature
Food on six legs
The world's population is growing and more people need food. Insects have a high protein content and their breeding and processing is more climate-friendly than that of meat.
Graphic: Polygraph Design
Scientists are researching which insects are particularly suitable for consumption, how nutritious individual species are and what species-appropriate breeding of insects could look like. The animals could be bred in insect farms or in small bioreactors, for example. They grow quickly and can be processed into many products.
Compared to meat, the little creepy-crawlies are doing quite well. Livestock farming, for example, consumes a lot of water. Insects manage with less: One kilogramme of grasshoppers uses one litre of water before it is processed, while one kilogramme of beef uses 15,500 litres. Insects also require less food, as they only need two kilograms of food to produce one kilogramme of body mass. Breeding insects also causes fewer emissions: 100 grams of beef produce 750 grams of greenhouse gases, while the production of the same amount of domestic crickets causes 100 times less. And the little crawlers are also ahead when it comes to space: insects can be kept on a much smaller area than cattle or pigs.
