I work at a farm that produces live feed, mostly for pet stores and zoos. I've been working there full-time for a year-ish, amd I have experience with the production of Tenebrio spp. (mealworm beetles), Galleria spp. (waxworm moths), and Acheta spp. (house crickets). This includes every stage of the life cycle: egg + larva + pupa + adult for the "worms", and egg + nymph + adult for the crickets. The "worms" are sold as larvae for optimum nutritional value and trophic return-on-input, whereas the crickets are sold as adults. My job is one of the "dirty jobs" at the farm. Well, everyone's job there is dirty, but I'm one of the ones scooping feed, breathing clouds of bug shit, handling the product and sometimes having it crawl all over us, being swarmed by moths and beetles and flies, and dodging cockroaches. It's not as terrible as it might sound but it's definitely not clean.
This is a throwaway account that I'll be checking as much as I can today and tomorrow and maybe Monday too. I do not do push notifications or phone notifications and I'm not extremely online enough to respond to everything within 5 minutes, but I'll be logged on at least once an hour for this today. I will respond to every single question if I can, it just might take awhile. If you know or have an inkling of what my main is, shh, plz dun dox. After this AMA is complete I may abandon this account, I only made it for this (plus the bit).
To clear a few things up, YES, I have eaten the product, and YES, I do have a deep hatred for the careerist, corporate-ladder-climbing administrative class. Any other resemblences to a similar username are coincidental.
-WwF
What sort of scale do you think one might need for that? With all this supply chain collapse and whatnot I often wonder if a mutual aid organization might work for teaching communities to build up distributed bugs and mushroom growing operations. Does that sound like something viable or best left to my daydreams?
If you have wheat farms around, or other grain farms that might have bran and germ left over, there's gotta be a way you could take it off their hands. If you have a good source of root vegetables, a little bit goes a long way for keeping them hydrated and giving them micronutrients. Idk exactly what all they can eat and thrive on, probably all sorts of stuff.
maybe ask barrack obama for big black cones of wheat (CW: FB link)
This is all fascinating stuff btw, thanks for sharing.
Oh, I was more wondering about having enough bugs to make them a main protein source for people. :) Like what size operation do you think that would need?
Well, if I were to make a very rough estimate, I would say that 5,000 full-size mealworms might possibly be enough protein for 1 person for 1 day. So our mealworm operation, at its best, has produced enough to feed 150 people on a daily basis with 12 FTE personnel. Consider, though, that farmers are <1% of the American population today.
We grow bugs to feed reptiles mostly, but my boss has told me about how in China they have intensive operations where they produce mealworms for human consumption.
I think it's less a question of size to begin with, and more a question of whether you can cover every step in the process (that follows the life cycle) and keep your population stable. This alone would require several people, but once you achieved this, the marginal labor requirement to add another couple racks (~250k worms per rack) to the mix would be small. Slowly building your way up, you'd eventually reach a point where all your employees are occupied all day long, and by that point I think you would definitely be able to feed people.
Hmm, interesting. I wanna sit down and do the math right now, but I've gotta get going for a road trip. Definitely stuff to think about, thank you!
@wax_worm_futures (feel free to offer your wisdom)
waves
So, I've got a garbage can that I slowly fill with kitchen compost and garden compost that seems to attract soldier flies. We've got the bin in the shade where the chickens roam so they eat the larvae that do their thing and crawl out of the bin. Some years there has been a pretty sizable colony and I'd imagine that a different setup than we use on the farm would allow you to catch the larva and get them in a freezer.
I think spent grain from distilleries/beer making might be an acceptable food source for the flies when mixed with other food stuffs. I can't remember if we've poured the used yeast into the compost/bug bin though.
Spent grain would probably be a rather viable option. So would used yeast. For some of the wet feed we make in-house, yeast and glucose syrup are ingredients. Wet feed for soldier fly larvae has vinegar mixed in.
In terms of feeding your chickens... you probably could put the effort into getting them more soldier fly larvae, but would it really be worth it? If the chickens can already go over there and peck at whatever grubs, that comes at zero cost to you. I would say that permaculturally, what you have already is quite an elegant emergent setup, and doesn't need too much input or guidance from you besides dumping the compost and letting the chickens roam.
Soldier fly larvae retail for like 20 cents a pop, I'm not even kidding. But to sell them you need a certain level of marketing and consistency of production.
20 cent per..... individual?! That's mad capital. Not per ounce or nuthin?
Actually they are closer to 12 cents wholesale, and 20 cents retail, but still.
I shit you not, they have big margins. I would suspect that the total of the factors that go into their production comes out to maybe 3-4 cents a worm. With just a little bit of capital investment in thhe form of buildings and HVAC, it's possible for 2 full-time employees to produce 1 million soldier fly larvae on a really good week, and maybe 500 thousand on a bad week.
I could get rich! And ditch all you losers and never look back!
(Just kidding, I love my comrades)
For as long as there is demand for these bugs as a commodity, and while keeping reptiles and exotic pets is a luxury that requires lots of this commodity, you can probably make quite a buck on it if you get it going. As I've said elsewhere it would take a bit of startup capital and marketing know-how to do.
Before finding out about my current workplace I envisioned an insect farm as a cooperative enterprise that could support a commune. Now that I know more about it, I can say that it would be a good money maker, but it wouldn't produce incredible amounts of food for you to live on. Per unit of labor, it doesn't produce that much more than the format of 6 egg-laying hens per backyard.
Never thought to mix in vinegar, whats the purpose?
Soldier fly larvae, as far as my wife has read, are easier to propagate in larger quantity than grubs (at least for our setup/purposes) and they're extremely high in nutritional value. Also, she likes to tinker with things she's read about for fits and shiggles.
Like... each? or by weight?
I went by a local pet store and I saw the product from my company on the shelf. It was like $3 for a cup of 20.
I suspect the vinegar is to make sure their pH doesn't get too imbalanced; they produce a LOT of ammonia. It may also inhibit competitors from being able to eat their feed.
Neutralizing the ammonia... that makes sense.