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
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!