Eat Bugs, Save the Forest?

by Anne Munier

As a food source, insects have an awful lot going for them. They are extremely nutritious, can be found just about everywhere, reproduce quickly, and -- according to entomophagic enthusiasts (a.k.a. committed bug eaters) -- they taste pretty darn good!

Two billion or so people in the world make insects a regular part of their diet. There are over 2,000 edible species; the most common ones are some kinds of beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, and ants. (Note: Never eat an insect that you don’t absolutely know to be edible -- not *all* species of beetle, caterpillar, bee, wasp and ant are necessarily safe to eat.)

A happy entomologist!

Given:

• how widespread and healthy they are

• that about 10 billion of us will be sharing the planet in the next few decades, and most of us really like to eat

• that many people already suffer from food insecurity (i.e. lacking a steady, reliable source of good food)

…increasing the amount of insect-eating we do could make a lot of sense.

For your dining pleasure!

Most edible insects are harvested from the wild. But that can be tricky- if insects are a popular food (and believe it or not, many are), then they can be over-harvested. When too many people collect too many insects, that makes their populations decline (and can damage the ecosystem while they’re at it).

But there’s a really important flip side. When people value the insects they get from these forests, it gives communities incentive to protect them.

Take the mopane worm, for example. It’s an edible caterpillar that is loved in countries in southern Africa. They are an important source of protein, and contribute to food security and household income. Their numbers have been going down though, because they are being overharvested, and their habitat is being damaged by forestry, agriculture, and
climate change.

The beloved mopane worm

But there’s good news. Many communities are organizing to protect important sections of forest and the trees where mopane worms live. That’s great for the caterpillars, great for the people who eat them, and really great for the environment. It means more forests can keep doing all the important things that forests do for the world (like enhancing biodiversity, providing habitat, reducing greenhouse gases, conserving water, and preventing soil erosion).

Here’s another example of people protecting more than just the bugs they want to eat. The Bombay locust is a major pest of corn and sorghum crops in Thailand. Instead of spraying them with pesticides, people came up with the idea of harvesting them for food. Now more people have high quality food (the locust); more money (by selling hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the critters annually); the crops grow better because there are fewer pests (so- even more food); and there are no pesticides contaminating the environment. I call that a win-win-win-win! 

While most edible insects are currently wild-harvested, there’s increasing interest in farming them, including in places- like Canada- where there’s not (yet!) a strong bug-eating culture. This ALSO helps the environment- insects don’t take a lot of space to raise, they produce relatively little waste (and what they do can be put to good use as fertilizer), and they emit far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional animal agriculture.

Mealworm farming in France photo credit Vox

Has all this good news whetted your appetite? Here at this link is a list of edible insect suppliers in North America (there are options like cricket flour if you don’t want to look the real thing in the eye while you eat it). With the basics purchased, take a look at some recipes (like these ones!) to whip up some buggy treats yourself, safely, and tell us how it goes!