.svg)
It took over 2 million years for the human population to reach 1 billion, but only 200 years more to reach 7 billion. We are already using two-thirds of our available agricultural land for livestock cultivation, and estimated demand for food rises with the population counter. Soon, there will be 8 billion mouths to feed, mouths that will only get hungrier and hungrier – how should we do it?
The Green Revolution
Let’s talk greens – agriculture. There is a naïve notion that farming is an everyman’s profession. The idea of pulling life from soil has an unmistakably romantic tinge, and most people will believe that agriculture is a sustainable and “green” practice – more on this later – after all, lettuce is green, and green is good. Reality is not so quaint. Farming has forever been the game of the wealthy – aristocrats and society elites control both the land and who gets to farm it. This is not new – the control over arable land that the aristocrats of Ancient Rome wielded prompted large-scale land reform by Caesar – and arguably led to the fall of the Roman Republic.
A skeptic may say here: “So what?” After all, more food means more full bellies, and a rising tide lifts all ships, right? And plus, if livestock cultivation becomes untenable, we can always fall back on a greens and grains diet.
The truth is, modern agriculture is not sustainable. Ignoring the environmental degradation due to animal runoff and agrichemicals, the basic natural resources required make large-scale agriculture unendurable. Take, for example, farming in the American interior. The semi-arid climate requires intense irrigation of crops, and irrigation requires water. Although some of the water is pumped up from self-sufficient aquifers, a significant amount comes from aquifers that will never fill up again. It is highly probable that there will be a shortage of water in places where the land is extremely thirsty. Of course, tractors, harvesters, the global supply line – these all run on fossil fuels. And fertilizers are made from natural gases and phosphorous rock, both of which are finite.
We must accept this fact of agriculture – that it is more damaging to our environment than most of us may believe. From here, what is to be done?
Our new six-legged friends
Much has been said on the development of new and exciting technologies regarding innovations such as plant-based meats and cellular agriculture. However, these innovations are still far away from successfully scaling manufacturing and distribution to the global scale. Additionally, cellular agriculture suffers from the limiting factor of foetal bovine serum, an animal product necessary in stimulating growth in stem cells. Taking into reference the common misconceptions of agriculture, plant-based meats too may not turn out to be as “sustainable” as we would like to believe. There is a third path we may walk in feeding ourselves and those around us – a path not for the squeamish: insects.
Cicadas, crickets, and many related cousins have long made appearances as food in many parts of the world outside of the West. We know humans require a protein-rich diet in order to sustain ourselves, and insects are representative of a massive population of protein sources. Importantly, insects produce a large amount of food for a relatively small footprint.
Admittedly, insects suffer from a lack of production systems optimized for global scale manufacture. However, insects do not require cutting-edge technologies, whilst both plant-based meats and cell agriculture do. How long shall we wait for tomorrow’s innovations? With insects, we do not need to wait – we could have started yesterday, and we can definitely start today.
Of course, there remains the stigma against eating the things that crawl under our decking. But the truth is, overpopulation and dwindling resources will not slow for the queasy and the delicate among us. The bottom line: in order to meet our future demands, alternative protein sources are going to be required.
Although the cutting edge of science is incredibly exciting, we should not neglect the fact that we are running a sprint, not a marathon. Glossy new technologies make for exciting reads in pop-science journals, but the world needs a practical, ear-to-the-grass solution, and it needs it now.
