The Real Reason for the Insect Farming Race
Earlier this month, Nicolas Rivero- a climate solutions reporter for The Washinton Post, wrote an article about the race to create large insect farms- and even though the animals are small- the businesses behind them are nothing to scoff at. The article states that in the past three years, insect start-ups have raised over $1 billion in venture capital funding. And this is only the beginning.
The article dives into the recent history of large insect farms and recent partnerships with some titans of the food industry- namely Tyson Foods investing in Protix and food processor ADM partnering with Innovafeed. (Tyson, Protix and Innovafeed are all members of CEIF.)
You can read the Washington Post article here but we think it’s important to highlight a core value that connects a lot of these farms- reducing carbon emissions that plague modern large-scale agriculture sectors. There are a few key quotes from people who work at these insect-agriculture companies that are important. From the article:
“We really want to be able to drive down carbon emissions in food chains and replace ingredients that put pressure on natural resources, and the way to do that is through scale. ”
The reason this is a race is because insect farming could be one key solution to several issues that are impacting the future of our planet: food waste, sustainability, and growing nutritious food for the animals that feed humans.
At first glance it seems like these companies might be in competition with one another, however, as stated by Ynsect co-founder Antoine Hubert “…what matters is that we’re better compared to existing incumbents and we’re all together to reduce the carbon footprint.”
The Center for Environmental Sustainability through Insect Farming (CEIF) is an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center. CEIF bridges Academia and Industry with foundational, pre-competitive research to drive growth of the Insect Agriculture space.