Insect Farming: The Overlooked Sustenance

All of the livestock raising preppers have failed to mention insects. Many insects, like mealworms, crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, beetles, etc. are edible. Insect farming would be a good way to sustain a family, considering they are an infinite resource and packed with protein. A pound of crickets contains more protein than a pound of beef. So why are insects left out?

 

Why not? Maybe it's a cultural thing here in the United States. The only insects I ate (not counting the ones that I may have swallowed inadvertently) was when we spent about $9 US for a pound of cricket flour and made (quite tasty) biscuits from it.

 

I had a friend that raised crickets for bait. Those things multiply like MAD! I suspect that they would make a wonderful supplementary food source both eaten themselves and used as bait to add fish to your diet.

 

My maternal papaw had an area of his yard that caught the drain of a hill. He laid old boards on that muddy area. When we went fishing, we'd just flip a board and get more than a dozen half-foot long night-crawlers.

Wanna increase your harvest? Crunch leaves & let'em rot. Mix that mulch in with that mud and cover with them thar old boards. Worms make mulch; mulch grows worms. Worms catch fish. Worms iz protein. Fish am made by God. Loaves and fishes. God provides.

 

I think no one thinks of insects as food for the same reason that no one swaps recipes for boiled cow brains, it's just a culture thing. I'm not complaining, it's nice to live in a culture that can cherry pick preferred foods. Insect farming is easy and fun though and I've raised mealworms, red wigglers, bees, crickets, cockroaches (on purpose), fruit flies and silk worms for various reasons. They make an amazing source of nutrition for poultry primarily, especially during the winter months. And if it ever got that bad then I'd eat them too. After I ate all the chickens of course

 

Haha! I like to call insects "micro-livestock."

More about insects (among other things) in posts #19 & #20 in this thread: https://mysurvivalforum.com/threads/mass-extinction-of-farm-animals.3085/#post-40689

I, too, learned how easy it is to raise a nutritionally dense food, back in the days when I had pet tree frogs to feed. There are many websites extolling the virtues of insects as a source of food around the world. Hey, if they can do it, I can easily overcome my "ick" factor if hungry enough.

I will also put bugs to work! Some insects, such as maggots, can be used to entice birds into a trap, or used as chum for fish bait. (Hang a dead rat or whatever from a tree branch over the water and let the flies do their thing. The resulting maggots will soon drop into the water, which will attract more fish than you can imagine. Soon the fish will learn this is THE prime dinner spot.)


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Ok, I was planning on insects as food for my chickens and fish if I get an Aquaponics pond set up. Actually eating insects would be something like plan Z. Long after plan A lol

 

Don't knock it until you try it.

 

I can agree with that! I prefer to recycle the bugs through fish or chickens first, myself.

But to go along with what Bishop said in the ant video on this thread, if I am not willing to practice advanced survival now, it may not go well with me in hard times. There may be a time where fishing or keeping chickens may not be possible, or my pantry is getting low, or maybe I want to supplement my pantry as much as possible to keep it from being depleted so fast.

That is why I am experimenting now, during easy times, how to make a yukky situation more palatable.

I remember reading a document over 20 years ago about how a doctor working in austere conditions in a third world country saved a dying boy's life by making a broth with water and roasted and powdered June bugs. The high protein and fat content of the bug broth pulled the boy from the edge of starvation better than the high-calorie nutritional paste that was being used at the time.

This impressed me enough to look further into the benefits of including insects in a survival diet. It is said that 80 percent of the world's population eats insects as a regular part of their diet. Hmmm...I think they know something that most so-called civilized folks don't.


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In Colombia, ants are roasted with salt. Hmmm...would that be called crunchy salt-and-vinegar ants? The formic acid in the ants is kinda vinegar-y.


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Okay, that's it....I AM NOT moving to a third world country, insects, especially spiders would make me commit ugly things, (not worth mentioning). Maybe the doctors soup with powdered & roasted June bugs. Yucky, that all, just plain yucky. Period.

 

lol!

The way things are deteriorating now, the third world may come to us sooner than we think...

Hopefully not, but I want to be mentally prepared for the S part of STHF because supplies can dwindle mighty quickly, gardens can fail, and even hunting and foraging may not be a daily option.

As the old saying goes, "Blessed are the flexible, for they are not easily bent."


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I must be a bit off because my first thought was "would too much ant-acid require an antacid?"

 

Remember the story of the community bringing a rock/stone to the cooking pot and everybody having soup....I will be the first one to throw a stone...hahahaha / lol

 

Well everyone eats bugs and worms you just don't know it when your doing it

 

I generally will not kill a animal out of prime but I have often thought about hanging the critter in the chicken yard so the chickens can eat the maggots that fall to the ground. The chickens really like those.