The future of insect farming is data driven | Hacker News Reader

The future of insect farming is data driven

hopperatx.com

27 pointsDanI-S5 comments

Cool stuff. I wonder what sorts of health problems we might encounter cramming lots of insects closely together that haven't been encountered in nature yet because they simply did not happen at the scale of a farm.

The good news is that with analytics like this, it is easier to analyze and get to the bottom of it.

My first encounter with cricket farming was in in my high school herpetology club with our cricket tank. I always thought it was pretty cool, albeit loud and stinky. I'm going to take a lateral step from that in the future and likely start a small worm box for my garden. I'd love some sort of soil analytics tool to help me out with that.

Many insects serve as vectors to move parasites around. I used to work with parasitic nematodes that rode on clies and other insects to move around. Insect farms would need to take care to not allow these to enter the population.

Also, genetic diversity is an issue. Crickets with little genetic diversity are prone to disease.

The planet will always be able to sustain a larger human population, so long as that human population is willing to accept worse living conditions.

How bad do those living conditions have to get before people will be comfortable taking steps to limit the growth of the human population?

Intelligent people read articles like this as if it's some great leap forward for humanity, so apparently having to eat bugs all day isn't bad enough.

Are any living conditions bad enough? Or are we just going to keep expanding into the 10s of billions until human life itself is devalued to nothing, and we can't afford to eat anything but bugs?

Population trends in developed countries are plummeting. As we grow wealthier we reproduce less. Europe is dying, as is Russia. The USA only keeps a bit above replenishment rate through immigration.

Reminds me of this project:

http://www.kunger.at/161540/1591397/overview/farm-432-insect...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856289

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