Why Insect Farming Isn’t the Solution It Pretends to Be
Insect farming is being sold as a fix for the planet: low-impact, high-efficiency, scalable protein that could allegedly feed the world without the environmental wreckage of cows, chickens, and pigs. But that’s the con.
Behind the marketing campaigns, TED Talks, and sci-fi startups is a field built on fantasy, not fact. A critical review in npj Sustainable Agriculture reveals that the entire insect farming industry is crawling with three deeply flawed assumptions. These “bugs” in the system have created a narrative that’s not just misleading — it’s actively derailing serious environmental and ethical progress.
Let’s dissect them.
Bug #1: Recycling 10-Year-Old Studies Like They’re Still Relevant
Insect farming is often described as environmentally superior, citing life-cycle assessments (LCAs) from over a decade ago — especially a 2012 study on mealworms and a 2013 FAO report built around it. These have been cited thousands of times, including by new studies that should know better.
The problem? These studies are ancient by agricultural standards. They looked at small-scale mealworm farms feeding their insects human-grade food, like carrots and oats, with slow growth rates and minimal processing. That’s not how industrial insect farms operate today.
Modern operations use grain-based feeds to speed up growth cycles and burn through enormous energy during processing and drying — none of which is accounted for in those early studies. And while the FAO report pitched insects as a meat replacement, most are being ground up into protein powder for fish farms and trendy energy bars — products with lower environmental impacts than meat anyway.
So when new papers cite these outdated numbers to hype insect farming’s sustainability, they’re recycling myths, not facts.
Bug #2: Banking on Food Waste That’s Not Actually Available
The second faulty assumption is that insect farms will heroically divert mountains of food waste from landfills. Reports claim they could process 50% or more of national waste streams, transforming leftovers into clean protein.
But here’s what’s really happening: most insect farms don’t touch food waste. It’s inconsistent, contaminated, and expensive to collect and treat. What do they use instead? Grain — the same resource-intensive feed already fuelling factory farming.
Even in countries with advanced waste recycling systems, only a tiny fraction of food waste is legally usable as animal feed, let alone suitable for insect farms. There’s also stiff competition for these scraps from bioenergy plants and livestock industries. This isn’t just a logistical problem — it’s a systemic one.
The industry’s own executives admit it: “It’s extremely difficult to build an industry with a consistent quality product if your main input has a high level of variability.”
Translation? The whole food waste narrative is a smokescreen.
Bug #3: Fantasy Economics Dressed Up as Business Plans
Many of the cost projections for insect farming are pure fiction. Studies claim the industry will soon be cost-competitive with conventional protein — but only if you believe equipment lasts 30 years, electricity costs are negligible, feed conversion is magical, and insects convert garbage into gold with no overheads.
One widely cited study valued bakery waste at £30/ton. In reality, it’s closer to £175–£225. Some projections overstated larvae yields fivefold by confusing wet and dry feed conversion ratios. Others used electricity prices lower than what any real business would ever pay.
This is how fantasy becomes policy: cherry-picked numbers repackaged as “innovation.” But in reality, most insect startups are bleeding money, struggling to scale, and quietly folding. Investor interest is already cooling.
People Don’t Want to Eat Insects — And That’s Not Changing Anytime Soon
Even if the environmental and economic arguments held up (they don’t), the “edible insect” pitch still hits a cultural wall.
Public polling in the US and Europe shows people are far more open to plant-based meats than insects. Around 90% would try the former. Only 20% would consider the latter — and that’s just “try,” not adopt.
Despite years of media hype, insect-based foods remain niche, repulsive to most, and completely ineffective at dislodging animal flesh from the centre of the plate. As The Guardian put it: “All the talk about eating insects has not made a big difference.” Cultural disgust and lack of culinary tradition aren’t going away with a sprinkle of cricket powder in a protein bar.
None of this is about nitpicking science. It’s about strategy — and misdirection.
Propping up insect farming as a “less bad” alternative gives industry, media, and policymakers a convenient escape hatch. They get to pretend they’re addressing the climate crisis while maintaining the mindset that animals exist to be used. This isn’t progress. It’s regression with a rebrand.
The vegan movement isn’t asking for cleaner cages or smaller victims. We’re not asking you to swap the flesh of cows for the bodies of flies. We’re asking you to reject the entire idea that someone should be bred, confined, and killed for profit — regardless of how small they are or how efficient their suffering becomes.
Debugging the Debate
If researchers, policymakers, and environmentalists want to have a serious conversation about sustainable food systems, they need to ditch the bug-eyed optimism. That starts with:
▫️Updating life-cycle assessments to reflect current industry realities.
▫️Abandoning the food waste myth unless backed by actual practice, not hypothetical charts.
▫️Demanding transparency in cost models based on commercial-scale data, not startup wishlists.
But more importantly, it means moving beyond the logic of animal use entirely.
Because no matter how small or strange their bodies may be, insects are still individuals. Still living. Still exploited.
Scaling up insect farming doesn’t end injustice — it just multiplies it. Let’s stop pretending we need new victims to save the planet.
We don’t need “cleaner” exploitation. We need to stop using animals. Period.