Crickets For Dinner Anyone?

It's amazing how you can come back from a show like Dakotafest with so many new ideas on your mind.  It's also amazing how an event like Dakotafest opens your eyes to things that are going on around us all the time that we take for granted.

I read a staggering statement this morning.  The earth will have nearly 9 Billion people to feed by the year 2050.  The interesting thing about Dakotafest is everything there was about feeding those people.  No agriculture, no food.  Period.

Dakotafest had all kinds of booths and exhibits pertaining to livestock and farming.  But there wasn't one booth there featuring crickets as a protein source.  That's right.  Crickets.

I read an article today in Forbes that said,

Founded in 2012 to address the global market for entomophagy, Tiny Farms wants you to eat bugs. While they may not be popular in the United States, over 2 billion people worldwide use insects as a food ingredient. Tiny Farms aims to capitalize on the United Nations Food and Agricultural Administration stance that insects could be key to providing enough food for the word’s growing population by replacing traditional meat production with more energy, space and time-efficient insect production.

As time flies by, we will have to look for new ways to feed people, but this one caught my eye and kind of got stuck in my throat for a bit.  Maybe I've been watching too much TV lately.  Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls is a show that routinely has viewers cringing at the thought of choking down some grub or bug.  By the looks of the report from Forbes, we aren't too many years away.

I'll take a good beef burger today.  And I'll enjoy it too.  But as times fly by, things do change and I can imagine that 'crickets' for protein will probably be something we deal with in our lifetime.  Our children most likely will anyway.