<h2>Waiter, There&#8217;s a Cricket in My Soup</h2>
<p>When longtime Cisco chairman and former CEO John Chambers ends his relationship with the company this December, he plans to delve into the startup scene. The firm&#8217;s top priority? Revolutionizing the way we eat.</p>
<p>&#8220;The <a href="https://futurism.com/the-future-of-protein-heres-how-lab-grown-meat-is-transforming-our-future/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">primary source of protein</a> you will be having within your life, definitely within 20 years and maybe within 15, will be insects,&#8221; said Chambers, speaking at the Techonomy 17 conference earlier this week. He went on to describe insects as &#8220;the cleanest form you can produce at least challenge to the environment.&#8221;</p>
<p>More specifically, it seems that Chambers is backing the Austin, Texas-based startup Aspire Food Group. He&#8217;s made a financial investment in the company and is all serving as a mentor to its CEO Mohammed Ashour, according to a <a href="https://www.cnet.com/au/news/crickets-for-dinner-in-20-years-says-cisco-john-chambers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report from CNET</a>.</p>
<p>Aspire&#8217;s marketing materials talk about the &#8220;rich tradition of eating insects around the globe.&#8221; Tradition is a big part of the company&#8217;s ethos – but it&#8217;s also committed to using cutting-edge technology to ensure that it can farm insects with a protein quality similar to meat, and an environmental footprint on par with plant life.</p>
<p><iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FGXjhw0d3Mc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>In Ghana, Aspire farms palm weevil larvae commercially alongside an initiative that helps local farmers raise the grubs. In the United States, they&#8217;re more concerned with food-grade crickets.</p>
<p>As well as developing new farming practices, Aspire wants to change the way we think about eating insects in the west, given the enormous environmental benefit that such a change to our diet could have.</p>
<p>Many of us might be a little squeamish about sitting down to a plateful of crickets, but there&#8217;s really no reason to be. Chambers spoke about a recent seven-course dinner he enjoyed at a ritzy restaurant in San Francisco called Saison, where the insects were a key component in everything from dessert to an accompanying margarita.</p>
<h2>Future Food</h2>
<p>It&#8217;s no secret that farming livestock is a huge burden on the environment. In addition to the sheer amount of resources it takes to raise animals for food, there&#8217;s evidence that agricultural waste is a <a href="https://futurism.com/toxic-byproducts-from-farms-are-destroying-our-environment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">major contributor to air and water pollution</a>.</p>
<p>The solution seems clear: we need to find an alternative to the meat we&#8217;re eating at present. Insects don&#8217;t raise the same issues cows and pigs do, but it might not be easy to get people on board with the idea when they are unaccustomed to eating them. Other efforts are being made to produce food that has the outside appearance of traditional meat products, but in reality is something quite different.</p>
<p>A startup called Memphis Meats is aiming to <a href="https://futurism.com/researchers-unveiled-the-first-chicken-meat-grown-without-chickens/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">make lab-grown meat a reality</a>. The company has already received investments from high-profile names in the technology industry like <a href="https://futurism.com/bill-gates-and-richard-branson-invest-in-lab-grown-meat-startup/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sir Richard Branson and Bill Gates</a>.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re not the only ones, though: China recently signed a <a href="https://futurism.com/china-signed-a-300-million-lab-grown-meat-deal-with-israel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trade agreement worth $300 million</a> that help three Israeli companies produce lab-grown meat for export. U.S.-based Hampton Creek expects to have its synthetic meat <a href="https://futurism.com/a-new-company-will-have-fake-meat-on-the-shelves-next-year/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">on store shelves as soon as next year</a>.</p>
<p>Traditional meat isn&#8217;t going anywhere just yet. However, you can expect to see plenty of alternatives cropping up in the near future; whether they&#8217;re lab-grown, insect-based — or something else entirely.</p>


The future of food might be farming insects with a protein quality similar to meat, and an environmental footprint on par with plant life.

In the future, crickets could serve as our primary source of protein

Future Society

Farming livestock to produce meat has a sizable effect on the environment. Crickets could provide a more responsible way for us to get our protein.

In the Future, Crickets Could Serve as Our Primary Source of Protein

Crickets could be a reliable source of food that doesn't carry the environmental burden of farming livestock.

<h2><b></b>A Better Source of Protein</h2>
<p>Crickets are a good source of protein, provided you can work up the courage to eat one. In order to offset the <a href="https://futurism.com/study-finds-that-going-meatless-could-save-the-environment/">harmful effects that come with relying on beef</a>, however, we need to turn to another source, and our best option may come from the insects that keep us up at night.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aspirefg.com/">Cricket company Aspire</a> has a plan to make this possible, and it doesn&#8217;t involve eating handfuls of bugs. Instead, the Austin, Texas-based company has plans to create a massive cricket farm, with its sole purpose to produce, feed, and harvest the insects to be turned into food people can eat.</p>
<p>The original farm saw human workers periodically feeding the crickets, but this proved to be inefficient and ineffective, since the people worked normal work hours during the way, while crickets are nocturnal. After a bit of number-crunching, and spending some time studying how crickets respond to mass reproduction, Aspire elected to incorporate a robotic system that would provide the ideal amount of food. Adjustments to the cricket&#8217;s diet were also made to create a better end product.</p>
<h2>Supply vs. Demand</h2>
<p>People just aren&#8217;t ready to eat crickets as long as they continue to resemble them, though— something Aspire learned when it offered whole, dry-roasted crickets at events.</p>
<p>&#8220;We wanted to gauge consumer readiness for consuming insects in this most confrontational fashion,&#8221; <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40454212/this-automated-cricket-farm-is-designed-to-make-bugs-a-mainstream-source-of-protein" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said Apsire CEO Mohammed Ashour to Fast Company</a>. &#8220;Our hypothesis&#8230;was that [we’ve] still a long way to go, and the needle won’t have moved very dramatically from two years ago when our data showed that something like 70% of Americans aren’t ready.”</p>
<figure id="attachment_97373" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-full wp-image-97373" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/08/IMG_6614_1024x1024.jpeg" alt="crickets aspire food" width="600" height="600" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image Credit: Aspire</figcaption></figure>
<p>People were more open to trying cricket-based food when in the form of granola or other products, where the insect origin of the offerings were not so apparent.Demand for cricket snacks has only increased. Much to the surprise of Aspire, they currently can&#8217;t keep up with consumer and retailer demand. Their current robotic farm, which takes up 25,000 sq ft. of space, raises more than 22 million crickets in a month, but this isn&#8217;t enough. Fortunately, there are plans to expand the farm next year, starting with a 50,000 sq ft expansion, and followed by small additions until the farm is 250,000 square feet in size.</p>
<p>Putting a bigger emphasis on insect food will almost certainly cut down on the worryingly large carbon and land <a href="https://futurism.com/how-lab-grown-meat-could-be-the-future-of-food/">footprints of beef.</a> Perhaps their growing popularity will one day lead to more people eating whole crickets, like many other parts of the world already do.</p>


Their cricket snacks have become so popular that Aspire is rapidly expanding their robotic cricket farm.

The startup Aspire has developed a cricket farm run entirely by robots, in order to keep up with surprising demand for insect-based snacks and foods.

/Crickets

Future Society

In the Future, Crickets Could Serve as Our Primary Source of Protein

Future Society

An Automated Cricket Farm Could Bring Bug-Based Food to the Masses

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