Sustaining in the “New Normal”

Warning to our American and European readers: Your face may contort involuntarily into an expression of disgust when you read the following statement. Other readers, however, will not bat an eye, regarding this as nothing unusual: I have, on several occasions, willingly eaten insects. (More than half the world does so routinely, by the way.)
Chapulines (fried grasshoppers), gusanos de maguey (toasted caterpillars), and escamoles (marinated eggs of a giant black ant) were common pre-Hispanic delicacies and are still popular in rural Mexico. Today, many fine restaurants in Mexico City serve them as high-priced, gourmet specialties. I have sampled all three. All are delicious.
With the world population expected to bulge to nine billion by 2050, “mini-livestock” insect farms may thrive. Proponents note the superior protein and micro-nutrient content of many insect species and the potential ease of bug husbandry. Might we rely on the world’s six-legged creatures to sustain us?
Raising insects on their preferred diets of waste products and plant material may require far fewer resources and cause less environmental harm than raising confined livestock on a grand scale. By many measures, insect farming may become a sustainable enterprise.
What makes an industry or an enterprise “sustainable”? Most would agree that it must not deplete or degrade the very resources on which it and the wider world rely, including natural and human resources.
Beyond a doubt, to be sustainable, an enterprise must also achieve and maintain business success. A sustainable industry must be comprised of a critical mass of businesses that sustain profitability.
To sustain success, those businesses must react deftly to changing market conditions. Today, that is no small task, as financial and commodity markets, including cotton, are soaring and diving – often daily – as we have never before seen. Some analysts are calling this wild market volatility “the new normal.”
So, sustainability also means adaptability and agility, the ability to anticipate and embrace change – change that, more and more, is apt to be fast and dramatic. Today’s landscape may hardly resemble tomorrow’s.
In today’s agriculture, we often regard insects as enemies. Tomorrow, we may raise and nurture them. What we eschew today, we may chew tomorrow.