What if earlier and more widespread insect farming?

Insects can be a good source of not only protein, but also vitamins, minerals, and fats. For example, crickets are high in calcium, and termites are rich in iron. One hundred grams of giant silkworm moth larvae provide 100 percent of the daily requirements for copper, zinc, iron, thiamin, and riboflavin.
They are eaten around the world. Some insects are eaten as larvae or pupae, others as adults. Though not insects, arachnids such as spiders, tarantulas and scorpions are also eaten. A total of 1417 species of insects have been recorded as being eaten by over 3000 ethnic groups. These include 235 species of butterflies and moths, 344 species of beetles, 313 species of ants, bees and wasps as well as 239 species of grasshoppers, crickets and cockroaches, amongst others. Other commonly eaten insects are termites, cicadas and dragonflies. Insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations.
Another major advantage is the fact that insects generally have a higher food conversion efficiency than more traditional meats, measured as efficiency of conversion of ingested food, or ECI. While many insects can have an energy input to protein output ratio of around 4:1, raised livestock has a ratio closer to 54:1.

But until now nobody ever seemed to try to build micro-farms to produce them in mass quantity. Since they eat plants that aren’t used for human consumption this should have helped in times of bad harvest, at least to give humans the necessary amount of vitamin and proteins.
Also they could be transported much easier than any livestock on long journeys by ship. This might prevent things like scurvy for example.
So why didn`t it happen?
 
This is a good question... honeybees and silkworms have been farmed for thousands of years, so it's not like the concept of domesticated insects is hard to come by.

My best guess is that insects are so numerous, in places where they are eaten it doesn't really make sense to have to capture and control them. It's only when we're interested in their byproducts that we want to make sure they're located in a place where we can get them.
 
Two main problems IMO: Humans only eat a fairly limited number of insects when not motivated by famine. Second, cultivating insects in large enough numbers to feed a population would have been virtually impossible before the last century or so.

I think a major barrier to large scale insect farming would have been building a habitat that would house the desired insect, and no other insects. When the building materials are wood, it is too easy for other insects to take advantage of the area set aside for "cultivation" of the desired insect.

A 13th century French peasant could build a barn, seal it off from the outside world to the best of his ability, introduce the desired insect, and toss in copious amounts of insect food. However, it is likely that more hearty, less tasty local insects would infest the building (ants or roaches come to mind), out competing the intended insects, and infesting the rest of his farm.

For intense insect farming to be effective you need the capacity to build a large, sterile environment. The silkworm was farmed because a) its silk was worth more than its weight in gold and b) it only required a relatively small number of the worms to produce valuable amounts of silk. To get a kilogram of insect protein, you are talking about tens of thousands of individual insects to be raised, protected from the outside world, and harvested. That is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of worms needed for a farm.

Honeybees are kind of a unique example, since they are the only insect I am aware of that converts an inedible substance (nectar) into an edible one that is edible by humans and capable of storage. No other insect, except for a few spieces of ants do anything similar, and the amount of work it would take to dig up the anthill would probably make harvest prohibitively difficult.
 
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This is a good question... honeybees and silkworms have been farmed for thousands of years, so it's not like the concept of domesticated insects is hard to come by.

My best guess is that insects are so numerous, in places where they are eaten it doesn't really make sense to have to capture and control them. It's only when we're interested in their byproducts that we want to make sure they're located in a place where we can get them.

This sounds about right to me.
Perhaps if we had some sort of social insect* that produced a spicy resin they idea of extending collection/farming of this to eating the grubs and then other insects might have taken off.
Afterall honeydew has been recognised for about as long as gardening and orchardry but bees were always more productive. Something that ate fruit or flower pests and produced a spicy honey equivalent would be very useful!

* I suggest a mutant ladybeetle that develops a form of eusociality since actual social beetles (Ambrosia Beetles) tend to be destructive of trees.
 
On second thought, humans have probably been capable of cultivating massive colonies of ants, such as Dorylus ants, for at least the last few thousand years. However, it would have been very difficult to harvest them, and the pressence of millions of ants around an area of human settlement would have probably been more trouble than the added food-source would be worth.
 
Two main problems IMO: Humans only eat a fairly limited number of insects when not motivated by famine. Second, cultivating insects in large enough numbers to feed a population would have been virtually impossible before the last century or so.

I think a major barrier to large scale insect farming would have been building a habitat that would house the desired insect, and no other insects. When the building materials are wood, it is too easy for other insects to take advantage of the area set aside for "cultivation" of the desired insect.

A 13th century French peasant could build a barn, seal it off from the outside world to the best of his ability, introduce the desired insect, and toss in copious amounts of insect food. However, it is likely that more hearty, less tasty local insects would infest the building (ants or roaches come to mind), out competing the intended insects, and infesting the rest of his farm.

For intense insect farming to be effective you need the capacity to build a large, sterile environment. The silkworm was farmed because a) its silk was worth more than its weight in gold and b) it only required a relatively small number of the worms to produce valuable amounts of silk. To get a kilogram of insect protein, you are talking about tens of thousands of individual insects to be raised, protected from the outside world, and harvested. That is several orders of magnitude greater than the number of worms needed for a farm.

Honeybees are kind of a unique example, since they are the only insect I am aware of that converts an inedible substance (nectar) into an edible one that is edible by humans and capable of storage. No other insect, except for a few spieces of ants do anything similar, and the amount of work it would take to dig up the anthill would probably make harvest prohibitively difficult.
For the most part you've hit the nail on the head I think. However I could see Ant farming being possible simply set up a housing structure with a long narrow airtight corridor between it and a source of food wait for a worker train to form then seal of the ends and pump smoke in and wait for the ants to die then collect.


On second thought, humans have probably been capable of cultivating massive colonies of ants, such as Dorylus ants, for at least the last few thousand years. However, it would have been very difficult to harvest them, and the pressence of millions of ants around an area of human settlement would have probably been more trouble than the added food-source would be worth.
Harvesting wouldn't really be the problem making sure your army ants don't end up farming you is probably the bigger worry.
 
what if this was used to upstart a new culture in an area that otherwise wouldn't have been able to support a large population?

the sub-saharan africa comes to mind, as does the amazon, and the pacific islands. if bugs were cultivated and distributed en masse for food, this could bring about entirely different cultures around the world :cool:
 
In my TL I'm eventually going to mention how the kingdoms of Central America have domesticated the honeypot ant. Its a delicacy for the people and particularly enjoyed by the nobles.

To domesticate more insects earlier you simply have to give the insect something that rich people want. Honeybees had honey, silkworms silk. Is there anything else that people could want, simple food isn't enough. As people have already mentioned there's enough insects around to make it impractical. In places were they act as food they are always available in large numbers either all year round or during migrations. So they have to have something else that people want or taste really good.
 
In my TL I'm eventually going to mention how the kingdoms of Central America have domesticated the honeypot ant. Its a delicacy for the people and particularly enjoyed by the nobles.

To domesticate more insects earlier you simply have to give the insect something that rich people want. Honeybees had honey, silkworms silk. Is there anything else that people could want, simple food isn't enough. As people have already mentioned there's enough insects around to make it impractical. In places were they act as food they are always available in large numbers either all year round or during migrations. So they have to have something else that people want or taste really good.

Yes. That's why I suggested some sort of spice beetle, considering how expensive spices used to be (and some still are!).
 
Most historical insect farming is a lot like raising mammals for their horns - you are kinda missing the main advantage. Bees and silkworms were both kept for a product that, while valuable and useful, was very much dispensable. Honeydew ants, spice beetles and their ilk, too, would fall into that category. If you want to get to where insect raising really is effective, yopu need to raise them for meat, which AFAIK means grubs. I don't think that that would be logistically difficult, though it would work better in hot climates than cold (the largest insect grubs in Northwestern Europe AFAIK are those of the May beetle, nowhere near the size of what Africa, Central America and Oceania have to offer).

I suspect that creating a POD is almost impossible within recorded history, given the strong Western taboo on insects, but if you can it would be a fascinating scenario. Lots more protein for urban societies, and of necessity a cuisine of combined dishes.
 
Is it just a western taboo? I don't think the Aztecs, Indian cultures, etc. ever tried grub farming.
 
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Is it just a western taboo? I don't think the Aztecs, Indian cultures, etc. ever tried grub farming.

I don't know how universal it is outside of Europe and the Mideast. Several cultures in Southeast and South Asia, and a fair number of africvan and Central American people, eat insects routinely, though they are usually harvested from the wild. I can't think of any instance of systematic raising of insect meat stock, but another poster pointed out that may be because they are so plentiful in nature.
 

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I don't know how universal it is outside of Europe and the Mideast. Several cultures in Southeast and South Asia, and a fair number of africvan and Central American people, eat insects routinely, though they are usually harvested from the wild. I can't think of any instance of systematic raising of insect meat stock, but another poster pointed out that may be because they are so plentiful in nature.
I once seen a documentary program shot in a Southeastern Asian country (I think it was Thailand, but I can’t recall for sure now). There was a part of the program dealing with a young rural schoolgirl that raised money for her education by selling edible grubs she raised in a rotting log in the garden (not an overly complex farming method but not “harvested from the wild” either). If I remember the documentary correctly, they said this is not uncommon.
 
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