OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden’s administration, which has been running multi-trillion dollar deficits since taking office, has found another way to squander precious taxpayer dollars, and it’s highly likely the vast majority of Americans who learn about it are going to be furious.
According to a federal grant listing, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began funding research into trash-fed crickets in July 2023 as a means of developing an alternative to conventional — and allegedly “unsustainable” — protein production, the Daily Caller reported.
The $130,000 grant supports research that “addresses the need for more cost-efficient production of crickets as a sustainable protein source,” according to the federal listing. More specifically, the grant funds research into using landfill waste to feed crickets that later will be harvested for human consumption, the report said.
The Daily Caller adds:
USDA awarded the grant to Mighty Cricket Inc., a private firm that sells cricket flour, cricket protein powder and cricket oatmeal. The agency believes that using landfill waste to feed crickets could help the firm “procure cricket feed at lower cost than what is available on the market,” leading to savings that could then be passed along to the consumer.
USDA’s grant listing criticizes traditional animal farming for being too resource-intensive and too harsh on the environment.
“Conventional protein production poses a substantial strain on the ecosystem, requiring unsustainable quantities of water, land, and feed as inputs,” the grant description claims, which also calls “conventional” farming a “significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.”
The listing also says that the demand for bug protein has grown in recent years following “public awareness of the need for more sustainable food sources.”
“To sustain the world’s growing population, food production practices need to dramatically shift towards resource conservation,” the grant continues. Bug farming is “one solution” to that problem, according to the USDA grant description.
Mighty Cricket’s website emphasizes the environmentally sustainable aspects of cricket cultivation, highlighting reduced land use, minimized waste, lowered carbon emissions, decreased water usage, and reduced energy consumption, among other benefits.
Influential organizations such as the United Nations and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have released materials advocating for the incorporation of insects into the Western diet, the DC reports.
According to a 2022 article published by WEF, integrating insects into our diet could serve as an effective strategy to mitigate climate change. Another article from WEF contends that the increasing global population will amplify the demand for alternative protein sources, including insects.
Insects are gradually gaining traction in the West, with companies emerging across Europe to offer food products derived from bugs. For instance, Czechia produces cricket chips, Germany offers bug burgers, and Belgium boasts beetle beer among its insect consumables.
But by far, the vast majority of Westerners — and especially Americans — are not likely to latch on to the craze, mostly because the issue of “climate change” is very low on the list of issue priorities, according to most recent surveys.
The one issue that matters most to Americans is the economy. According to a January survey from the Pew Research Center, only “28 percent of Americans rate economic conditions as excellent or good,” an improvement of sorts since the previous survey.
But that said, “Despite the improvement in economic attitudes, the public is far less upbeat today than it was from 2018 through early 2020, during Donald Trump’s presidency and prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic,” Pew noted.
“The share of Americans saying economic conditions will be worse a year from now has fallen from 46 percent last April to 33 percent today,” the research organization said. “However, more continue to say that conditions will be worse than better (26 percent) next year; 41 percent expect the economy will be about the same as it is today.”
