YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — One could call this a farm – but the home to the breeder of crickets (Big Cricket Farms) is nothing more than an abandoned warehouse in rural Youngstown.
Big Cricket Farms is working with a Boston-based insect food startup, Six Foods, which will grind crickets into "flour" and turn them into cricket chips, or "chirps." The creators of Six Foods believe by blending the crickets with other more familiar ingredients they will be able to overcome the disgust that puts many off the idea of eating a bug, while creating a snack that tastes familiar but is rich in protein.
"We realized people aren’t going to eat insects as long as they could see what it was," explained Laura D’Asaro, co-founder of Six Foods, which is one of several companies hoping to tap the potential of bugs as a cheap and environmentally sustainable source of nutrition.
"We realized that insects were an answer to years of searching. I’ve been a vegetarian most of my life and I found out there is a moral, sustainable way to get protein." Raising, or growing, the crickets is key.
The caretaker at this warehouse in Youngstown is Kevin Bachhuber. "I’m not in a forest. I’m not in a park. I’m not even outside. I’m here in an old, rundown warehouse in Youngstown, Ohio," he pointed out.
The crickets live in big black square tents that sit right on the warehouse floor. Inside the tents are bright lights, an interior like tinfoil and stacks of Rubbermaid tubs. Crack a lid on one of those tubs and you’ll find Cricket City.
"There are little cricket high-rises made out of egg carton. If you look here, the little tiny grains of rice things – wow, there’s a lot of them," he interrupted himself – "are the eggs."
Bachhuber said the crickets munch on organic chicken feed and will mature rapidly, within two months. While some of these crickets will end up sold whole at local farmers’ markets, most will be ground up and made into "cricket flour," a nutrient-dense product that can be used in baked goods.
He said he is in talks with energy bar companies as well as chip and cookie manufacturers who are interested in buying cricket flour in volume. That could be because insects are such a rich source of protein and minerals. They’re commonly used in zoo and pet food. In some other countries, people have been eating bugs for decades.
To produce a pound of crickets requires one gallon of water and two pounds of feed, said Bachhuber. The same amount of beef requires anywhere from 400-2,000 gallons of water and 25 pounds of feed.
"They are marvelously efficient little digesters, and growers," he said of the bugs. Growing crickets, or any insect for that matter, is uncharted water for regulatory agencies. "Insect farms are new," said Ashley McDonald with the Ohio Department of Agriculture. "They would be new to us. And we don’t regulate them at this time."
She said they do regulate food processors and so in that sense, the operation would be treated like any other food facility when it comes to good practices.
Cohorts in this venture with D’Asaro are Rose Wang and Meryl Natow. All are 2013 graduates of Harvard University.
"Insects like these have great health benefits," Wang said. "The crickets can be up to 70 percent protein. Our cricket chips, or Chirps, have 7 grams of protein per 140 calories. That’s like a protein bar. What’s more, the chips are low-fat, non-GMO and gluten-free."
"We wanted to make a snack that was better than a potato chip," Natow added. "And we’ve experimented with the idea of eating bugs for many months."
Experts believe more research into the pathogens that affect insects is needed, and more should be known about their diets before they can be successfully included in the human food chain.
"Farming insects is risky, and we can’t afford the remotest chance that our insects are contaminated with feed that’s not fit for humans," Bachhuber said.
As for when you can expect to see cricket on the menu or in your protein bar, it might not be that far off; Big Cricket Farms will debut its product this August.
