Buzzing: To be organic or circular?
Hello everyone, how are you doing? The news this week is that Buzzing is now on Instagram 😎 Check it out for more pictures from Test Corner, my mealworms and my dog (it wouldn’t be Instagram without a dog or a cat, right?).
This week in Buzzing:
To be organic or circular, that is the question
Q&A: Shobhita Soor, Legendary Foods
Test corner: Mealworm burgers
Last week, I spoke to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) about their work to establish an organic standard for the production of insects. Sales of organic food have grown significantly over the past 20 years and there is now demand for organically produced insects too. After all, there are organic standards for bees, aquaculture and animal husbandry, so why not for the production of insects?
Organic standards for insect production already exist in Switzerland, Canada and the US; the IFOAM standard will be global, and like all IFOAM standards, voluntary and free to access. IFOAM also hopes that it may influence or be used as the basis for regulatory standards in markets such as the EU (the European Commission is working on an organic insect standard).
The notion of organic insect production raises some interesting questions: in principle, for animals to be reared organically, they must be fed certified organic feed. This is obviously possible for insects too (by-products from organic farming or food processing for instance) but it restricts the pool of available feed so much that it threatens to jeopardise insects’ unique ability to turn low-value waste products into protein.
The circularity argument is central to insects as food and feed, and not just from a sustainability point of view: lower value waste products will cost less than commercial animal feeds and help lower the cost of insect protein.
The whole issue reminds me of a conversation I once had with someone about weekly fruit and vegetable boxes. I receive a weekly box of organic fruit and veg, the other person a box of fruit and veg that may have gone to waste because they didn’t meet supermarket standards. They argued that their box was better because it prevented waste: I agree that this madness of “weird-looking” vegetables has to stop, but I also want to support organic agriculture.
These two worthy causes are not mutually exclusive, and it’s good to see that IFOAM and organisations like the European insect lobby group IPIFF are trying to reconcile these differences. IFOAM for instance is considering whether organic feed requirements may be delayed until more organic substrates (the insects’ feed) are available.
IPIFF for its part wants to explore the possibility of including non-organic insects in organic aquaculture feed on the grounds that insects are a natural part of the diet of many fish species. They also want to support the inclusion of up to 5% non-organic insect protein in organic poultry and swine feed. The premise is that although the insects in those feeds are not organic, they are sustainable and generally support organic principles. The same goes for insect frass (manure): it is a natural fertiliser, essential to preserve soil health.
It seems eminently sensible, so I hope common sense will prevail. And I will welcome organically-certified insects when standards are ready, if only to support the businesses along the value chain who are making this commitment, but also because it will go towards further legitimising insects as food and feed.
The Q&A: Shobhita Soor, Founder & CEO of Legendary Foods
In 2013, Shobhita Soor and a handful of her MBA classmates at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) won the Hult Prize competition, which awards $1 million in capital seed funding to a start-up seeking to solve pressing social issues. Their company, Aspire Food Group, started with a palm weevil farming pilot in Ghana (and in Mexico & the United States); it has since become one of the rising stars in the insects as food movement, with a cricket farming research facility in Austin, Texas (US), and the world’s largest cricket farm in London, Ontario (Canada) currently in construction. As for the pilot facility in Ghana, it is now a thriving business in its own right, Legendary Foods, with Shobhita at the helm and ambitions aplenty.
How did you initially settle on palm weevil in Ghana? It’s a departure from the standard crickets and mealworms…
We were looking for somewhere with a good product-to-market fit. It had to be an insect amenable to domestication (not all insects are), it had to be something that could be processed in simple forms, and on the market side, it had to be something that was desired. That process led us to palm weevil larvae, and Ghana was a logical market: palm weevils are a traditional food, the country is politically stable and set up for international business.
How do you sell palm weevil larvae and what do consumers think?
The palm weevil larvae has the texture of a sausage and the taste of shrimp. It really fits in with the flavour and texture profile of existing Ghanaian cuisine. It’s a traditional food that isn’t very common in cities so most young people aren’t familiar with it. But when they taste it, they like it. A common reaction from older customers is: “Oh wow, I haven’t seen palm weevil larvae since I was a child!”, or “I haven’t eaten this since I left the village!”. People are also surprised by the quantities we get through farming because you would not get that many through wild-harvesting.
We sell the larvae fresh or frozen, which consumers can use as a direct substitute to meat or fish in stews, soups, rice dishes or stir fries. We also have fully processed products that are our “gateway products”: we have a biscuit that is 15% larvae, and a condiment called Shito [a ubiquitous Ghanaian pepper sauce]. Shito traditionally contains dried shrimp or fish, which we have substituted for palm weevil larvae. It’s been a great marketing tool.
What are your ambitions?
What we are trying to build in Ghana is a mass market product that’s a substitute to meat. Protein sovereignty is at the core of what we do. Our mission is to produce the most cost effective, resource efficient, nutritious, locally produced animal protein, and our target market is the region [western and central Africa], not just Ghana. We are in the process of raising an equity round of funding to build a larger farm in the Greater Accra region, which will allow us to export more easily and integrate into the existing food processing ecosystem in the country.
Test Corner: Mealworm Burger
This week, I made a new batch of insect burgers. I made some with crickets a few months ago and didn’t like them, so this time I used mealworms instead. I’m happy to report that they were delicious: firm and full of flavour.
I followed BUG’s recipe, which is very similar to Horizon’s recipe for the cricket burger: basically a base of pulse, with lots of lovely seasoning, which means that it was definitely the cricket powder I’d used in that recipe that I disliked (I’ve since bought a different one that I really like).
Interestingly, the burgers are not the most popular insect dish I’ve made at home: my little boy loved them but my daughter had to be coaxed into finishing hers. It’s made me think about how I could add cricket or mealworm powder to my children’s favourite dishes: I think next on my list are pancakes or hummus. I’ll report back!
