Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
118 NEWINS-ZEIGLER HALL
GAINESVILLE,FL 32611
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Reducing Cost, Improving Efficiency and Safety of Farming Crickets as Food IngredientsAnimal based nutrients, specifically protein, are critical for health, yet already about 70% of agricultural land, and 30% of the total land on earth, is used to raise livestock. And, the global market for protein products has exploded to over $15 billion in 2012, with 30% growth expected in 5 years. Market research firms, such as Mintel, state that 19% of all food and beverage products are claiming high-protein contents. Further, customers are demanding organic labeling to ensure quality. Organic sales topped $81 billion in 2012, with a projected rise of 14% per year. Insects, especially organically feed crickets, present a substantial opportunity to meet the protein needs of the burgeoning population with a much lower environmental footprint than other livestocks. As the human population grows, it is ever more important to sustain rather than increase our levels of consumption. Expanding the use of land for livestock production is neither feasible nor sustainable. The current challenge is that methods, equipment and technologies utilized in the cricket farming industry are primitive and entirely manual. Nearly all of the methods have been fundamentally the same for 60+ years. Due largely to lack of mechanization and innovation, these inefficiencies result in high costs and unreliable supply. Any cost reductions in cricket production will result in a 3-4 fold corresponding reduction in the cost of dried products/ingredients made from them. This SBIR project is intended to develop streamlined system and mechanized processes for cricket farming that reduces cost and improves efficiency to meet the growing human consumption demand. Our Phase I project objectives are: 1) improve efficiency/cost and mechanize cricket mass harvesting for human consumption (frozen crickets) (and determine the optimal cricket age to harvest), 2) improve efficiency/cost of water delivery to crickets and 3) compare/evaluate the performance of conventional cricket feed versus certified organic feed. After successful completion of the current Phase I project, our Phase II goals will include: 1) design, construction and evaluation of industrial scale equipment to mechanize and automate aspects of cricket farming such as harvesting, feed and water delivery and 2) development of lower cost cricket feeds utilizing agricultural and food/beverage industry byproducts. The knowledge gained from this research will be valuable for the development of insect farming technology for food production and will contribute to the birth of new industries.All Things Bugs LLC intends to determine the feasibility of innovations to drive down the cost of cricket production for the human consumption market. If successful, this project will be a step toward revolutionizing the food industry and an important change for agriculture by improving production feasibility for an entire class of animals thus far largely ignored - Insecta. Further, as the largest manufacturer of high quality food grade cricket powder in the Western Hemisphere, the company is well positioned to commercialize the technologies from this project. Best of all, consumers are interested. Media outlets, such as Forbes, Fox News, Huffington Post, New Yorker and Washington Post have all published articles about using this promising nutrition source. Most importantly, All Things Bugs LLC has had several requests for this ingredient for protein bars, baked goods and therapeutic foods, including over 5,000 lbs in product sales. We believe that these innovations will be broadly useful beyond crickets for farms producing other edible insects such as grasshoppers, mealworms and others.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
20%
Developmental
70%
Goals / Objectives
Animal based nutrients, specifically protein, are critical for health, yet already about 70% of agricultural land, and 30% of the total land on earth, is used to raise livestock. And, the global market for protein products has exploded to over $15 billion in 2012, with 30% growth expected in 5 years. Market research firms, such as Mintel, state that 19% of all food and beverage products are claiming high-protein contents. Further, customers are demanding organic labeling to ensure quality. Organic sales topped $81 billion in 2012, with a projected rise of 14% per year. Insects, especially organically feed crickets, present a substantial opportunity to meet the protein needs of the burgeoning population with a much lower environmental footprint than other livestocks. As the human population grows, it is ever more important to sustain rather than increase our levels of consumption. Expanding the use of land for livestock production is neither feasible nor sustainable. The current challenge is that methods, equipment and technologies utilized in the cricket farming industry are primitive and entirely manual. Nearly all of the methods have been fundamentally the same for 60+ years. Due largely to lack of mechanization and innovation, these inefficiencies result in high costs and unreliable supply. Any cost reductions in cricket production will result in a 3-4 fold corresponding reduction in the cost of dried products/ingredients made from them. This SBIR project is intended to develop streamlined system and mechanized processes for cricket farming that reduces cost and improves efficiency to meet the growing human consumption demand. Our Phase I project objectives are: 1) improve efficiency/cost and mechanize cricket mass harvesting for human consumption (frozen crickets) (and determine the optimal cricket age to harvest), 2) improve efficiency/cost of water delivery to crickets and 3) compare/evaluate the performance of conventional cricket feed versus certified organic feed. After successful completion of the current Phase I project, our Phase II goals will include: 1) design, construction and evaluation of industrial scale equipment to mechanize and automate aspects of cricket farming such as harvesting, feed and water delivery and 2) development of lower cost cricket feeds utilizing agricultural and food/beverage industry byproducts. The knowledge gained from this research will be valuable for the development of insect farming technology for food production and will contribute to the birth of new industries.All Things Bugs LLC intends to determine the feasibility of innovations to drive down the cost of cricket production for the human consumption market. If successful, this project will be a step toward revolutionizing the food industry and an important change for agriculture by improving production feasibility for an entire class of animals thus far largely ignored - Insecta. Further, as the largest manufacturer of high quality food grade cricket powder in the Western Hemisphere, the company is well positioned to commercialize the technologies from this project. Best of all, consumers are interested. Media outlets, such as Forbes, Fox News, Huffington Post, New Yorker and Washington Post have all published articles about using this promising nutrition source. Most importantly, All Things Bugs LLC has had several requests for this ingredient for protein bars, baked goods and therapeutic foods, including over 5,000 lbs in product sales. We believe that these innovations will be broadly useful beyond crickets for farms producing other edible insects such as grasshoppers, mealworms and others.Phase I Technical ObjectivesIn current cricket farming methods, the major cost drivers are: 1) manual labor involved with cricket harvesting, 2) labor for manual watering and feeding and 3) the cost of feed (especially organic feed) (personal conversations with several US based cricket farms). Additionally, there is substantial customer demand for organic fed cricket products. We have chosen to direct our efforts at streamlining harvesting and watering, and at determining the feasibility of crickets fed on organic feed.The overall objective of this Phase I proposal is to determine feasibility of farming crickets on organic feed for the human food industry. Below are the important questions we seek to answer in Phase I of this project. The concept will be deemed feasible if we can reduce the amount of labor involved with cricket harvesting OR watering by half. The section on "Phase I Work Plan" will describe how we plan to address these questions. These answers will provide solutions to the technical challenges of our project and lead to equipment prototypes and pilot scale production processes for farm raised human food grade crickets as well as prepare us for our Phase II plans.1. Cricket Harvesting: Develop More Efficient Method for Mass Harvesting Farm Raised CricketsI) Can crickets be efficiently separated from frass and other materials at large scale, and can this be mechanized?II) Does cooling or freezing crickets before harvesting improve efficiency?2. Efficient Watering System: Develop More Efficient Device/System for Automatic Watering of Crickets I) Can an automatic watering system be designed which reduces or eliminates manual watering of crickets?II) Could an automatic watering system be designed which would require cleaning/maintenance, only once every 5 weeks (the life cycle of a cricket)?3. Optimization of Feed Input vs Cricket Output and Performance of Organic vs Conventional Cricket Feed: I) Does commercial organic feed perform as well as standard commercial non-organic feed for cricket growth, rate and productivity?II) Based on life-stage-dependent feed conversion ratios, what size or life stage is the most efficient to harvest on a cost per pound basis?
Project Methods
Phase I Work Plan - 8 months This section describes how we will address our Phase I Technical Objectives and successfully achieve our goals as well as generate our desired results, methods and prototypes. Dr. Dossey will oversee and manage this entire Phase I project from beginning to end. Our Advisory Board and its Scientific Reader will review a summary of our project plans at the beginning and middle of the project. They will also review a summary of our results in the middle and at the end of the project.Task 1. Cricket Harvesting: The primary goal of this task will be to determine the feasibility of mechanized methods to improve the efficiency of cricket harvesting at industrial scale for the human consumption market. These experiments will address the technical question "Can crickets be efficiently separated from frass and other materials at large scale, and can this be mechanized?" This study will use modified sifts and vibrating conveyors to gently move insects and divide them in different size groups. For this, we will initially need to determine the dimensions of cricket bodies at all nymph stages and adults. Measurements of head and body width and total body length will be done for each nymph instar and adults. The same methods will be applied to frass pellets produced by nymphs of all instars and adults. Results of these analyses will be used to estimate optimal screen parameters for separation.For cricket separation method and apparatus development, a prototype of a mechanized separator will be constructed by modifying a commercially available vibrating conveyor and a sifter. The prototype will have exchangeable screens to run separation tests of different screen types. Groups of crickets and frass pellets will be passed through the prototype. Groups separated by the screens tested will be inspected for success or failure to separate either frass from insects and adults from nymphs, and frass, adults and different nymphal stages will be quantified. These experiments will be repeated for different amounts of separation time to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of separation based on different amounts of time in the separator. We will also do time course studies which will determine, for each minute of shaking/harvesting, how many crickets move down the chute versus how many remain on the screen or in the conveyor.Task 2. Efficient Watering System: The primary goal of this task will be to develop an efficient, clean, reliable, automated watering system for farmed crickets. For this, initially we will conduct experiments to answer the technical question "Can an automatic watering system be designed which reduces or eliminates manual watering of crickets?" We will develop and evaluate improved strategies for water delivery to farmed insects. Our goal is to develop at least 1 automatic watering device and 1 absorbent system which may be utilized with the device or in lieu of it. Preference will be given to designs which provide water from above. Additionally, we will attempt to utilize a system to continuously fill the water feeders, so they would not have to be manually refilled during the 5 week life of farmed crickets prior to harvest. These experiments will be conducted at the USDA-ARS NBCL by Drs. Morales-Ramos and Rojas, with guidance and technical/design input from Dr. Dossey at All Things Bugs LLC (through emails and weekly phone meetings).Once at least 2 reliable water delivery systems are developed in the experiments described above, additional experiments will be conducted to answer the technical question "Could an automatic watering system be designed which would require cleaning/maintenance, only once every 5 weeks (the life cycle of a cricket)?" Specifically, we plan to test the design based on the hypothesis that, if we provide the water from above, the crickets cannot defecate on it and other refuse cannot fall on the wet watering surface. Some parameters which will be tested include: what type of sponge is utilized, water flow rate to sufficiently water crickets while not being too wet as well as simplicity of removing and replacing the sponge to avoid unnecessary manipulation of a cricket brooder during its 5 week production cycle. Of course, one type of sponge tested will include the type currently utilized in the manual watering systems at current cricket farms.Task 3. Optimization of Feed Input vs Cricket Output and Performance of Organic vs Conventional Cricket Feed: The primary goal of this task will be to evaluate the efficacy of commercially available certified organic cricket feed as compared with the performance of standard non-organic cricket feed. These experiments will also help determine the optimal (ie: most cost effective) life stage of crickets to harvest. Based on the aforementioned market demand for organic food ingredients and products, particularly from our existing customers, it is critical to determine the feasibility of utilizing certified organic feed at cricket farms. Thus we will conduct the following experiments to address this market demand and the technical question "Does commercial organic feed perform as well as standard commercial non-organic feed for cricket growth, rate and productivity?" For feed evaluation experiments, three biological parameters will be used to evaluate the cricket feed for productivity: 1) immature survival, 2) development time, and 3) food conversion efficiency. These parameters will be measured in groups of newly hatched crickets at controlled environmental conditions. Each group will receive a different food mix from beginning to the end of their development. Mortality will be monitored and recorded daily. The date of completion of development will be recorded for each individual by observing the groups daily and removing and counting adults from each group.To determine and compare food conversion efficiency, groups of cricket nymphs of the same age will be fed exclusively with each of the food formulations. These groups of newly hatched cricket nymphs (per group) will be weighed and provided with a known weight of food. The groups will be placed in an environmental chamber. At weekly intervals, the nymph groups will be weighed to determine living weight gain. The remaining food and frass will be dried in a vacuum oven at 50ºC and weighed. The groups will be fed with new pre dried and weighed food and returned to the environmental chamber. The experiment will continue until the nymphs complete development. Food and frass will be dried in a vacuum oven at 50ºC before each weighing. The insect dry weight gained will be determined by subtracting the normal water weight content of living adults at the end of the experiment series. The water content of living adults will be determined by the weight difference of living versus vacuum oven-dry adults. Food assimilated will be calculated as food consumed minus frass weight. This information will be used to convert living weight gained to dry weight gained. A plot of food conversion efficiency versus weekly intervals will be used to determine the time of optimal food conversion efficiency and the time when conversion efficiency declines. This study will be repeated at one higher and one lower temperature. In addition to performance of certified organic versus conventional convention feed, feed conversion studies will also help us to answer a second important technical question: "Based on life-stage-dependent feed conversion ratios, what size or life stage is the most efficient to harvest on a cost per pound basis?" A well calculated feed conversion ratio will also help inform cricket farming operations on the exact amount of feed needed for crickets at different life stages, and to determine whether or not feed is being wasted.