Recipient Organization
ALL THINGS BUGS LLC
120 MARK TWAIN CIRCLE APT L5
Athens,GA 30605-6613
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Reducing Cost, Improving Efficiency and Productivity of Farming Crickets as Food IngredientsAs the human population grows, it is ever more important to sustain rather than increase our levels of consumption from the earth and it's ecosphere. The market for protein is exploding. The global market for protein products was $15.2 billion in 2012. By 2017, these markets are projected to increase 30% to $20 billion dollars. Demand for protein has expanded well beyond the traditional body builder market into every area of life including weight loss, wellness, and sports nutrition among others. Yet already about 70% of agricultural land, and 30% of the total land on earth, is used to produce livestock. Thus, expanding the use of land for livestock production is neither feasible nor sustainable. The good news is farming insects, utilizes less energy, feed, land and water than other livestock at any scale (small or large). Thus, farming insects contributes less to climate change and overall pollution levels. However, farming insects such as crickets has not had the benefit of advanced farming practices, technology and innovations that other animal derived commodities have had over the past 150+ years. Insect farming has remained entirely manual, much smaller scale and largely unchanged for at least 60+ years. Due largely to lack of mechanization and innovation, these inefficiencies result in high costs and unreliable supply. Frozen crickets cost $4-$10 per pound. Compared to other protein sources, this is high. Cricket powder is at $24 per pound. Cricket powder requires 4 pounds of crickets to produce 1 pound of powder). Thus, any cost reductions in cricket production will result in a 4 fold corresponding reduction in the cost of dried products/ingredients made from them. In order to become competitive in the market, frozen cricket prices must drop to $1 per pound. The current Phase II SBIR funding will allow us to refine and commercialize our successful Phase I innovations to improve the feasibility of insects as a mainstream agricultural product and food ingredient. With those funds we will be able to: 1) improve efficiency/cost and mechanize cricket mass harvesting and freezing through refinement of our Phase I cricket harvesting/flash freezing prototype, 2) refine our Phase I prototype to produce a market-ready device to improve efficiency/cost of water delivery to crickets and 3) develop at least 5 new cricket feed formulations which will be quickly commercialized on new and existing farms.All Things Bugs LLC (www.crickepowder.com) continues to commercialize its innovations the rapidly growing human consumption market. Recently, all major news sources have covered insect as an up and coming source of food, often mentioning our company. Examples include: Huffington Post, Forbes, Fortune, Fast Company, The Newyorker, Fox News and many others. Further, as a leader in the industry in innovation and as the largest manufacturer of high quality insect based ingredients, our company is well positioned to commercialize technologies from this project. Our company has had great commercial success with its finely milled whole cricket powder (GrioproTM) (developed from other Phase I and Phase II USDA SBIR projects), including nearly half $1 million (over 10,000 pounds of cricket powder) in sales. Our product far out-performs the competition in overall quality as finer, ligher colored and overall better functionality in a wide variety of food and beverage products. It is being used by other companies in protein bars, baked goods. protein shakes, snacks, pastas and many other products on the market. We believe that these innovations will be broadly useful beyond crickets for farms producing other edible insects such as grasshoppers, mealworms and others. If successful, with this Phase II project, our company will be a step toward revolutionizing the food industry and an important change for agriculture by improving production efficiencies and scale of an entire Class of animals largely ignored to date - Insecta.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
20%
Developmental
70%
Goals / Objectives
As the human population grows, it is ever more important to sustain rather than increase our levels of consumption from the earth and it's ecosphere. The market for protein is exploding. The global market for protein products was $15.2 billion in 2012. By 2017, these markets are projected to increase 30% to $20 billion dollars. Demand for protein has expanded well beyond the traditional body builder market into every area of life including weight loss, wellness, and sports nutrition among others. Yet already about 70% of agricultural land, and 30% of the total land on earth, is used to produce livestock. Thus, expanding the use of land for livestock production is neither feasible nor sustainable. The good news is farming insects, utilizes less energy, feed, land and water than other livestock at any scale (small or large). Thus, farming insects contributes less to climate change and overall pollution levels. However, farming insects such as crickets has not had the benefit of advanced farming practices, technology and innovations that other animal derived commodities have had over the past 150+ years. Insect farming has remained entirely manual, much smaller scale and largely unchanged for at least 60+ years. Due largely to lack of mechanization and innovation, these inefficiencies result in high costs and unreliable supply. Frozen crickets cost $4-$10 per pound. Compared to other protein sources, this is high. Cricket powder is at $24 per pound. Cricket powder requires 4 pounds of crickets to produce 1 pound of powder). Thus, any cost reductions in cricket production will result in a 4 fold corresponding reduction in the cost of dried products/ingredients made from them. In order to become competitive in the market, frozen cricket prices must drop to $1 per pound. The current Phase II SBIR funding will allow us to refine and commercialize our successful Phase I innovations to improve the feasibility of insects as a mainstream agricultural product and food ingredient. With those funds we will be able to: 1) improve efficiency/cost and mechanize cricket mass harvesting and freezing through refinement of our Phase I cricket harvesting/flash freezing prototype, 2) refine our Phase I prototype to produce a market-ready device to improve efficiency/cost of water delivery to crickets and 3) develop at least 5 new cricket feed formulations which will be quickly commercialized on new and existing farms.The section on "Phase II Work Plan" will describe how we plan to address these questions. These answers will address the interests of industry customers and consumers toward optimizing the commercialization and market potential for high quality protein powder products made from insects. All objectives and experiments will be designed to build on Phase I prototypes, discoveries and successes toward developing market-ready models for commercialization by the end of Phase II.Cricket Harvesting and Freezing• Can our Phase I prototype be improved to freeze crickets more efficiently at higher output? : Refine Phase I Cricket Harvesting Machine Build and Design; Build and Test a Commercial Scale Prototype Ready for Sale to Farms.• Do other materials and mesh sizes improve efficiency when sifting live crickets?• What are the ideal conveyor belt mesh sizes and materials to use for flash freezing crickets to reduce loss of yield from crickets getting stick in the belt while not compromising air flow?• What is the optimal air speed in a flash freezer to maximize cricket flash freezing rate while not blowing crickets off the belt?2. Efficient and Automated Cricket Watering System• Does the water system design affect cricket growth, food consumption, and survival? : Refine, Automate and Evaluate Phase I Prototype.• Does the new water system (from Phase I) reduces water contamination?• Can an automated version of Phase I design be produced?3. Development of Improved Cricket Feed Formulations• Can better feed formulations be developed with better cricket growth, higher fecundity and overall increased farm productivity? : Optimizing Cricket Feeds for Lower Cost and Higher Yields.• Can cricket feeds containing no animal sourced ingredients be developed that perform as well as or better than existing commercially available cricket feeds?• Can unconventional, agricultural/industrial byproducts or underutilized biomass be used to make cricket feed lower cost and more sustainable without compromising performance?
Project Methods
?Task 1. Cricket Harvesting: Work Item 1: To complete evaluation of our current prototype, we will conduct experimental mock production runs of crickets of quantities of 300 to 500 lbs. This will allow us to do about 10 replicates of each trial run. In these runs we will evaluate: 1) cricket flow rate, 2) optimal cricket throughput density, 3) percent of crickets adhering to harvester surfaces and not coming out into the bags and 4) quality parameters (such as temperature) of bags of harvested crickets at various production rates (pounds per hour).Work Item 2: During this Work Item we will evaluate test results from Work Item 1 and modify the existing prototype to eliminate problems identified in this Work Item 1 and Phase 1. In these runs we will evaluate: 1) cricket rate (pounds per hour) moving through the harvester, 2) percent of crickets sticking to harvester surfaces (testing at least 3 types of surfaces), 3) time between equipment cleaning cycles (ideally should be no less than 12 hours) and 4) quality aspects of crickets coming out of the harvester such as temperature.Work Item 3: Conduct final evaluations of the fully modified prototype.Work Item 4: During this Work Item, we shall design and construct a production harvest of larger capacity based on lessons learned in phase I and initial prototype testing in phase II from Work Items 1-3. This Work Item will generate a fully functional and commercially viable frozen cricket harvester ready to be used at any modern large scale cricket farm.Work Item 5: Conduct experimental tests similar to those in Work Items 1 and 2 on the new commercial scale harvester.Work Item 6: Install the new commercial scale harvester in a production facility, and test in a real world cricket farm setting. Experiments and evaluation of parameters similar to those in Work Items 1 and 2 will be conducted, but at larger scale with inputs being cricket farm staff shaking dividers from full sized cricket brooders into the hopper for separation from refuse, freezing and harvest into 50 pound bags as a fully automated single-step procedure for those staff. Task 2. Efficient and Automated Cricket Watering System: To achieve our objective of developing an improved automated cricket watering system, we plan the following Phase II experiments development work.Experiment 1, Experiments Testing Cricket Growth, Food Consumption and Survival Using Our Watering Prototype: Cricket eggs will be obtained by exposing plastic boxes filled with water saturated coconut husk to colonies of adult house crickets for 2 days. Oviposition boxes will be incubated at 27ºC until eggs hatched. Eclosing first instars will be aspirated into a petri dish and weighed. Groups consisting of 700 mg of first instars will be introduced to each of 6 rearing containers. The mean weight of one first instar is approximately 0.68 mg and the approximated number of crickets in 700 mg is 1,029. Initially each rearing container will be filled with 2 egg cartoons to provide shelter. Two water dispensing treatments will be compared. Treatment 1 will consist of conventional cricket water feeders lined with polyurethane foam to prevent drowning, and treatment 2 will consist of Phase I design based prototypes. The prototypes will be designed to hold the same water volume as the conventional water feeders. Food consumption will be measured by recording the exact weight provided to each rearing container. Rearing containers will be maintained in an environmental chamber at 27ºC, 65% RH, and 14 h photophase. At the end of 6 weeks, all alive crickets, remaining food, and frass will be weighed and recorded. Estimates of weight gained and food consumed will be transformed to dry-weight estimates using published estimates of cricket water content and by using previously obtained determinations of the water content of the cricket feed formulation and its hygroscopic characteristics after exposure to the same conditions used to grow the crickets for a period of 1 week. Total cricket live-weight at the end of 6 weeks, feed consumed and number of surviving crickets per container will be compared among water dispensing treatments.Evaluating Water Contamination: Samples of water will be taken from the water absorbing substrate and water jars. Samples will be analyzed for content of organic compounds such as ammonia, methane, urea, uric acid, etc. using a gas chromatograph / mass spectrometer.Development of Automated Cricket Watering System: Each of this systems tested will be tested for long term efficiency and lick control. The best candidates will be tested in a cricket colony from start to production in experiments designed as above described for the water dispensing simple design.Task 3. Development of Improved Cricket Feed Formulations: Self-Selection Study (6 months): This will be done using a self-selection providing a choice of food items of known composition, and developing a formulation based on the consumption data. Six groups of crickets will be placed in rearing containers as described above. Groups will consist of 700 mg of first instars. The groups will be provided with water and shelter as described above. Different food dishes will also be provided. Each dish will be filled with a different ingredient. Consumption of each ingredient will be measured for each of the groups. The groups will be allowed to grow and develop in environmental chambers at 27ºC, 65% RH, and 14:10 h (L:D) photoperiod for a period of 6 weeks. At the end of the experiment, crickets will be separated and weighed to determine weight gained.Cricket Feed Formulation Development and Evaluation Studies, and Testing Optimal Protein/Carbohydrate/Lipid Ratios: A feed will be formulated based on the relative consumption of each of the ingredients described in Experiment 1. This feed ("Diet S") will be compared with the best performing among feeds tested in Phase I. Two additional versions of Diet S will also be tested: a high protein "Diet P" and a high carbohydrate "Diet C" version. Comparisons of food consumed, weight gained, cricket survival, and food utilization will be done among 3 treatments using groups of 700 mg of first instars (6 per treatment) for a period of 6 weeks (conditions described above). Results will be used to formulate new diets using the information obtained from the self-selection experiment and used to formulate Diet S.Data analysis: Means of weight gained, food consumed, number of surviving crickets, and ECI values will be analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and compared among treatments using the Tukey-Kramer HSD test. The ECI values will be root square arc-sine transformed before analysis to eliminate bias due to their binomial distribution. General linear model (GLM) will be used to analyze weight gained in relation to number of surviving individuals and compare it among treatments using least square mean Tukey-Kramer HSD test.Evaluation of Improved Diet Effect on Fecundity (reproductive capacity): After weighed, counted and recorded, crickets will be returned to their rearing boxes to complete development on their respective food treatment. Twelve groups of 2 males and 2 females from each food treatment will be placed in plastic boxes modified with 6 screened windows on the sides and two on the cover. Cricket groups will be provided with water, pieces of egg cartoon as shelter, food of their respective treatment formulation, and a petri dish filled with water-saturated coconut husk as oviposition substrate. Oviposition dishes will be replaced daily for a period of 6 days. Oviposited dishes will be placed in environmental chamber to allow eggs to complete development. First instars from each group and oviposition day will be counted. Progeny per female will be compared among treatments and oviposition dates using GLM accounting for adult mortality occurring during the experiment.