

Olympia Yarger is a cutting edge Australian insect farmer on a mission
Goterra as a waste management company
Olympia’s key idea has always been turning agricultural and post-consumer waste back into feed and food. “If insects are to be truly sustainable, they cannot just be a smaller animal to feed. They have to do a job of consuming waste that is not useful or causes trouble in conventional agriculture. So, we have gone looking for waste streams around the country – quality marc from vineyards, rice hulls, nut hulls, cotton trash – and are trying our mealworms on different substrates and analysing how it affects their nutritional value. We believe insect farming will play a vital role in the future success of Australian producers by providing an alternative to labour intensive, high infrastructure costs of traditional waste management options.”
Australia has just been experiencing a severe drought and, if it continues long enough, eventually these waste streams will be used elsewhere. In the meantime, they are a challenge for primary producers to deal with and an ideal substrate for Olympia.
In Australia, insects are considered animals, and farmers must abide by the same regulations as for livestock in terms of feed standards. This means the waste streams they are fed must still be acceptable for human consumption, nothing putrid or damaged, even if it is what they would consume in nature.
Plenty of reasons to eat insects
There are at nearly 2000 known edible species all with unique flavours and textures. From the juicy huhu grubs of New Zealand to the crunchy fried grasshoppers in Mexico or the raw honey ants in Australia, there is so much diversity!
Crickets are one of the most appealing edible insects in the West3 and have attracted most of the media attention in recent years. If you’ve seen any of this media, you will know that crickets are composed of 60 to 80% protein, contain more iron than beef, and as much calcium as milk.4
They also boast some very impressive environmental statistics. Compared to beef5 crickets:
require 15 000 fewer litres of water per kilogram of meat produced,
are 12 times more efficient at converting feed to protein,
produce 100 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and
require very little land and mature in a rapid eight-week cycle.
While this may not be enough to overcome an ingrained ‘ick’ factor6 it is certainly hard to contradict.
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION (FAO), 2019. Insects for food and feed. FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization [online]. 18.03.2019. [Accessed on 27.03.2019]. Available on: http://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/
GRILO PROTEIN, 2018. Why you should start eating insects. Grilo Protein [online, accessed on 27.03.2019]. Available on: https://griloprotein.com.au/why-eat-crickets/
VAN HUIS, Arnold, VAN ITTERBEECK, Joost, KLUNDER, Harmke et al., 2013. Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security [online]. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. [Accessed on 12.06.2019]. Available on: http://www.fao.org/3/i3253e/i3253e.pdf
WILKINSON, Kerry, MUHLHAUSLER, Beverly, MOTLEY, Crystal et al., 2018. Australian Consumers’ Awareness and Acceptance of Insects as Food. Insects. 19.04.2018. Vol. 9, no 2. DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/insects9020044
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