On average,only about 10% of what a cow eats will be gained as weight. The rest is lost as heat as the cow moves about during the day. For insects, nearly 90% of what it eats will become weight, making insects a far ore efficient way of raising protein than most farm animals.

Nearly a third of all the fish caught in the oceans ends up being fed to livestock. At a time when fisheries around the world are collapsing, we need to find sustainable alternatives. If we can raise insects so efficiently, we can replace high protein fish with high protein insects.

Every year around the world, millions of tonnes of food are thrown away into landfills, where they breakdown and release methane into the atmosphere. If we were to feed it to our insects though, we could turn a net producer of pollution into a valuable and worthwhile product.

Eating insects is great for your health! Insects are high in protein and healthy fats, as well as calcium and iron, while being low in carbohydrates. The FAO has stated that eating insects is better your your health than eating more commonly eaten livestock, such as beef.

One consideration with current farming is the welfare of the animals. Most animals do not like cramped, dark conditions. Many insects, however, love those conditions! Farming insects intensively will hopefully help relieve the burdens of battery farming from other species.

If we are successful in testing our design, we will create a modular farm that can be stacked. That means we will be able to build farm vertically, and save space, allowing for better and more efficient land use. This means we can use land that would have been used for farming for other things instead.