Written by: Mannat Malhan
Edited by: Soham Parmer
Designed by: Yaashi Mulchandani
Published by: Marwa Damanhoury
Bugging the System: Why Tiny Insects Hold the Key to Future Food
If someone told you that the future of food might involve insects, you would probably have some questions. What kind? Why? And, most importantly, do you have to eat them? Insects are being looked at for something much bigger than putting a cricket on your dinner plate. Researchers and farmers are exploring how insects could fit into food systems as a source of protein, animal feed, and even fertilizer. Once you look at what insects can actually do, the idea starts to make sense.
Firstly, food systems produce large amounts of organic waste and by-products. Some of it is unavoidable: parts of crops that people don’t eat, materials left over from food processing, and other organic by-products. Usually we think of those things as waste, but insects see them differently. Species such as black soldier flies and mealworms can be raised on suitable organic materials and convert those nutrients into insect biomass. That biomass can then be processed into protein-rich feed ingredients. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has identified insects as a promising source of feed, partly because of their ability to use resources that might otherwise have limited value. From a sustainability perspective, insect farming becomes interesting. The goal isn’t necessarily to replace every other source of protein, but to find another way of getting useful nutrients out of materials we already have.
Then, there’s the stuff insects leave behind called frass. Frass is the waste produced by insects along with leftover material from their growing environment. It doesn’t sound impressive, but researchers are studying it as a possible fertilizer and soil solution. A 2025 study published in Scientific Reports found that insect frass can provide nutrients to soil and has potential as an agricultural fertilizer and emphasized that its effects can vary depending on the type of frass and how it’s used. So one insect could make protein and something that grows more crops.
That makes insects useful, but we should still consider their limitations. It would be easy to look at all of this and decide that insects are obviously the answer to food waste and sustainable protein. But they aren’t: insect farming still requires energy, water, equipment, transportation, and suitable feed. The environmental benefits depend heavily on how the insects are raised. A 2025 review in NPJ Sustainable Agriculture also pointed out that the idea of simply feeding insects food waste has limitations because not every type of waste is suitable or safe for insect production. There’s also the fact that people have to want the products. Eating insects is completely normal in some cultures and has been for a long time. The FAO estimates that around 2 billion people worldwide eat insects. For someone who didn’t grow up eating insects, though, the reaction can be very different. Insect farming doesn’t mean that everyone starts replacing their diet with bugs. Instead of showing up as a whole insect on your plate, insect protein could be used in animal feed. Black soldier fly larvae, mealworms, and other insects are already being studied and used for this purpose. That could make insect farming easier for consumers to accept. You might benefit from insect-based production without ever having to look at the bug that helped make it possible. This also connects to a bigger idea in agriculture: circularity. Instead of treating food production as a straight line where resources go in and waste comes out, a circular system tries to keep useful materials moving. Insects can be one way of connecting those steps. It obviously isn’t a perfect circle, and there are still plenty of questions about how these systems should be designed. But the basic idea is still worth paying attention to.
So, are bugs actually the future? Maybe, but not in the way we imagine it. Insects could become another source of animal feed, and their by-products could be used in agriculture. Some people may choose to eat insects directly, while others never will. The bigger lesson has less to do with insects themselves and more to do with how we think about food. We have gotten pretty good at producing food, but we also have to figure out how to use the resources behind that food more carefully. And if tiny bugs can help us turn some of what we currently throw away into something useful, maybe they’re worth taking a second look at. Even if you still don’t want one on your plate.
References
Biteau, C., Bry-Chevalier, T., Crummett, D., Loewy, K., Ryba, R., & St Jules, M. (2025). Have the environmental benefits of insect farming been overstated? A critical review. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 10.1111/brv.70076.
Owusu Fordjour Aidoo, Osei-Owusu, J., Asante, K., Aboagye Kwarteng Dofuor, Belinda Obenewa Boateng, Shadrack Kwaku Debrah, Kodwo Dadzie Ninsin, Shahida Anusha Siddiqui, & Chia, S. Y. (2023). Insects as Food and Medicine: A Sustainable Solution for Global Health and Environmental Challenges, 10(10).
Glover, D., & Sexton, A. (2015). Edible Insects and the Future of Food: A Foresight Scenario Exercise on Entomophagy and Global Food Security.
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Mohammad, S. F., Shah, A. A., Wanapat, M., El‐Mogy, M. M., Al‐Hoshani, N., & Alyami, E. M. (2026). Utilizing Insects to Convert Waste Into Nutrients for Sustainable Feed and Food Production. Entomological Research, 56(2).
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Corentin Biteau, Bry-Chevalier, T., Crummett, D., Ryba, R., & Jules, M. S. (2025). Bugs in the system: the logic of insect farming research is flawed by unfounded assumptions. NPJ Sustainable Agriculture, 3(1).
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van Huis, A., Halloran, A., Van Itterbeeck, J., Klunder, H., & Vantomme, P. (2022). How many people on our planet eat insects: 2 billion? Journal of Insects as Food and Feed, 8(1), 1–4.