MALNUTRITION: FAO man on mission to swap chicken wings for insects diet

Serge Verniau is a man with a mission: to persuade the world to swap the chicken wings and steaks on their plates for crickets, palm weevils and other insects rich in protein and vitamins.




Verniau, the Laos representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is only half-joking when he says his dream is “to feed the big metropolises from Tokyo to Los Angeles, via Paris” with the small arthropods.
He plans to present the lessons drawn from a pilot project to the world at a conference on edible insects, probably in 2012.
“Most of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Trying to feed the whole planet enough protein from cows won’t work,” Verniau told AFP.
It is not by chance that the dream was born in landlocked Laos, one of the world’s poorest countries.
Almost one quarter of its population of six million people, and nearly 40 per cent of children below the age of five, suffer from malnutrition, according to figures from the Laos government.
The typical rice-based diet provides insufficient nutrients for development — a shortfall that could be filled by insects, highly rich in protein and vitamins.
Eaten as snacks, grilled or fried, they are already part of Laos cuisine, but most people do not know how to breed them, said Oudom Phonekhampheng, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the National University of Laos.

Different food
“They just take them in the wild and eat them, and then it is finished and destroyed. They have to think about the future,” he said.
In a modest building in the suburbs of the capital, his department’s laboratory collects scientific data on this new area of breeding.

Along with house crickets — which are already widely farmed in neighbouring Thailand — there are experiments in breeding mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants, which are appreciated for their larvae.
The students are trying out different foods for the insects in an attempt to reduce costs while maintaining quality, explains Yupa Hanboonsong, a Thai entomologist supervising the project for the FAO.
Up to now, the roughly 20 cricket farms operating in Laos have used chicken feed, like thousands of Thai farms, but it is expensive and must be imported.
Vegetables or waste left over from the production of the national beer, BeerLao, could be one solution, said Yupa, who hopes to “train the whole country”.
Beyond the fight against malnutrition, this new economic activity can also generate revenue for farmers, added Yupa.


Farming insects
Phouthone Sinthiphanya, 61, seized the opportunity in 2007 to supplement his meagre pension after a career in the tobacco industry.
The 27 cylindrical concrete vats, about 50cm (20 inches) tall, installed in the garden of his house in Vientiane produce 67kg (148 pounds) of crickets every two months, he explains.
One kilo of live insects fetches Sh628.80 ($7.5 dollars). The same quantity crushed sells for Sh524 ($6.25).
“I worked for a tobacco company and then retired. My pension was not enough so I started farming insects,” he said.
“Our customers are restaurants, villagers, markets,” he said, adding that breeding the small creatures was “easy”.
It requires little space or natural resources and only their singing might annoy the neighbours.
“Insect farming creates less damage to the environment. It is a green protein,” said Yupa.
Proponents believe such nutritional and environmental advantages could be beneficial beyond Laos, particularly in other developing countries where people are used to eating cicadas and grasshoppers.

“You can make powder from crickets that is very rich in protein. It’s low in fat and it can be added to biscuits in problem areas where food rations are distributed,” said Verniau.
Nor has he given up hope of persuading sceptics in the West.
“When you look closely, a grey shrimp or a cricket, it has the same appeal,” he joked.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/FAO+man+on+mission+to+swap+chicken+wings+for+insects+diet/-/539444/1151172/-/item/0/-/kqsp27/-/index.html

MALNUTRITION: Are insects the answer to global malnutrition?

Amelie Bottollier-Depois (AFP)
VIENTIANE — Serge Verniau is a man with a mission: to persuade the world to swap the chicken wings and steaks on their plates for crickets, palm weevils and other insects rich in protein and vitamins.

 Eaten as snacks, grilled or fried, insects are part of Laos cuisine

Verniau, the Laos representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is only half-joking when he says his dream is "to feed the big metropolises from Tokyo to Los Angeles, via Paris" with the small arthropods.

He plans to present the lessons drawn from a pilot project to the world at a conference on edible insects, probably in 2012.
"Most of the world's population will live in urban areas. Trying to feed the whole planet enough protein from cows won't work," Verniau told AFP.
It is not by chance that the dream was born in landlocked Laos, one of the world's poorest countries.
Almost one quarter of its population of six million people, and nearly 40 percent of children below the age of five years old, suffer from malnutrition, according to figures from the Laos government.
The typical rice-based diet provides insufficient nutrients for development -- a shortfall that could be filled by insects, highly rich in protein and vitamins.
Eaten as snacks, grilled or fried, they are already part of Laos cuisine, but most people do not know how to breed them, said Oudom Phonekhampheng, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the National University of Laos.
"They just take them in the wild and eat them, and then it is finished and destroyed. They have to think about the future," he said.
In a modest building in the suburbs of the capital, his department's laboratory collects scientific data on this new area of breeding.
Along with house crickets -- which are already widely farmed in neighbouring Thailand -- there are experiments in breeding mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants, which are appreciated for their larvae.
The students are trying out different foods for the insects in an attempt to reduce costs while maintaining quality, explains Yupa Hanboonsong, a Thai entomologist supervising the project for the FAO.
Up to now, the roughly 20 cricket farms operating in Laos have used chicken feed, like thousands of Thai farms, but it is expensive and must be imported.
Vegetables or waste left over from the production of the national beer, BeerLao, could be one solution, said Yupa, who hopes to "train the whole country."
Beyond the fight against malnutrition, this new economic activity can also generate revenue for farmers, added Yupa.
Phouthone Sinthiphanya, 61, seized the opportunity in 2007 to supplement his meager pension after a career in the tobacco industry.
The 27 cylindrical concrete vats, about 50 centimetres (20 inches) tall, installed in the garden of his house in Vientiane produce 67 kilos (148 pounds) of crickets every two months, he explains.
One kilo of live insects fetches 60,000 kips (7.5 dollars). The same quantity crushed sells for 50,000 kips.
"I worked for a tobacco company and then retired. My pension was not enough so I started farming insects," he said.
"Our customers are restaurants, villagers, markets," he said, adding that breeding the small creatures was "easy".
It requires little space or natural resources and only their singing might annoy the neighbours.
"Insect farming creates less damage to the environment. It is a green protein," said Yupa.
Proponents believe such nutritional and environmental advantages could be beneficial beyond Laos, particularly in other developing countries where people are used to eating cicadas and grasshoppers.
"You can make powder from crickets that is very rich in protein. It's low in fat and it can be added to biscuits in problem areas where food rations are distributed," said Verniau.
Nor has he given up hope of persuading sceptics in the West.
"When you look closely, a grey shrimp or a cricket, it has the same appeal," he joked.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hyoufi5B9D0hcEhU00IAnpYHwq8A?docId=CNG.ec3ddaed040906001d877372bf5bec99.4e1

POVERTY: Laos: Eat more insects!

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Insect farming aims to end food insecurity in Laos

Mike Ives: 15 March 2011


 Farmed insects: coming soon to plates in Laos: Flickr/avlxyz

[HANOI] What is the best way to raise and cook crickets, mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants? A research and demonstration site in Laos aims to find out, as part of a push to provide food security in the country.
Laotian farmers will be taught how to rear and process the insects, in the hope of turning a food source that is largely foraged into one that is farmed instead.
Food insecurity is widespread in Laos, and sustainable insect farming will provide income for farmers as well as food, according to the site's sponsor, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Insects are just as nutritious as cattle and poultry, according to FAO, and farming them could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions, say researchers at Waegineng University in Netherlands.
The demonstration site, to be launched this month (28–30 March) at the National University of Laos in Vientiane, will research the best ways of raising and cooking crickets, mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants.
Approximately 95 per cent of Laotians already eat insects, according to the FAO, and the practice is culturally acceptable.
"Many people in developing countries already eat insects, but they usually collect them from the wild," said Yupa Hanboonsong, the FAO's chief technical officer for the edible-insect project and entomology professor at Khon Kaen University in Thailand.
"It would be better if they grew insects in their gardens."
But there are many gaps in agricultural knowledge of how best to farm them that the research will attempt to address.
Research will focus on reducing production costs, assessing nutritional content and developing food-safety standards, Hanboonsong told SciDev.Net, noting that researchers will strike a balance between cooking insects and preserving taste.
The researchers will also explore ways of grinding insects into baking powder, she said, because some consumers "don't like to see the legs" of the insects they eat.
Establishing food safety guidelines would help Laotians sell their insects both domestically and abroad, Hanboonsong said, adding that insects are already sold commercially in Thailand.
Growing insects on 20 square metres of land could net a Laotian farmer US$100 per month, said Krilert Tawekul, professor of sustainable agriculture and food security at Khon Kaen University. And insects require much less start-up investment than chickens or cows, he added.
Tawekul said that rearing insects is a "simple technology" that should be promoted in other developing countries. Khon Kaen University will host 20 African agricultural experts for a five-week study tour of Thai insect farms this spring.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/insect-farming-aims-to-end-food-insecurity-in-laos.html

MALNUTRITION: Eating insects 'could cut greenhouse gas emissions'

Benjamin Kolb: 17 January 2011
 Eating insects is common in many parts of the world: Flickr/katesheets

Dining on crickets, locusts, or even cockroaches, instead of cattle or pigs, could ease both food insecurity and climate change, according to researchers.
Insects caught in the wild are already eaten widely in the developing world. Now a study says that farming them on a large scale for food would damage the environment far less than equivalent livestock production.
Scientists compared emissions, by livestock and by insects, of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, which have a greater warming effect than carbon dioxide. They also measured ammonia production, which harms the environment by acidifying soil and water.
They reared mealworms, locusts and crickets, all of which are consumed around the world, as well as sun beetles and cockroaches, which people do not eat, despite their potential as a protein source, while monitoring the amount of gas produced per kilogram of insect growth.
Compared to cattle, weight for weight, insects emitted 80 times less methane — a gas with 25 times more impact on global temperature levels than carbon dioxide.
And crickets produced 8–12 times less ammonia than pigs.
According to the study's lead author, Dennis Oonincx, an entomologist from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, 80 per cent of the world's population eats insects, particularly in the developing world.
"It's a normal part of the menu there," said Oonincx. "If you look at the mopane ['worm' or edible caterpillar] industry in Africa, it's a million dollar business."
Most of these insects are harvested live in the wild, so collection is subject to seasonal variation — they are only farmed in a few countries, he said.
Arnold van Huis, the paper's co-author and professor of tropical entomology at Wageningen University, helped formulate the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) policy on edible insects.
He said they are an "excellent food source ... that should be nurtured" and taken up as an alternative to cattle.
"I don't think we can continue eating beef like we did in the past and the FAO has already predicted that in 2050 it will become so expensive no-one [will be able to] pay for it any more."
In Kenya, Monica Ayieko, a family and consumer economist at Maseno University, is studying insect production but said the 'Westernisation' of diets could pose an obstacle to encouraging consumption.
A spokesperson for the International Livestock Research Institute, in Kenya, which published a paper last year on improving the carbon efficiency of cattle farming, said that it recognises the value of widening the use of nutritious insects in poor communities. But "no one solution — livestock or otherwise — is going to provide sufficient food and do so sustainably".
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/eating-insects-could-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions-.html

MALNUTRITION: LAOS: Critter cuisine could feed a nation

VIENTIANE, 14 June 2010 (IRIN) - After a hard day's work, Bounpheng Wattana and his friends like nothing better with a cold beer than a mouthful of creepy-crawlies. In his opinion, insects are the ultimate organic food."These are local and natural foods from our country, so Lao people like this kind of food because there are no chemicals. They are natural foods," said Bounpheng.While tasty critters may be a popular city snack, investing in sustainable insect farming and promoting the benefits of bug-gobbling could form part of the answer to alleviating chronic malnutrition in Laos, said Vonglokham Phouvanh from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) .
"Insects can provide a good source of protein, fats, carbohydrates, calcium, vitamins and other minerals - this is an essential part of human nutrition," he said. A 2007 World Food Programme (WFP) [http://www.wfp.org/] report estimated that about 40 percent of children were malnourished or stunted, one of the worst rates in Southeast Asia, while the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Report 2009 [http://hdr.undp.org/] indicates that 40 percent of Lao children under five are underweight.Promoting insects could help alleviate the problem, and the potential is there - a recent FAO survey found that more than 95 percent Laotians snack on critters. There are about 1,700 edible insect species worldwide but their nutritional benefits are a relatively recent discovery.Breeding bugsTo capitalize on this and ensure sustainability, FAO has a programme focused on the whole chain - from bug breeding to commercialization and consumption.Vankham Duangbutby started breeding crickets from her home in the suburbs of Vientiane five years ago and soon realized how profitable it could be."At first I did a little farming, just tried with two cylinders of crickets. After we found it worked we continued to farm until we had 56 cylinders. When we sell, on average, we can earn one million kip [US$115] a month," Vankham said.She now receives advice and equipment from FAO to help with her cricket farming.One of the attractions of insect farming is its simplicity, Bounthavy Sisouphanthong, vice-minister of planning and investment, told IRIN."You don't need to have lots of land, you don't need lots of equipment and you don't need that much knowledge, and then you can make a business," he said.Beating povertyInsect farming can be a lucrative venture. Neighbouring Thailand cannot satisfy its growing demand for insects and already imports from countries including Cambodia and Myanmar, FAO said.Serge Verniau, FAO's representative in Laos, thinks insects could play a part in tackling world poverty."The vision of FAO is not just to reduce chronic malnutrition in Laos, which is of course the core objective, but also to feed the grand metropolises in the future, from Calcutta to Shanghai and even New York to Rome. This great food source is also environmentally friendly to produce and needs much less energy and space than conventional meats," Verniau said.