Feeding humanity cannot be accomplished with linear thinking.
We need circular, holistic solutions that leverage diversity.
Systemic Solutions
The closer you look at insects in our agriculture, the more you can see how they’re poised to potentially solve some of the most problematic agricultural and health challenges we face.
Dear Change-Maker,
The challenges we are facing today are so large that sustainability can no longer be just a vision, but it needs to be a starting point with how we approach our food. We need to go beyond that and repair some of the damage caused by industrialized agriculture.
Insects can play a major role in solving some of these challenges because they’re at the very forefront of two idea revolutions occurring right now.
The first is that we’re shifting our mentality from an extraction, monoculture based mentality more to an ecosystem approach that views health and value in diversity. Luckily for us there’s examples of healthy ecosystems all over - and they’re called nature.
Nature = Successful System
Nature’s ecosystems are not propped up by stored energy from fossil fuels and petrochemicals fertilizers pesticides. In fact, they thrive in diversity, and that’s what makes them resilient to changes in our climate. Nature is a closed-loop system (unlike industrial agriculture.)
Successful Systems = Scale
Nature’s systems are big and small. The second major idea revolution occurring right now is to focus on the beneficial impact of microbes. Insects represent a confluence of those two ideas because they are more than just a little organism; they’re actually an ecosystem of these microbes that have evolved together for millions of years to work together.
Insects have incredibly important roles in our ecosystems. As a keystone species, ecosystems collapse without them. One of their biggest roles is processing organic waste - in recovering nutrients.
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