United Nations: Eat more ants and grasshoppers to avoid starvation

Tuesday, June 18, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: eating insects, food supply, survival

(NaturalNews) World hunger would not really be that big of an issue if people would just eat more insects as part of their normal diet. This is the basic premise of a new report recently put out by the United Nations (U.N.) Food and Agriculture Organization (F.A.O.), which actually makes the claim that ants, grasshoppers and other bugs are somehow healthier and better for the environment than the traditional protein-dense foodstuffs we are all used to eating.

The ridiculous proposal gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Let them eat cake!" Except for the fact that, to most people living in developed countries, being told to eat bugs by an unelected and highly-corrupt entity like the U.N. is far more offensive. Worse is the fact that the U.N. is pulling out all the usual propaganda to push its new bug-eating agenda, including the tired warnings about how eating meat contributes to "global warming."

"Insects are healthy, nutritious alternatives to mainstream staples such as chicken, pork, beef and even fish," claims the U.N. in its report. "They have high feed-conversion efficiency (an animal's capacity to convert feed mass into increased body mass) ... (and) they emit relatively few GHGs (greenhouse gases) and relatively little ammonia."

You can read the full U.N. report, entitled Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security, here:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e00.htm

To be fair, the report presents some valid ideas about using insects to feed chickens, for instance, which aligns with what these creatures would normally eat if they were not forcibly confined to cages and fed soybean and corn meal for commercial production. But the leap to suggesting that humans should also eat more bugs is insulting, particularly to Westerners and others for whom eating such creatures have never been a cultural norm.

Diversified, grass-based, 'beyond organic' production methods are what will truly feed a growing planet

But when cattle are raised properly on pasture, and in harmony with the natural surroundings of a particular area, there can exist a truly sustainable balance capable of producing more than enough food for the needs of a local community without the need to eat bugs. The same is true for crops grown biodynamically using traditional methods that actually enrich soil and benefit the environment. These are the methods embraced by people like Joel Salatin, who successfully manages a biodynamic farm in Virginia that has been in his family for decades.

"If we quit feeding cows corn, and practiced mob stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization, 70 percent of the world's arable land could return to perennial prairie polycultures building soil and sequestering carbon," explained Salatin in a 2009 interview with TreeHugger.com. "If every suburban - or urban, for that matter - lot and mega-yard became an edible landscape, supermarkets would be gone."

These and many other nature-based concepts of growing and raising food are completely ignored by the U.N., which is more concerned with towing the status quo and convincing the world that there is no other route to food security and abundance than to convert to an insect-based diet. But we know better. A decentralized, localized system of food production that works in conjunction with nature rather than in defiance of it is the true future of food, and one that does not require completely scrapping the basic foods people have eaten for millennia.

"Can I feed the world? That's a wonderful question, one of my favorites," said Salatin to The Observer's Gaby Wood during an interview back in 2010 about the biodynamic, grass-based farming methods his family has utilized for generations. "Not only can we feed the world, this is the only system that really can feed the world."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.myfoxny.com/story/22233951/un-says-why-not-eat-more-insects

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.polyfacefarms.com/speaking-protocol/joels-bio/

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/Sept10_Salatin.pdf

http://www.guardian.co.uk