Solving World Hunger With Aphid Farms

[erialsneider]

For years the U.N. has been begging the world to embrace insects as a form of protein. The problem? Aside from the gross-out factor, they can be hard to catch, and when people do find a colony they rarely think to only take as much as the insects can produce, ensuring even those trying to take advantage of the protein we are literally surrounded by, can’t. The solution? An easy and sustainable insect farm!

Now, having scoured the insect farm and algae markets, many designs either are too costly to see widespread use in third world countries(algae), or simply don’t produce enough food for the space they take up(flies).

 

An overlooked source of protein, carbs and amino acids, aphids, or plant lice, are a potentially unparalleled food source. It was once said that if the offspring of ONE female aphid survive the summer, there would be enough aphids to stand in military formation circumferencing the planet several times. That’s right, it’s whatever million comes after quadrillion. Now, the beautiful part is that they not only feed on plants, but there is a type of aphid for literally almost every plant on earth. Currently, the only breed available to order online are pea aphids, which eat a variety of plants, most of which are very quick germinators and reach maturity in at most two months.

 

Imagine we could create a sustainable ecosystem, growing our quadrillion aphids, requiring only sunlight water, and backup plants. Simply knock off some aphids when your rice needs some protein, because the little green guys reach maturity in a week, producing about 50 to 100 eggs when they do, and for parts of the year they REPRODUCE ASEXUALLY, making the management of their population even easier. Additionally, there is an aphid breed for just about every plant in the world meaning we could pick the best pair for the production of organic matter.

 

Now, just as an example, imagine if we could get ahold of some bamboo aphids, which are commonplace in parts of the world, a pest, and remember that bamboo grows about three feet a day. Assuming that pair would be easily sustainable, think about the potential organic matter production.

What if we could create a sustainable food source that simply requires a temperate climate, sunlight and water, well, we could feed a lot of people. The distribution of seeds, plastic containers and the pests hardly even requires much infrastructure in-country to grow and distribute. On top of that, just think, protein that doesn’t require large tracts of land, which is a major obstacle in many starving countries.

 

P.S. If anyone lives in Asia, I will pay to get some bamboo aphids.

 

P.S.S In America, the allowable number of aphids in hops is 2,500 per 10 grams, so if you are grossed out, or worried about health issues, beer is basically aphid juice.

[JMJones0424]

If you were my neighbor, after I got over the urge to shoot you, I'd report you to the authorities. Rather than importing invasive species, I'd encourage you to first actually try growing something and observing the effect that aphids have on the plant. Then try harvesting aphids off of that plant. Your post is full of ideas, but it seems to me that you are short on experience.

[erialsneider]

Mr. Jones, I simply believed with the number of people dying every minute, more lives would be saved if I got the info out there, months before I would working by myself on a limited budget. As I stated I can't even access any breeds other than pea aphids. As far as Aphid farming experience, people have been farming them for years for their frogs and as I show below, ants farm them as well.

 

But so you aren't just taking my word for it, according to backyardnature.net, “Each of the many aphid species has its own life cycle, but there are some features uniting nearly all of them. One feature most species share is that they are incredibly prolific. Wingless adult female aphids can produce 50 to 100 offspring. A newly born aphid becomes a reproducing adult within about a week and then can produce up to 5 offspring per day for up to 30 days! The French naturalist Reaumur during the late eighteenth century calculated that if all the descendants of a single aphid survived during the summer and were arranged into a French military formation, four abreast, their line would extend for 27,950 miles, which exceeds the circumference of the earth at the equator!”

 

As far as their safety being in question, according to health.yahoo.net, “if you home-brew beer, you might consider growing your own hops: The FDA legally allows 2,500 aphids for every 10 grams of hops.”

 

And if that’s not enough, heck, ants are even doing it. Here’s a BBC video:

 

The only previous attempts at farming aphids I could find online were to feed people’s pet frogs, the concepts they used could be easily scaled up, and all were simply using pea aphids and pea plants, which is far from the best possible combination, in my opinion.

 

Another strength of using aphids as opposed to other insects, is that many aphids only can eat their host plant, meaning that the chances for environmental contamination from foreign species can be completely avoided, which is a major drawback to using insects to fight world hunger.

 

Another strength of using aphids as opposed to other insects, is that many aphids only can eat their host plant, meaning that the chances for environmental contamination from foreign species can be completely avoided, which is a major drawback to using insects to fight world hunger.

 

What remains for us is to figure out how to create a sustainable ecosystem for them to thrive in, plants that quickly produce seeds will be integral as ideally we will choose a plant that either can survive under attack from the aphids for a prolonged period of time, about a month at least, or quickly produce seeds, allowing us to constantly renew their food source, the key here is maximum amount of organic matter produced. This is why bamboo was my example, though I have done no tests myself. There are numerous options, Wisconsin fast plants(fastplants.org) are an intriguing option, as they are genetically modified to reach maturity, (producing seeds) in thirty days, among the fastest rates on the planet. Basically the only thing to left to deduce is what plant do aphids eat that can keep up with their unbelievable reproduction rates. And remember, as they reproduce asexually much of the year, they are going to be constantly harvested, leaving a small breeding population which will quickly balloon in size will be no problem, and will allow us to harvest some of them for food every week, which is a spectacular rate.

Edited November 3, 2013 by erialsneider

[Mountain]

Have you done any calculations on how much food plants your aphids would require to produce x amount of food for human consumption? I just ask because most places where people are starving, it is generally because they can't get anything to grow there in the first place.

 

Now, just a bit of math here.... the average adult weight for an aphid is 0.000017637oz, it would take 57,000 aphids to produce 1 pound of food. That is a lot of aphids, especially considering how short their life spans are. This does not take into account any losses to predation either, aphids are at the bottom of the food chain and are heavily predated upon. Aphids generally make it in the wild because they have ants to protect them within their symbiotic relationship.

 

To make enough food to feed even one person you would have to harvest at least 57,000 aphids per day, to account for predation you would have to raise probably at least twice that number per day. You would also have to have plants that would grow well in an arid climate and you would have to keep the aphids cool enough and hydrated enough so that they do not die. This does not even calculate in how much damage the aphids will do to the plants or whether the plants will be able to survive the climate and the aphids.....

 

Your aphid juice beer would contain .0441 ounces of aphid juice if they were at the very maximum allowable number, not exactly what I would term aphid juice beer.

 

I would say that you're heart is in the right place, but your mind is lost in the wilderness at the moment.....