Insects are gaining recognition among progressive agriculturalists for a few principal reasons:
1) The amount of land needed to raise crickets, mealworms, and other normal commercially produced is significantly lower than the amount of land needed to raise mammals and avians.

2) The FAO has estimated around 20,000 insect raising farms in Thailand. According to Daniela Martin, author of Edible, raising insects for food (especially crickets) is relatively low-resource (especially for water) but requires a heck of a lot of labour and maintenance, mostly because they reproduce so fast and eat a lot of corn.

3) Feeding “livestock” (tiny livestock) solely corn, and having it get converted into pure protein is way better than feeding a cow soy, corn, grain, and other feeding contents used to fatten the cow in a shorter amount of time. Crickets live an average 2.5 months. Therefore, their optimal slaughter time is relatively soon.

There are very few commercial producers in North America at the moment – Next Millennium farms / Entomo farms being the only producer in Canada. Their cricket powder is sold at CHOICES for over $7 per 1/2 oz to $11 per oz. It is relatively expensive considering a tablespoon equates to 45 calories and only 6g of protein. One would have to include several tablespoons of cricket powder to make their baked good rich in protein. According to Daniela Martin again, however, the same amount of protein in 312 cows can be produced in one year of a normal size cricket farm. It’s a no brainer that when land use, water usage, and feed consumptions are the deciding factors, crickets are still the bette protein option.

This is why further research and experimentation are required for increasing the efficiency and feasibility of eating crickets.