“Big protein”: insect-eating farmers in Zimbabwe | Climate

“Oh, they sing! I like their voices. I like to be in a room full of crickets,” Esnath Divasoni said excitedly, her eyes gleaming behind the big glasses. She was wearing a blue and green dress and black jacket, her hair tied back, and she was smiling during the Zoom call. “I like what I am doing and why I do it,” she said.

The 33-year-old’s mother is an insect-eating farmer in rural eastern Zimbabwe. Although people in her village and elsewhere eat insects and worms that have been foraged in the forest or collected during crop harvesting for generations, the young entrepreneur has found a way to reproduce them year-round in enough quantities to feed her Communities and help mitigate the effects of climate change.

In 2020, she established an edible insect production unit in a small corrugated-roofed room on Marondera’s parent farm about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Like her parents, everyone in her community is a small farmer who grows corn, jelly beans, peanuts, tobacco and other crops, and raises cattle and chickens. Their farm is one of 150 homesteads in three villages, which are located on flat landscapes where rivers and dams intersect.

As in other places in sub-Saharan Africa, life in the village has become increasingly difficult. The country is experiencing severe food insecurity, millions of people already need humanitarian assistance, according to 2020 Global Food Crisis Report Forecast (GFCRF). “Climate change has become more extreme in the past few years. We have experienced floods and droughts,” Divasoni explained. She added that this reduces crop yields, leading to malnutrition, hunger and poverty-and education also declines because parents cannot afford to send their children to school when resources are limited. According to the report, Zimbabwe is one of the 10 countries in the world where less than 20% of babies receive a minimum adequate diet, which affects their quality of life throughout their lives.

When Divasoni grew up, her parents valued education but were unable to pay for all children’s secondary school expenses. “Family resources were limited at the time. It was normal to get married at the age of 15. Many people believed that a woman’s highest achievement was marriage. So my four sisters got married early,” Divasoni said.

But she wanted to study. The international non-governmental organization CAMFED (Female Education Movement) scholarship allowed her to go to secondary school and then to the University of Costa Rica, becoming the first person in the village to leave his family to study abroad.

She is now one of the two core trainers CAMFED Agricultural Planning Guide, To show young women from poor rural backgrounds how to apply innovative indigenous agricultural techniques to help them adapt to and respond to climate change. So far, Divasoni and her partner have trained 320 agricultural guides in various regions, and these new trainees are now passing on their knowledge to other women across the country. They pay attention to women because they are often the first to feel the effects of climate change when they cultivate the land and support their families. In many parts of Asia and Africa, women account for 60% of the agricultural labor force. according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Protein of the future

While studying agricultural science at the Earth University of Costa Rica, Divasoni was determined to find a way to solve the problems of malnutrition and food insecurity in her community and other areas. “I like to eat insects, so I studied them,” she said with a smile. “From childhood to growth, we used to pick insects from trees in summer and then use plastic bags to collect insects after harvest. Everyone is doing this, and this trend continues today.” But she wanted to find a way, Let families have a richer and more regular source of insects instead of the few insects they can only collect at certain times of the year.

She discovered that crickets are a sustainable and affordable source of protein. “They are very nutritious. They are low in fat and high in protein, vitamins and minerals,” she said. More importantly, they require very few resources, and unlike cattle, they produce almost no greenhouse gases, she added.

Crickets are native to this area and cannot fly. They have many natural enemies such as lizards, mice and chickens, so they do not run away and pose the risk of plague like locusts, which are devastating crops throughout Africa. She remembers that when she was young, people tried to harvest locust swarms, but she would not recommend this now because they might be full of pesticides and other chemicals designed to destroy them.

After choosing crickets, she tried to design a simple, inexpensive and user-friendly way to breed crickets so that other women in her community could learn to do so.

Adult cricket [Photo courtesy of Lameck Marondera]

She said that anyone can build a cricket farm because it requires very little space and equipment. Her room is a simple 5×7 meter room, with rows of large blue and green laundry tubs stacked on two shelves. “I didn’t buy anything. I use everything around me. We have to be very creative,” she said. “The feeding container is a large dishwashing for washing blankets”, she covered it with a cloth. She added egg cartons to the crickets, made them hide underneath as if they were in the wild, and recycled plastic trays of meat or fruit from the supermarket for them to feed. Other daily containers are used as incubators and water dispensers.

She feeds the crickets with special dried beans, sorghum, and a little calcium every five days, supplemented with crumbs from the kitchen and vegetables from the garden. “I only use local resources, so I don’t need to import soybeans or anything else. The things I put in the crickets will go back to the garden because of their poop. [high in nitrogen and phosphorus] It’s a very good fertilizer,” she explained.

When the crickets mature after five to eight weeks, according to the temperature, their eggs are collected to start a new production cycle, and then the adults are harvested. A few seconds in hot water will kill them, and then they can be boiled in slightly salty water, fried, grilled or dried to add to broths and soups. An adult cricket can grow to three centimeters long and one centimeter wide. She said, “They are large pieces of protein,” with edible legs and wings, and they taste a bit like fried chicken skin.

Esna takes care of the crickets [Photo courtesy of Lameck Marondera]

At first, people in her community were skeptical. “They never thought you could grow insects. For them, it was a waste of space and money. They told my parents:’Your daughter has gone abroad, and now she brings this American thing to the community’,” she said laughingly. “But now, this is normal.” She keeps crickets for family and friends, and sells a pack of 50 grams of dried crickets for $1 in the market.

For a family of four or five, a nutritious meal needs about 100 grams to 200 grams of insects. They are usually paired with saza, which is a staple food made from high-quality corn, which is quite light, so the crispy and salty crickets add flavor.

Divasoni now has 20 barrels, each barrel can produce about 1,000 crickets or about 1 kilogram of high-quality protein every five to eight weeks. She said that to produce the same amount of chicken requires twice as much feed, four times as much space and ten times as much water.

“Insects are a climate-smart way of producing protein. They are the proteins of the future,” she said. Her plan is to first establish a large insect-eating farmers network throughout the community, and then go further afield. She has trained 15 women in her community, and each woman has started training another 4 women so that they can all support their families and generate income. “I did this not only to make money for myself, but also for other women, because fighting malnutrition is not a journey of one person.”

Esnath conducts training courses in her community [Lameck Marondera/Al Jazeera]

‘Kids love this meal’

It is too early to assess the diet and economic impact of eating insects on the community, because women have just started to grow insects and the output is still limited. But many people say they are grateful that they have learned a new way to support their families. “This is a welcome intervention,” said Judith, 65, who takes care of her four primary school grandchildren. “Due to the outbreak of the disease, we lost all our chickens. But now, we have a source of animal protein, and children like cricket meals.”

Divasoni believes that her model can be replicated in other parts of the country and throughout Africa. She said that Kenya already has many cricket farmers, and the country’s Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology in Bondo has a complete department that specializes in insect production and research for human and animal consumption, funded by the World Bank.

She considers her edible insect cultivation and training to complement her leadership role in the CAMFED Agricultural Guidelines, showing women and young people how to improve them through climate-smart methods such as soil conservation, irrigation, fertilization, pest management, and agroforestry. Farm productivity and sustainability.

“I am working with my community to mitigate the impact of what is happening far away from us for generations and in many cases. Through the small but powerful things we are doing, we are able to reduce the impact of climate change on ourselves Impact on life and build adaptability for future generations,” she said.