A Man's Gotta Eat - Agroecology and Food Security

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > A Man's Gotta Eat - Agroecology and Food Security

cloneboy: May 7, 2014

rudatron posted:

I think if you can find a good way of leeching heavy metals from sewage, you can 'close the cycle' and treat sewage instead of pumping it out into the ocean. But as it is now you have to, otherwise that stuff will just slowly build up. It's kind of both a technological problem, but more than that a development problem. We have great technology to produce from raw inputs, but not the technology to recycle efficiently (disassemble back into raw inputs). Though you could mitigate some problems with heavy regulation, there's just still a lot of things you just can't do.

There's been some research showing that composting worms will absorb heavy metals into their systems, leaving it out of the compost they process.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120816133420.htm

I've read about similar results with mycoremediation.

There are quite a few municipalities that already compost sewage, but they typically utilize conventional composting processes that don't seem to account for heavy metals and other contaminants.

Troutful posted:

Crickets thrive on leftovers (up to and including literal garbage) and can easily be raised indoors, in a shack, etc. Industrialized cricket farming is already a thing, the bugs just wind up in pet food instead of people food. I used to raise crickets for research projects in college and I would have eaten them, too, if I hadn't been worried about parasites.

I could go on and on about the benefits of crickets-as-food (they're ridiculously nutritious! many vegetarians will eat them! they're probably kosher!), but a whole lot of consumers were raised on the "never touch a bug" principle and that's obviously going to hugely influence their dietary decisions. Crickets do seem to be gaining some traction among the health food crowd, though, for whatever that's worth. I'm pretty optimistic about the future of entomophagy in general. It's really no more disgusting than eating shrimp or other shellfish -- people just need to be persuaded.

I've seen some very interesting information about black soldier fly larvae ("Phoenix worms," "soldier grubs," etc.) being used for waste management, and apparently they're very high in calcium and protein.

I'm sure I could get over my personal ick factor if they were ever presented for me to eat, but at the very least they could be used for animal feed.

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