Grub’s up

幼虫来助力

Beetles and flies are becoming part of the agricultural food chain

甲虫和苍蝇正在成为农业食物链的一部分

They are raised in farms and fed to fish

它们在农场里长大，被用来喂鱼

Jul 4th 2019

SOME VISIONARIES hope that insects will play a big role in future human diets. Insects are nutritious, being packed with protein. Unlike hot-blooded mammals and birds, which use a lot of energy to keep themselves warm, they are efficient converters of food into body mass. And in some parts of the world they are, indeed, eaten already.

一些梦想家希望昆虫在未来人类的饮食中扮演重要角色。昆虫富含蛋白质，营养丰富。温血的哺乳动物和鸟类需要消耗大量的能量来保持体温，而昆虫与他们不同，它们是食物和体重的高效转换器。在世界上的部分地区，昆虫已经作为食物被食用。

词汇

Visionary/空想家；梦想者；有眼力的人

Well, maybe. But it will take some serious marketing to persuade consumers, in the West at least, that fricasseed locusts or termiteburgers are the yummy must-haves of 21st-century cuisine. The visionaries might nevertheless prove correct that insects will contribute to human nutrition—just not in the way they imagine.

嗯,也许吧。但要想说服消费者(至少在西方)，让他们相信焖蝗虫或白蚁汉堡是21世纪美食家们的必备美食，还需要进行一些颇有用心的营销策略。尽管如此，这些远见卓识者可能会证明昆虫对人类营养的贡献是正确的——只不过不是他们想象的那样。

词汇

Fricasseed/焖制的

locust/ 蝗虫；蚱蜢

termite/白蚁

What is actually happening is that a band of entrepreneurs are breeding insects as animal fodder—particularly fish food. Grown on cheap inputs, then crushed and formed into meal, they will thus provide all of the nutritional advantages the visionaries talk of, but at one remove from people’s dining tables instead of being served up directly for lunch.

事实上，一群企业家正在培育昆虫作为动物饲料——尤其是作为鱼饲料。它们生长在廉价的原料上，然后被碾碎做成一顿饭，因此，它们将为鱼儿提供所有梦想家们所提及的营养优点，但与人们的餐桌相隔一段距离——不是直接作为午餐供应。

 

The two most promising species are flour beetles and black soldier flies, specifically the larval stages of these animals. Flour-beetle larvae, better known as mealworms (pictured above), have been used as fish food for a long time—they are excellent bait for anglers and are bred commercially on a small scale for this and other purposes, including as chicken food. Black-soldier-fly larvae are a more recent subject of interest. They are, in the jargon, saprophagous, meaning that they feed on decaying organic matter and will thus eat all sorts of stuff, including manure. This has led to interest in using them as composting agents, so that cultivating them, too, has already been happening on a small scale. What has changed are people’s ambitions. Instead of turning such insects out by the kilogram, the plan is to do it by the tonne, by industrialising the process.

最有盼头的两个物种是粉甲虫和黑蝇，特别是这些动物的幼虫阶段。面粉甲虫幼虫，更广为人知的是粉虫(见上图)，很长一段时间以来一直被用作鱼的食物——它们是垂钓者的绝佳诱饵，并被用于小规模的商业养殖，包括作为鸡肉的食物。黑军蝇幼虫是最近才引起人们兴趣的课题。用行话来说，它们是食腐的，意思是它们以腐烂的有机物为食，因此会吃各种各样的东西，包括粪肥。这引起了人们对把它们用作堆肥剂的兴趣，因此，小规模地培育它们也已经开始了。但这个项目人们的雄心壮志已经改进。他们的计划是通过工业化生产一吨昆虫，而不是按公斤来生产这种昆虫。

词汇

Larvae/幼虫，幼体

Jargon/行话，术语

saprophagous,/ 食腐的

Fly fishing

飞蝇垂钓

One of the most advanced mealworm-raising enterprises is run by Ynsect, a French firm. It uses an approach called vertical farming, which is also popular with those growing salad vegetables in cities, in the modern equivalents of market gardens. Vertical farming is an indoor operation in which the produce is held in trays that can be shuffled around robotically.

法国Ynsect公司是世界上最先进的食肉动物饲养企业之一。它采用了一种被称为垂直农业的方法，这种方法在现代市场菜园中也很受那些在城市种植沙拉蔬菜的人的欢迎。垂直农业是一种室内作业，将农产品放在托盘中，托盘可以被机器人移动。

词汇

Shuffle/把……变换位置；调动

 

Ynsect’s test facility, in Burgundy, is 20 metres tall and has 10,000 mealworm-laden trays. Nothing is wasted. The insects’ droppings are collected for use in fertilisers. When the larvae are about ten weeks old, those not destined to pupate, and thus provide the next generation of mealworms, are sorted, cleaned and steamed to death. They are then, as Antoine Hubert, Ynsect’s boss, puts it, treated like olives. They are crushed to extract their oil and the remaining pulp is dried and powdered. These products are sold as pet food. But the company’s eventual targets are fish farms raising salmon, trout and sea bass.

Ynsect在勃艮第的测试设施有20米高，有10000个盛满面粉虫的托盘。没有什么是浪费。昆虫的粪便被收集起来用作肥料。当幼虫大约十周大时，那些注定不会蛹化，从而提供下一代粉虫的幼虫就会被分类、清洗和蒸死。就像Ynsect的老板Antoine Hubert所说的那样，他们就像橄榄一样被对待。它们被压碎以榨取油脂，剩下的肉渣被干燥并磨成粉末。这些产品作为宠物食品出售。但该公司的最终目标是养殖三文鱼、鳟鱼和鲈鱼的渔场。

词汇

 trout/鲑鱼，鲑鳟鱼

 sea bass/鲈类海鱼

The test facility turns out 30 tonnes of protein meal a month. On the back of its success, Ynsect is planning to start construction, later this year, of a full-scale commercial operation, 30 metres tall. This farm, in Amiens, will produce 1,500 tonnes of meal a month. And Ynsect is not alone in its ambitions for mealworms. In Washington state, in America, the home of many fish farms, a firm called Beta Hatch is building a commercial mealworm farm inside an old juice factory. This, Virginia Emery, the firm’s boss, hopes, will match the output of Ynsect’s farm in Burgundy.

该试验场每月生产30吨蛋白质粉。在取得成功的基础上，Ynsect计划在今年晚些时候开始建设一个30米高的全面商业运营项目。这个位于亚眠的农场每月将生产1500吨粮食。Ynsect并不是唯一一家对粉虫有野心的公司。在美国华盛顿州，许多养鱼场的所在地，一家名为Beta Hatch的公司正在一家旧果汁厂内建造一个商业粉虫养殖场。公司老板维吉尼亚•埃默里希望这一数字能与Ynsect在勃艮第的农场产量相媲美。

 

The leading contender in the breeding of black soldier flies, meanwhile, is AgriProtein. Its factory on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, produces a similar tonnage to that of Ynsect’s Burgundian facility. Flies being more active than beetles, AgriProtein’s farm employs huge cages to hold them by the million. The fertilised females lay their eggs in trays fitted with cavities shaped like honeycomb and slathered in molasses. These trays are removed at regular intervals to ensure that the larvae within hatch simultaneously and are thus the same size—for large larvae often cannibalise small ones.

与此同时，培育黑兵蝇的主要竞争者是AgriProtein。该公司位于南非开普敦郊区的工厂，生产的吨位与Ynsect勃艮第工厂相仿。苍蝇比甲虫更活跃，AgriProtein的农场使用巨大的笼子来容纳上百万只苍蝇。受精后的雌性苍蝇将卵产在装有蜂窝状空腔的托盘中，这些空腔被涂上厚厚的糖蜜。这些托盘定期被移走，以确保幼虫同时孵化，因此大小相同——因为大的幼虫经常会吃掉小的幼虫。

词汇

Contender/竞争者；争夺者

Cannibalise/同类相食

 

Once removed from the breeding cages, the eggs are placed in hatching units and the young larvae then transferred for a short time to a nursery before being moved again, to an area where they can grow. After ten days here they are crushed and turned into oils and meal in a manner similar to that employed by Ynsect.

一旦从繁殖笼中取出，卵就被放置在孵化单元中，幼虫被转移到苗圃中一小段时间，然后再被转移到一个可以生长的地方。在这里10天后，它们被压碎，用一种类似于Ynsect使用的方法将它们转换为油脂和饲料。

 

One notable difference between the mealworm and soldier-fly approaches to insect farming is the fodder that the larvae are themselves fed. The companies are tight-lipped about their specific formulas. Mealworms are vegetarians. Ynsect feeds its charges on a diet including wheat bran. AgriProtein’s fly larvae were originally pampered with blood from abattoirs mixed with bran, while the adults were fed milk powder, molasses and sugar. Now the firm has formulated proprietary diets for both larvae and adults.

将粉虫和军蝇转变为昆虫规模化饲养的一个显著区别在于饲养依赖于自己的饲料喂养。这些公司对它们的具体配方守口如瓶。粉虱是素食者。Ynsect的食物包括麦麸。AgriProtein公司的果蝇幼虫最初是被屠宰场的血液和麸皮混合喂养的，而成年果蝇则被喂食奶粉、糖蜜和糖。现在，该公司已经为幼虫和成虫制定了专利食谱。

词汇

approach to/通往…的方法

Fodder/饲料；素材

Molasses/  糖蜜，糖浆

Exactly what farmed insects eat depends as much on local regulations as on what the insects prefer. It was only in 2017 that the EU permitted the feeding of insect protein to farmed fish—and this on condition that the insects themselves tucked into foodstuffs approved as animal fodder. AgriProtein, which intends to expand its reach beyond South Africa, formulates its proprietary mixes to conform to the rules in destination markets.

确切地说，养殖昆虫吃什么既取决于当地法规，也取决于它们喜欢什么。直到2017年，欧盟才允许向养殖的鱼类喂食昆虫蛋白——前提是这些昆虫本身所喂养的食材为被批准作为动物饲料的食品范围内。AgriProtein打算将业务扩展到南非以外的地区，它制定了自己的专有配方，以符合目标市场的规则。

词汇

Tuck/  卷起；挤进；大口吃

Regulatory fussiness, though understandable, does get in the way of another possible benefit of fly farming—waste disposal. Jason Drew, AgriProtein’s boss, reckons fly farms may one day prove ideal places to manage and recycle excrement, especially in poor countries. To this end, a subsidiary of the company has worked out how to extract birth-control and growth hormones from human and animal faeces respectively, to avoid these getting into the finished product. They hope, regulators permitting, to start adding treated faeces to fly-feed next year or the year after.

虽然可以理解监管的繁琐，但它确实妨碍了苍蝇农业的另一个可能的好处——废物处理。AgriProtein的老板贾森•德鲁(Jason Drew)估计，有朝一日，苍蝇养殖场可能会成为管理和回收粪便的理想场所，尤其是在贫穷国家。为此，该公司的一家子公司已经研究出如何分别从人类和动物粪便中提取节育激素和生长激素，以避免它们进入成品。他们希望，在监管机构允许的情况下，从明年或后年开始在苍蝇饲料中添加经过处理的粪便。

词汇

Fussiness/易激怒

Faeces/粪便

At your disposal

由你支配

Both beetle farmers and fly farmers also aspire to follow the paths of other husbanders of livestock by breeding better versions of their animals. Over the past four years, for example, researchers in Finland, Spain and Serbia have built up a genetic library of black-soldier-fly varieties. Gunilla Ståhls of the University of Helsinki says this library shows how much variety the flies have to offer—an essential basis for a breeding-improvement programme.

无论是甲虫养殖户还是苍蝇养殖户，都希望通过培育出更好的品种来效仿其他牲畜养殖户的做法。例如，在过去的四年里，芬兰、西班牙和塞尔维亚的研究人员已经建立了一个黑军蝇的基因库。赫尔辛基大学的Gunilla Stahls说，这个图书馆展示了果蝇必须提供多少种类——这是一个繁殖改良计划的基本基础。

 

Mr Drew thinks the scope for such improvement is enormous. As he observes by analogy, a few decades ago a laying hen would produce about three eggs a week, and even then only during the summer. Selective breeding means such a hen can now be counted on to turn out double that number, and to do so all year round.

Drew先生认为这种改进的空间是巨大的。正如他通过类比观察到的，几十年前，一只下蛋的母鸡每周会产下大约3个鸡蛋，即便是夏天也是如此。选择性繁殖意味着这样的母鸡现在可以预期下出两倍的数量的蛋，而且全年如此。

词汇

Analogy/类比；类推

At the moment, the tonnages firms like Ynsect and AgriProtein aim to produce are still trivial compared with the multi-million-tonne market for fish feed. But that leaves plenty of room for growth. This is, moreover, a growth that may bring environmental benefits as well as economic ones. Today, a lot of fish food is itself fish. Insect farming could help relieve the oceans of that burden, and improve the prospect of the adage that “there are plenty more fish in the sea” actually being true.

目前，像Ynsect和AgriProtein这样以生产吨数为目标的公司，与数百万吨的鱼类饲料市场相比，仍然微不足道。但这也留下了很大的发展空间。此外，这种增长可能带来环境效益和经济效益。今天，很多鱼的食物本身就是鱼。昆虫养殖可以帮助海洋减轻这一负担，并改善“海中有更多的鱼”这句格言的景愿，落实这句话。

词汇

Adage/  格言，谚语