{"id":63927,"date":"2022-10-04T13:57:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T17:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=63927"},"modified":"2023-01-24T14:12:44","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T19:12:44","slug":"cricket-farm-3-cricketeers-protein-alternative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/cricket-farm-3-cricketeers-protein-alternative\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cricket Farm Raises a Protein Alternative"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Claire and Chad Simons\u2019s son came home from school one day having eaten a \u201cdelicious\u201d snicker-doodle made from cricket flour, the couple were more than intrigued. The next day they started to raise crickets in their basement. Driven by concern about climate change<\/a>, they hoped to create a truly sustainable source of protein<\/a> for hungry families. Today, the couple are co-founders of 3 Cricketeers<\/a> and raise millions of crickets each month in a 3,500 square-foot indoor farm. Watch this inspiring video of a family that is working to overcome the \u201cick factor\u201d of eating insects and put crickets on your dinner table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on 3 Cricketeers, read our story: Willing to Eat Crickets? This Business Hopes You\u2019ll Turn a Dare Into a Healthful Habit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\r\n\t\tRead Full Transcript<\/i><\/span><\/a>\r\n\t\t
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PIX:\tWorkers taking care of the cricket farm in the warehouse.<\/p>\n

Sue SOT:\tHow old are those crickets?<\/p>\n

Claire: \tThese are about eight weeks. So they were full-grown, yes. They've had a nice life. They were breeding. Crickets, they don't jump out. They like to be together, being in their little habitat.<\/p>\n

L\/T:\tClaire Simons \u2013 Co-Owner \u2013 3 Cricketeers<\/p>\n

PIX:\tShots of the cricket farm, Claire and Chad cooking in kitchen. Claire measures and mills crickets into flour, bakes crickets on cookie sheets.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tIn the kitchen, we dehydrate the crickets and process them. I mill them into a fine powder. We make cookies with that, we season them and roast them whole. We make them into snack mixes, cover them in chocolate.<\/p>\n

PIX:\tClaire and Chad in the warehouse, putting crickets into freezer.<\/p>\n

CLAIRE: \tHow many pounds do you have coming out of the freezer? <\/p>\n

Chad:\tOut of the freezer, I think we've been averaging about 4 pounds.<\/p>\n

CLAIRE:\tI'm thinking to put it in a dehydrator now, so 4 pounds?<\/p>\n

CHAD:\tOh. No, we have 3, so it would be 12 going in there.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tOkay. So that\u2019s good.<\/p>\n

L\/T:\tChad Simons \u2013 Co-Owner \u2013 3 Cricketeers<\/p>\n

CHAD: \tWhat you just saw was what we call the Iron Maiden. It's the walk-in freezer. They fall asleep in about a half an hour. They go into hibernation, and we leave them in overnight before we harvest them. They're frozen solid. Then we rinse them off and Claire takes them.<\/p>\n

CLAIRE:\tAnd I take them into the kitchen. <\/p>\n

PIX:\tShots of cattle; Claire cooking crickets.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tChad and I, we definitely always had discussions about, there's not going to be enough water and there's not going to be enough land. We can't sustain the way we're going. Crickets, obviously, it's a fraction of the land, feed, water, than it would for other sources of protein. Cattle, I believe it's about 10,000 gallons of water per pound, and crickets it's one. And obviously, land, crickets emit virtually no greenhouse gas. There's really no byproduct. <\/p>\n

Claire:\tIt kind of looks like ground beef.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tSo climate change is our mission.<\/p>\n

PIX:\tMaddox working with the cricket eggs and watering the trays of eggs with peat moss, putting in incubator.<\/p>\n

L\/T:\tMaddox Simons \u2013 The 3rd Cricketeer<\/p>\n

Claire:\tThis is where we collect the eggs from the female crickets. They lay them in the peat moss. So Maddox collected them and now he is moistening them so they stay in the incubator, they don\u2019t dry out. And so he\u2019s just kind of covering them with water...you can see a lot of them that have just hatched. These are little, just hatched, baby pinhead crickets. So their exoskeleton hasn\u2019t hardened yet, so they\u2019re really light.<\/p>\n

Sue SOT:\tYou\u2019re blowing the little babies off the top?<\/p>\n

Maddox:\tYes. We like to get as much as we can.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tOur son came home on Earth Day with a cricket flour cookie from school and said, \"You'll never believe what I ate.\" And it was a snickerdoodle. And it was delicious. Chad and I, we both kind of looked at each other and said, \"Oh, my gosh.\" So we, the next day, built a habitat downstairs in the basement, next to the washer and dryer. We had a little humidifier and set up a little heater and bought some crickets. We were able to breed them, and we were able to hatch the eggs.<\/p>\n

TEXT:\tA year later in 2016, the couple felt ready to establish a commercial cricket farm.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tWhen we first started looking for space to farm, it was unheard of. We say \u201ccricket farm,\u201d they don't understand. They obviously think it's outside. They don't realize it's inside. People thought we were crank-calling them.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tAfter we moved in here and had our setup going, the beginning was really getting the farming down. At first we really thought, \u201cMaybe people will want to buy them frozen raw next to the shrimp.\u201d And that didn't happen.<\/p>\n

PIX:\tVarious insects.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tThe ick factor is definitely there. In our culture we look at a bug as a pest, and it's a preconceived notion. You just think it's dirty. You think it's something that we shouldn't be eating.<\/p>\n

PIX:\tClaire measuring and milling crickets in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

TEXT:\tCrickets are eaten in countries across Asia, Africa and Central America.<\/p>\n

TEXT:\tBut in the U.S., FDA regulations do not recognize them as a human food.<\/p>\n

TEXT:\tThey can only be sold as a component of food.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tInsects have been eaten for generations, for millennia. So it\u2019s not something new. But I think that bigger chain stores, for this to really be a mass product, I think they want to have regulations in place first.<\/p>\n

TEXT:\tCrickets have a huge nutritional value.
\nTEXT:\tAnti-inflammatory
\nTEXT:\tAnti-diabetic
\nTEXT:\tAnti-hypertensive<\/p>\n

TEXT:\tTwo tablespoons of the powder equal about 16 grams of protein.<\/p>\n

PIX:\tClaire cooking tortillas with Chef Gustavo Romero.<\/p>\n

L\/T:\tChef Gustavo Romero \u2013 Recipe Consultant<\/p>\n

Sue SOT:\tWhat are you making for us?<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tSo we\u2019re going to make some cricket tortillas. We\u2019re going to incorporate a little bit of cricket powder in the masa. And we\u2019re going to make a winter squash taco.<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tWhen you understand the flavors, you really appreciate that, I think. For me, it might be even a little nostalgic when I'm able to taste something that I grew up eating. Cricket, you know, it\u2019s not very easily sourced here. Thanks to Claire, now I can have. <\/p>\n

Claire:\tWell, you taught us what a cricket should taste like.<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tSo if you are trying to use just cricket as flour, it will not work, it will not stick. We\u2019re going to add about a tablespoon of cricket powder per pound of masa.<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tI grew up in Central Mexico. The way I look at corn, I always see such an important part of the ecosystem, because I grew up around it. There are crickets everywhere. It's always the idea of putting things together that belong in one environment; they kind of just mix well. So when we talk about doing the tortilla, for me, it just makes sense. It's something, they should go well together, because they coexist.<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tWhile we're doing that, we're going to finish this sauce. So it's dried chilis, peanuts, garlic and oil.<\/p>\n

Sue SOT:\tSounds amazing.<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tYeah. We call it salsa macha.<\/p>\n

Claire:\tCrickets, this is something that has been here all along. We\u2019re bringing it back, showing people that this is something that we should be eating. We feel very strongly about it, and it does allow us to get up in the morning, to know that it's not the answer, but raising crickets, it's a piece of the puzzle. And humans, the way we eat, that is the most important thing. <\/p>\n

PIX:\tClaire and Gustavo eating in kitchen.<\/p>\n

Gustavo:\tI\u2019m going to make one more!<\/p>\n<\/p>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Concerned about the environment, 3 Cricketeers wants hungry consumers to try a more sustainable option: edible insects. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":62035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":false,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21506,20527,19731],"class_list":["post-63927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrepreneur-videos","tag-edible-insects","tag-sustainable-food","tag-women-entrepreneurs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Cricket Farm Raises a Protein Alternative<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Concerned about the environment, 3 Cricketeers wants hungry consumers to try a more sustainable option: edible insects.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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