Boing Boing

Boing Boing

Insect farming startups going bankrupt

Ellsworth Toohey
Mar 17, 2026
∙ Paid

Crispy insects (Korawat photo shoot/shutterstock.com)

The pitch was irresistible: feed agricultural waste to bugs, grind the bugs into protein meal, replace soybean and fishmeal, save the planet. Investors poured roughly $2 billion into insect farming startups after a 2013 UN report endorsed the idea. Now nearly a quarter of the 20 largest have gone bell…

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