Cricket-Reactor

Third Millennium Farming is proud to launch the Cricket Reactor (CR). The CR is a household countertop cricket farm that radically reduces the footprint of meat production by utilizing domestic bio-wastes, such as food scraps and yard waste, as feed for farming edible crickets.

The CR tightens the circular relationship between urban bio-wastes and farming. The CR is unique in that it maintains a superior level of hygiene within the farm, is escape-proof and utilizes domestic bio-wastes as feed. The CR is for people interested in farming their own food-grade crickets as a means of increasing their own food sovereignty, creating a more sustainable household and reducing the environmental impact of meat production.

The CR maintains superior levels of hygiene within the farm by utilizing a unique cricket-herding mechanism that evacuates crickets from their own waste and helps decrease odours. Specialized feeding cartridges provide the user with a hassle free method of getting food scraps in, and out, of the farm. A built-in reproduction mechanism lets crickets lay their eggs before they are harvested; which allows users to produce continuous generations of crickets.

The Big Picture

Third Millennium Farming (3MF) proposes an alternative approach to urban agriculture where city bio-wastes, such as sewage and grey water, are used to farm micro-crops, such as algae and fungi. The micro-crops are fed to micro-livestock (insects), which are then humanely euthanized and processed into high protein insect flour. 3MF is about grafting micro-crop and micro-livestock technologies onto buildings, cities and infrastructure to tighten the circular relationships between urban bio-wastes and food production.

The two primary advantages of insects over traditional livestock are that they convert feed into body mass more efficiently, and utilize a much wider array of biomass as feed. Unfortunately, the rapidly emerging food-insect farming sector in North America feeds chicken mash to insects; and farming chicken mash constitutes over 95% of the footprint of insect production. 3MF’s approach of developing bio-wastes as insect feeds creates massive reductions in the footprint and environmental impact of meat production. Farming insects in proximity to bio-wastes is essential because bio-wastes are perishable and too low in value to feasibly transport large distances to centralized farming operations. The CR demonstrates two key axioms of 3MF: bio-wastes can be utilized as insect feed and that insect farming can be decentralized to take advantage of localized sources of bio-wastes.