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[light string music]
[crickets chirping]
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- [Sue] How old are these crickets?
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- [Claire] These are about eight weeks.
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So they were full grown, yep.
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They've had a nice life.
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They were breeding.
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[laughing]
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Crickets, they don't jump out.
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They like to be together
being in their little,
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their little habitats.
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[upbeat electronic music]
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- [Voiceover 1] The way we
farm today will not sustain
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human civilization as we know it.
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- [Claire] There's not
gonna be enough water
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and there's not gonna be enough land.
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[Voiceover 1] We are
never going to replace
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traditional agriculture,
but we sure can innovate.
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- [Voiceover 2] We can
learn how to at least pivot
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and to work with this changing world.
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[music continues]
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- In the kitchen, we
dehydrate the crickets
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and process them.
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I mill them into a fine powder.
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We make cookies with that.
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We season them and roast them whole.
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We make them into snack mixes,
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cover them in chocolate.
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How many pounds do you have coming
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out of the freezer?
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- Out of the freezer, I think we've been
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averaging about four pounds.
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- So, no well, I'm thinking to put it
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in the dehydrator now.
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So, four pounds?
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- [Chad] Oh, no, we got three.
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So it'd be 12 going in there.
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- [Claire] Okay, so that's good.
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- What you just saw was our,
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what we call the Iron Maiden.
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It's the walk-in freezer.
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They fall asleep in about a half an hour.
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They go into hibernation.
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We leave them in overnight
before we harvest 'em
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so they're frozen solid.
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Then we rinse them off
and Claire takes them--
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- Then I take them into the kitchen.
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Chad and I, we definitely always had
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discussions about, there's
not gonna be enough water
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and there's not gonna be enough land.
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We can't sustain the way we're going.
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And crickets, obviously, it's a fraction
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of the land, feed, water
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than it would for other
sources of protein.
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Cattle, I believe it's
about 10,000 gallons
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of water per pound
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And crickets, it's one.
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And obviously, land.
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Crickets emit virtually no greenhouse gas.
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There's really no byproduct.
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Kinda looks like ground beef.
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So, climate change is our mission.
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[light acoustic music]
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This is where we collect the eggs
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from the female crickets.
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They lay them in the peat moss.
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So Maddox collected them,
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and now he's moistening
them so that they stay
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in the incubator.
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They don't dry out.
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And so he's just kinda
covering them with water.
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[music continues]
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You can see a lot of them
that have just hatched.
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These are little, just-hatched
baby pinhead crickets.
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So, their exoskeleton hasn't hardened yet,
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so they're really light.
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- [Sue] You're blowing them off,
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the little babies off the top?
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[laughing]
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- We like to get as much as we can
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to be able to plant.
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- Our son came home on Earth Day
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with a cricket flour cookie from school
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and said, "You'll never
believe what I ate!
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"It was a snickerdoodle
and it was delicious!"
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Chad and I, we both kind
of looked at each other
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and said, "Oh my gosh."
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So, we, the next day, built a habitat
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downstairs in the basement
next to the washer and dryer,
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and we had a little humidifier
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and set up a little heater
and bought some crickets
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and we were able to breed them
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and we were able to hatch the eggs.
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When we first started
looking for space to farm,
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it really-- it was unheard of.
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We say "cricket farm,"
they don't understand.
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I mean, they obviously think it's outside.
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They don't realize it's inside.
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So, people thought we
were crank calling them.
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After we moved in here
and had our set-up going,
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the beginning was really
getting the farming down.
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At first we really thought,
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maybe people will wanna buy them
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frozen raw next to the shrimp.
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And that didn't happen.
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[eerie percussive music]
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The "ick" factor is definitely there.
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In our culture, we look
at a bug as a pest.
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And it's a preconceived notion,
you just think it's dirty.
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You think it's something
that we shouldn't be eating.
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Insects have been eaten for
generations, for a millennia,
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so it's not something new.
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But I think that bigger chain stores,
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for this to really be a mass product,
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I think they wanna have
regulations in place first.
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[upbeat instrumental music]
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- [Sue] What are you making for us?
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- All right, so we're gonna
make some cricket tortillas.
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We're gonna incorporate a little bit
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of cricket powder mixed in our masa,
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and then we're gonna make
a winter squash taco.
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When you understand the flavors,
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you really appreciate that, I think.
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For me, it might be
even a little nostalgic
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when I'm able to take something
that I grew up eating with.
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Cricket is not very easily sourced here.
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But thanks to Claire, now I can have it.
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- Well, you taught us what a
cricket should taste like, so.
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- So if you're trying to
use just cricket as flour,
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it will not work.
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It will not stick.
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We're gonna add about a tablespoon
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of cricket powder per pound of masa.
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I grew up in Central Mexico.
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The way I look at corn,
I always see such a
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important part of the ecosystem, right,
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'cause I grew up around it.
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And then, I mean, there
are crickets everywhere.
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It's always like the idea
of putting things together
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that belong in one environment
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and they kinda just mix well.
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So when we talk about doing the tortilla,
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for me, it just makes sense.
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Like I said, something that
should do well together
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because they co-exist.
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[music continues]
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What we're doing now, we're gonna
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finish this sauce.
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So it's dried chilies,
peanuts, garlic, and oil.
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- [Claire] Sounds amazing.
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- [Gustavo] Yeah, we call
it, it's called salsa macha.
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- Raising crickets, this
is something that has
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been here all along,
and we're bringing it back
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and showing people that this is something
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we should be eating.
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We feel very strongly about it,
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and it does allow us to
get up in the morning
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to know that we're--
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It's not the answer,
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but raising crickets,
it's a piece of the puzzle.
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Humans, the way we eat, I mean,
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that is the most important thing.
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- I need to make one more.
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[upbeat instrumental music]
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[music continues]
