How can we keep Maine’s world-famous fishing communities employed and…
The 3 Cricketeers
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Like many Americans, Claire and Chad Simons worried about climate change but didn’t know what they could do about it. Then one day in 2015, their son came home from school, excited about having eaten a snickerdoodle made with cricket flour.
Crickets as food? Why not? they asked. Crickets are high in protein, easy to raise, and very environmentally friendly, using a fraction of the land, water, and feed needed to raise beef cattle.
Today the family operates a large commercial cricket farm, dehydrating and processing the insects into fine powder or roasting them for snacks. In many countries, insects are a regular part of the diet, even a treat. But recognizing that, for Americans, eating insects can come with a powerful “ick” factor, Claire and Chad work with Chef Gustavo Romero to create innovative - and delicious - new recipes and put high protein crickets on everyone’s plate.
Citation
Main credits
Williams, Sue (screenwriter)
Williams, Sue (film director)
Williams, Sue (film producer)
Other credits
Editor, Christina Kelly; director of photography, Sam Shinn; score, Carmen Borgia.
Distributor subjects
No distributor subjects provided.Keywords
[00:00:00.03]
[light string music]
[crickets chirping]
[00:00:09.02]
- [Sue] How old are these crickets?
[00:00:10.08]
- [Claire] These are about eight weeks.
[00:00:14.00]
So they were full grown, yep.
[00:00:16.05]
They've had a nice life.
[00:00:18.04]
They were breeding.
[00:00:19.07]
[laughing]
[00:00:24.06]
Crickets, they don't jump out.
[00:00:26.08]
They like to be together
being in their little,
[00:00:30.04]
their little habitats.
[00:00:33.07]
[upbeat electronic music]
[00:00:35.07]
- [Voiceover 1] The way we
farm today will not sustain
[00:00:39.06]
human civilization as we know it.
[00:00:42.03]
- [Claire] There's not
gonna be enough water
[00:00:44.00]
and there's not gonna be enough land.
[00:00:48.02]
[Voiceover 1] We are
never going to replace
[00:00:50.07]
traditional agriculture,
but we sure can innovate.
[00:00:55.02]
- [Voiceover 2] We can
learn how to at least pivot
[00:00:56.09]
and to work with this changing world.
[00:01:00.08]
[music continues]
[00:01:20.02]
- In the kitchen, we
dehydrate the crickets
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and process them.
[00:01:25.05]
I mill them into a fine powder.
[00:01:27.09]
We make cookies with that.
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We season them and roast them whole.
[00:01:33.04]
We make them into snack mixes,
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cover them in chocolate.
[00:01:45.03]
How many pounds do you have coming
[00:01:46.08]
out of the freezer?
[00:01:48.06]
- Out of the freezer, I think we've been
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averaging about four pounds.
[00:01:51.02]
- So, no well, I'm thinking to put it
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in the dehydrator now.
[00:01:54.02]
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.
[00:02:00.00]
- [Claire] Okay, so that's good.
[00:02:02.00]
- What you just saw was our,
[00:02:03.05]
what we call the Iron Maiden.
[00:02:05.07]
It's the walk-in freezer.
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They fall asleep in about a half an hour.
[00:02:10.03]
They go into hibernation.
[00:02:12.05]
We leave them in overnight
before we harvest 'em
[00:02:15.05]
so they're frozen solid.
[00:02:16.08]
Then we rinse them off
and Claire takes them--
[00:02:18.05]
- Then I take them into the kitchen.
[00:02:21.00]
Chad and I, we definitely always had
[00:02:24.01]
discussions about, there's
not gonna be enough water
[00:02:26.08]
and there's not gonna be enough land.
[00:02:29.02]
We can't sustain the way we're going.
[00:02:31.02]
And crickets, obviously, it's a fraction
[00:02:34.02]
of the land, feed, water
[00:02:37.02]
than it would for other
sources of protein.
[00:02:40.00]
Cattle, I believe it's
about 10,000 gallons
[00:02:44.05]
of water per pound
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And crickets, it's one.
[00:02:49.01]
And obviously, land.
[00:02:50.08]
Crickets emit virtually no greenhouse gas.
[00:02:54.03]
There's really no byproduct.
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Kinda looks like ground beef.
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So, climate change is our mission.
[00:03:04.00]
[light acoustic music]
[00:03:07.01]
This is where we collect the eggs
[00:03:09.00]
from the female crickets.
[00:03:11.00]
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
[00:03:18.05]
in the incubator.
[00:03:20.01]
They don't dry out.
[00:03:21.06]
And so he's just kinda
covering them with water.
[00:03:23.09]
[music continues]
[00:03:26.08]
You can see a lot of them
that have just hatched.
[00:03:30.06]
These are little, just-hatched
baby pinhead crickets.
[00:03:36.09]
So, their exoskeleton hasn't hardened yet,
[00:03:39.01]
so they're really light.
[00:03:42.09]
- [Sue] You're blowing them off,
[00:03:44.05]
the little babies off the top?
[00:03:46.02]
[laughing]
[00:03:47.04]
- We like to get as much as we can
[00:03:49.03]
to be able to plant.
[00:03:50.05]
- Our son came home on Earth Day
[00:03:52.05]
with a cricket flour cookie from school
[00:03:55.00]
and said, "You'll never
believe what I ate!
[00:03:57.03]
"It was a snickerdoodle
and it was delicious!"
[00:04:00.00]
Chad and I, we both kind
of looked at each other
[00:04:02.08]
and said, "Oh my gosh."
[00:04:04.07]
So, we, the next day, built a habitat
[00:04:08.08]
downstairs in the basement
next to the washer and dryer,
[00:04:11.09]
and we had a little humidifier
[00:04:13.05]
and set up a little heater
and bought some crickets
[00:04:18.09]
and we were able to breed them
[00:04:22.00]
and we were able to hatch the eggs.
[00:04:32.04]
When we first started
looking for space to farm,
[00:04:35.07]
it really-- it was unheard of.
[00:04:39.00]
We say "cricket farm,"
they don't understand.
[00:04:41.08]
I mean, they obviously think it's outside.
[00:04:43.07]
They don't realize it's inside.
[00:04:45.00]
So, people thought we
were crank calling them.
[00:04:47.06]
After we moved in here
and had our set-up going,
[00:04:50.03]
the beginning was really
getting the farming down.
[00:04:52.07]
At first we really thought,
[00:04:54.04]
maybe people will wanna buy them
[00:04:56.02]
frozen raw next to the shrimp.
[00:04:58.02]
And that didn't happen.
[00:05:01.09]
[eerie percussive music]
[00:05:06.07]
The "ick" factor is definitely there.
[00:05:09.03]
In our culture, we look
at a bug as a pest.
[00:05:12.05]
And it's a preconceived notion,
you just think it's dirty.
[00:05:16.04]
You think it's something
that we shouldn't be eating.
[00:05:32.02]
Insects have been eaten for
generations, for a millennia,
[00:05:35.07]
so it's not something new.
[00:05:38.00]
But I think that bigger chain stores,
[00:05:41.00]
for this to really be a mass product,
[00:05:43.02]
I think they wanna have
regulations in place first.
[00:05:47.06]
[upbeat instrumental music]
[00:05:58.03]
- [Sue] What are you making for us?
[00:05:59.07]
- All right, so we're gonna
make some cricket tortillas.
[00:06:03.09]
We're gonna incorporate a little bit
[00:06:05.08]
of cricket powder mixed in our masa,
[00:06:08.07]
and then we're gonna make
a winter squash taco.
[00:06:11.06]
When you understand the flavors,
[00:06:14.00]
you really appreciate that, I think.
[00:06:17.03]
For me, it might be
even a little nostalgic
[00:06:21.00]
when I'm able to take something
that I grew up eating with.
[00:06:26.05]
Cricket is not very easily sourced here.
[00:06:31.04]
But thanks to Claire, now I can have it.
[00:06:35.08]
- Well, you taught us what a
cricket should taste like, so.
[00:06:44.02]
- So if you're trying to
use just cricket as flour,
[00:06:48.03]
it will not work.
[00:06:49.01]
It will not stick.
[00:06:50.01]
We're gonna add about a tablespoon
[00:06:54.00]
of cricket powder per pound of masa.
[00:06:57.06]
I grew up in Central Mexico.
[00:06:59.06]
The way I look at corn,
I always see such a
[00:07:02.02]
important part of the ecosystem, right,
[00:07:04.03]
'cause I grew up around it.
[00:07:06.04]
And then, I mean, there
are crickets everywhere.
[00:07:08.03]
It's always like the idea
of putting things together
[00:07:10.06]
that belong in one environment
[00:07:12.00]
and they kinda just mix well.
[00:07:15.04]
So when we talk about doing the tortilla,
[00:07:17.09]
for me, it just makes sense.
[00:07:19.08]
Like I said, something that
should do well together
[00:07:22.06]
because they co-exist.
[00:07:25.04]
[music continues]
[00:07:29.01]
What we're doing now, we're gonna
[00:07:32.02]
finish this sauce.
[00:07:33.09]
So it's dried chilies,
peanuts, garlic, and oil.
[00:07:37.06]
- [Claire] Sounds amazing.
[00:07:39.00]
- [Gustavo] Yeah, we call
it, it's called salsa macha.
[00:07:43.02]
- Raising crickets, this
is something that has
[00:07:46.00]
been here all along,
and we're bringing it back
[00:07:50.09]
and showing people that this is something
[00:07:53.06]
we should be eating.
[00:07:54.07]
We feel very strongly about it,
[00:07:58.02]
and it does allow us to
get up in the morning
[00:08:02.01]
to know that we're--
[00:08:03.08]
It's not the answer,
[00:08:05.02]
but raising crickets,
it's a piece of the puzzle.
[00:08:10.04]
Humans, the way we eat, I mean,
[00:08:12.06]
that is the most important thing.
[00:08:15.00]
- I need to make one more.
[00:08:17.09]
[upbeat instrumental music]
[00:08:35.06]
[music continues]
Distributor: Bullfrog Films
Length: 9 minutes
Date: 2022
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Grade: 7-12, College, Adults
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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