again something about our diets.

And I would like to know what the audience is.

And so who of you ever ate insects?

That's quite a lot.

(Laughter)

But still, you're not representing

the overall population of the Earth.

(Laughter)

Because there's 80 percent out there that really eats insects.

But this is quite good.

Why not eat insects? Well first, what are insects?

Insects are animals that walk around on six legs.

And here you see just a selection.

There's six million species of insects on this planet,

six million species.

There's a few hundreds of mammals --

six million species of insects.

In fact, if we count all the individual organisms,

we would come at much larger numbers.

In fact, of all animals on Earth,

of all animal species,

80 percent walks on six legs.

But if we would count all the individuals,

and take an average weight of them,

it would amount to something like 200 to 2,000 kg.

for each of you and me on Earth.

That means that in terms of biomass

insects are more abundant than we are.

And we're not on a planet of men,

but we're on a planet of insects.

Insects are not only there in nature,

but they also are involved in our economy,

usually without us knowing.

There was an estimation,

a conservative estimation, a couple of years ago

that the U.S. economy

benefited by 57 billion

dollars per year.

It's a number -- very large --

a contribution to the economy of the United States for free.

And so I looked up what the economy was paying

for the war in Iraq

in the same year.

It was 80 billion U.S. dollars.

Well we know that that

was not a cheap war.

So insects, just for free,

contribute to the economy of the United States

with about the same order of magnitude

just for free, without everyone knowing.

And not only in the States,

but in any country, in any economy.

What do they do?

They remove dung, they pollinate our crops.

A third of all the fruits that we eat

are all a result

of insects taking care of the reproduction of plants.

They control pests.

And they're food for animals.

They're at the start of food chains.

Small animals eat insects.

Even larger animals eat insects.

But the small animals that eat insects

are being eaten by larger animals,

still larger animals.

And at the end of the food chain, we are eating them as well.

There's quite a lot of people that are eating insects.

And here you see me

in a small, provincial town in China, Lijiang --

about two million inhabitants.

If you go out for dinner, like in a fish restaurant,

where you can select which fish you want to eat,

you can select which insects you would like to eat.

And they prepare it in a wonderful way.

And here you see me enjoying a meal

with caterpillars, locusts,

bee, [unclear] delicacies.

And you can eat something new everyday.

There's more than 1,000 species of insects

that are being eaten all around the globe.

That's quite a bit more

than just a few mammals that we're eating,

like a cow or a pig

or a sheep.

More than 1,000 species --

an enormous variety.

And now you may think, okay,

in this provincial town in China they're doing that, but not us.

Well we've seen already that quite some of you

already ate insects maybe occasionally.

But I can tell you that everyone of you

is eating insects, without any exception.

You're eating at least

500 grams per year.

What are you eating?

Tomato soup, peanut butter,

chocolate, noodles --

any processed food that you're eating

contains insects,

because insects are here all around us,

and when they're out there in nature

they're also in our crops.

Some fruits get some insect damage.

Those are the fruits, if they're tomato,

that go to the tomato soup.

If they don't have any damage, they go to the grocery.

And that's your view of a tomato.

But there's tomatoes that end up in a soup.

And as long as they meet

the requirements of the food agency,

there can be all kinds of things in there,

no problem.

In fact, why would we put these balls in the soup,

there's meat in there anyway?

(Laughter)

In fact, all our processed foods

contain more proteins

than we would be aware of.

So anything is a protein source already.

Now you may say,

"Okay, so we're eating 500 grams just by accident."

We're even doing this on purpose

in a lot of food items that we have.

I have only two items

here on the slide --

pink cookies or surimi sticks

or, if you like, Campari.

A lot of our food products that are of a red color

are dyed with a natural dye.

The surimi sticks

is crab meat, or is being sold as crab meat,

is white fish

that's being dyed with cochineal.

Cochineal is a product

of an insect that lives off the cacti.

It's being produced in large amounts,

150 to 180 metric tons per year,

in the Canary Islands in Peru,

and it's big business.

One gram of cochineal

costs about 30 euros.

One gram of gold

is 30 euros.

So it's a very precious thing

that we're using to dye our foods.

Now the situation in the world is going to change,

for you and me, for everyone on this Earth.

The human population is growing very rapidly

and is growing exponentially.

Where at the moment we have

something between six and seven billion people,

it will grow to about nine billion

in 2050.

That means that we have a lot more mouths to feed.

And this is something that worries more and more people.

There was an FAO conference last October

that was completely devoted to this.

How are we going to feed this world?

And if you look at the figures up there,

it says that we have a third more mouths to feed,

but we need agricultural production increase

of 70 percent.

And that's especially because this world population

in increasing,

and it's increasing, not only in numbers,

but we're also getting wealthier,

and anyone that gets wealthier starts to eat more

and also starts to eat more meat.

And meat, in fact, is something

that costs a lot

of our agricultural production.

Our diet consists for some part of animal proteins,

and at the moment, most of us here

get it from livestock,

from fish, from game.

And we eat quite a lot of it.

In the Developed World it's on average

80 kg. per person per year,

which goes up to 120

in the United States

and a bit lower in some other countries,

but on average 80 kg.

per person per year.

In the Developing World it's much lower.

It's 25 kg. per person per year.

But it's increasing enormously.

In China in the last 20 years,

it increased from 20 to 50,

and it's still increasing.

So if a third of the world population

is going to increase its meat consumption

from 25 to 80 on average,

and a third of the world population

is living in China and in India,

we're having an enormous demand on meat.

And of course, we are not there to say,

it's only for us, it's not for them.

They have the same share that we have.

Now to start with, I should say

that we are eating way too much meat

in the Western world.

We could do with much, much less --

and I know, I've been a vegetarian for a long time.

And you can easily do without anything.

You'll get proteins in any kind of food anyway.

But then there's a lot of problems

that come with meat production,

and we're being faced with that more and more often.

The first problem that we're facing is human health.

Pigs are quite like us.

They're even models in medicine.

And we can even transplant organs from a pig to a human.

That means that pigs also share diseases with us.

And a pig disease,

a pig virus, and a human virus

can both proliferate.

And because of their kind of reproduction,

they can combine and produce a new virus.

This has happened in The Netherlands in the 1990's

during the classical swine fever outbreak.

You get a new disease that can be deadly.

We eat insects -- they're so distantly related from us,

that this doesn't happen.

So that's one point for insects.

(Laughter)

And there's the conversion factor.

You take 10 kg. of feed,

you can get one kg. of beef,

but you can get nine kg. of locust meat.

So if you would be an entrepreneur,

what would you do?

With 10 kg. of input,

you can get either one or nine kg. of output.

So far we're taking

the one, or up to five kg. of output.

We're not taking the bonus yet.

We're not taking the nine kg. of output yet.

So that's two points for insects.

(Laughter)

And there's the environment.

If we take 10 kg. of food --

(Laughter)

and it results in one kilogram of beef,

the other nine kg. are waste,

and a lot of that is manure.

If you produce insects, you have less manure

per kg. of meat that you produce.

So less waste.

Furthermore, per kg. of manure,

you have much, much less ammonia

and fewer greenhouse gases

when you have insect manure

than when you have cow manure.

So you have less waste,

and the waste that you have is not as environmental malign

as it is with cow dung.

So that's three points for insects.

(Laughter)

Now there's a big "if" of course,

and it is if insects produce meat

that is of good quality.