farm_432

I don’t know much about modern art, but I know what I like to eat: black soldier fly larvae! OK, I don’t like to eat those (that I know of), but the U.N. thinks I should, and University of Applied Arts graduate Katharina Unger is making it easy for me with her project Farm 432. This home bug garden lets you grow your own soldier flies for a tasty, wriggly alternate protein source.

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[vimeo 70515034]

In only two weeks, Farm 432 can turn less than a quarter teaspoon of fly eggs into more than five pounds of nutty, meaty-tasting larvae. (Unger recommends tomato larvae risotto.) And they make pretty congenial pets/livestock, FastCoDesign reports:

“Black soldier flies themselves do not eat, they just drink. And they do not transmit any disease to humans,” Unger explains. “Unlike normal house flies they usually do not sit on food and they do not sting or bite, either. They also fly very slowly, so in case one should escape it is easy to catch them.”

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Hey, it’s better than an ant farm. Those guys are hell to catch, and they’re barely delicious at ALL.