Over the last few weeks we've been talking about the challenges of producing food for the global population.
And there's been a lot of interest recently in new sources of food, and one of the most interesting is insects.
Well, why should insects be considered as a food source?
Well, for a start, a number of them are full of protein, and many also have certain vitamins, which may surprise you.
More so than a typical farm animal, in fact.
And compared to farm animals, whose waste products contain a great deal of ammonia, the waste products of insects are far less acidic and would therefore do very little damage to the soil or to any of the rivers that run through farmland.
Furthermore, when it comes to the production of insects, the expense would be very low.
No trees need be chopped down or forests turned to pasture, so the space that they would occupy would be radically smaller than for, say, cows or sheep.
But even if some consumers decided that they'd rather not put insects in their shopping basket, we could also consider how insects might be added to animal feed, the food given to farm animals.
It's already known that some insects, if they were part of the animal feed, would act as a sort of natural antibiotic within a cow or sheep's digestive system, thus removing the need for human intervention.
This would be a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative for farmers.
However, if consumers do decide that insects are a potential superfood, a way of feeding the world, then the next question is where do we source them from?
Or should they be bred on insect farms?
Well, if we take from the wild, one potential consequence of this is that too many will be taken, and in turn a species could become endangered or extinct.
Then, for insects which are harvested from the wild, we have no way of knowing where they have been or what they have come in contact with, and this could have harmful consequences for human health.
Imagine the scenario if food producers or retailers were supplied with insects that were carrying bacteria.
This is not something we want to add to the food chain.
If insects are bred on farms, the problems I've just outlined could be avoided, and in many countries it's already the case that demand for insects is growing, really growing, and it's not in rural areas where you'd expect, but, in fact, in the cities.
In Thailand, for example, where the demand has really shot up.
However, people in countries where insects are traditionally what people eat, they'll tell you that when insects are intensively farmed, their taste is simply not the same.
Ironically, this is the same accusation that people have when it comes to the way that cows and sheep are raised.
Insect farmers also face a series of challenges, and researchers are keen to assist.
First of all, when it comes to breeding, different insects have different requirements.
For a start, it's essential to maintain a suitable temperature for many species to reproduce.
If this isn't right, nothing's going to happen.
Another problem is something that often happens when any species is bred in a confined space, and so far researchers and farmers have not come up with any clear or long-term effective solution to it.
We're talking about the problem of disease.
You don't want a whole colony wiped out in one go.
There's also the question of where insects need to be kept.
If insects are to be bred as a superfood, then the tanks used to house them have to be better designed, and this has to happen so that cleaning takes up less time.
If we're talking about mass production, we don't want this to be a time-consuming activity.
And finally, like I said before, insects have long been part of the diet in some countries, but not so in others.
If farmers want to encourage people in, say, England or France or Germany to eat insects, then they're going to have to develop a strategy, and I'm not talking about production, but marketing.
Something that'll persuade potential customers to try something different.
Well, I've given you a general overview of the situation.
Now let's look at some specific examples.
