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Farming in the future: insects, snails and mushrooms August 10th, 2025 by Jeff Bentley

In the near future, more family farms may be able to earn a living, producing invertebrates and fungus as food for humans and animals. For thousands of years, people around the world have known how to harvest mushrooms, insects and snails as part of diverse cuisines. The neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (who ruled from 883 to 859 BC) hosted a banquet where 10,000 locusts were proudly served alongside oxen, lamb, deer, gazelles, fish, geese and wild fowl.

The peoples of West Africa know how, and crucially, when to collect edible caterpillars. For example, suspending harvest at the start of the mating season. Native people in central Mexico collect a certain kind of ant larvae and pupae (escamol). Harvesters leave some of the brood behind, so the nest will be able to reproduce. This is also true for people in Southeast Asia who collect brood and adults from weaver ant nests. The ants can be cooked (e.g., to make a sour soup), or used as fish bait or fed to songbirds.

As collection of wild species becomes commercialized, some eager outsiders travel to rural areas, and carelessly destroy resources that have been cherished for centuries. In southern Africa, city people cut down the mopane trees, to gather the mopane caterpillars feeding in the branches. Impatient ant harvesters in Mexico may dig up and destroy whole ant colonies. In the Pacific Northwest of North America, untutored collectors of matsutake mushrooms rake leaf litter to find the fungi, ruining its habitat.

One solution is to recognize that local people with specialized knowledge are the key to the long-term and sustained use of wild edible invertebrates and mushrooms. An alternative strategy is to grow edible species on farm.

Mushrooms have been wild harvested across the world for centuries. But their complex growth requirements make most of these species impossible to cultivate. The international trade in mushrooms is dominated by a few, farmed species, especially the button mushroom, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms. Â However, as consumers demand increasingly varied diets, additional species are now being cultivated, including wood-ear, and lionâ€™s mane. Oyster mushrooms and paddy straw mushrooms, for example, are increasingly cultivated, and can be produced on small farms. International trade in cultivated mushrooms is increasing rapidly, spurred on in part by demand for medicinal fungi.

Several European and North American firms are now producing insects as feed for domestic animals. The black soldier fly is especially popular. It is native to South America, but adapts well to cold and captivity. The maggots can be fed to poultry and hogs, for example.

Insects for animal feed are increasingly reared in large, factory-like facilities. However, family farmers are also producing invertebrates as food and feed, especially in the tropics. Black soldier flies are being raised by farmer cooperatives in Colombia, for example, as livestock feed.

In parts of Europe, farmers are starting to rear the Roman snail, the upmarket escargot.

Giant African snails are spreading as pests around the world, but they are a treat in their native West Africa, where wild harvesting is making the snails scarce. From Benin to Cameroon, women are making extra money by farming the snails.

In Thailand, farmers build small structures (a bit like greenhouses) next to the family home, to rear crickets, silkworm pupae and other insects that are in demand in supermarkets.

As the worldâ€™s food systems evolve, some of the delicacies that were once gathered in the wild can be farmed, ecologically, by smallholders, and sold to consumers as part of a diverse, healthy diet.

Further reading

Bentley, Jeff 2025 Insect biodiversity in the food system. Agriculture for Development 49: 32-35.

Boa, Eric 2025 Now you see me: Conservation and sustainable use of wild, edible fungi. Agriculture for Development 49: 24-27.

Boa, Eric and Jeffery W. Bentley 2025 Sustainable Use and Conservation of Edible Fungi and Invertebrates used as Dietary Components of Food/Feed. Background Study Paper, No. 77. Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd5752en

Related blogs

Six-legged livestock

The mushroom family farm

A Greener Revolution in Africa

Videos on how to grow giant African snails, crickets and mushrooms

AMEDD, MOBION, Nawaya and SonghaÃ¯ Centre 2017 Feeding snails. Hosted on Access Agriculture. 9 min.

KENNAFF 2016 Growing oyster mushrooms. Hosted on Access Agriculture. 12 min.

Nalunga, Jane 2023 Rearing crickets for food and feed. Hosted on Access Agriculture. 14 min.

PPA Permaculture Association 2025 Producing straw mushroom spawn. Hosted on Access Agriculture. 13 min.

Scientific names

Black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens)

Button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus)