This article was taken from the March 2016 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
According to research from Bard College in New York state, beef is among the most environmentally troubling products to farm: it requires 160 times more land per calorie than wheat, rice and potatoes, and creates 11 times more greenhouse gases.
Inspired by a study of industrial meat production, Katharina Unger has found an answer: mealworms, which contain a similar amount of protein content to red meat. The Austrian industrial designer has developed a desktop hive, the, LIVIN Farm Hive, that lets you harvest protein grown on your desk.
The device, which is 61cm tall and resembles a chest of drawers, is designed to sit on a kitchen worktop and produce 200g to 500g of mealworms per week. Mealworm pupae are put into the top and develop into beetles in a drawer below. These breed and lay eggs that fall into the next drawer down the stack.
Once they hatch, the worms drop down as they mature, ending up the bottom of the hive, ready to be frozen and then prepared. The hives beat their Kickstarter goal in January, and are scheduled to go on sale in spring 2016 for $699.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
