"It got really weird at one point", Jakub Dzamba admits. "When I was sort of... herding them."

Dzamba, a Canadian researcher, is describing the point at which he realised the crickets in his experimental farm had personalities. Observing his bugs intensely and making notes on their preferences, the cricket farmer and PhD student noticed that some preferred their own space, while others would follow the herd. He figured out how to encourage the crickets to move somewhere, rather than manually picking them up to transfer. The realisation translates into significantly lower labour costs when farming on a big scale.

It's these ingenious tweaks and ideas that give Dzamba's Cricket Reactor impressive results. While standard cricket farms (yes, there are a growing number in this booming industry) have a typical monthly yield of 1 pound of edible cricket per square foot, Dzamba says his model can produce 5 pounds. The initial countertop prototype has been developed into a much larger version, which can come pre-fabricated in a cargo container, or be modified to fit into whatever space you have free.

Greater Wax Moths, or Galleria mellonella, are hardy moths whose larvae ('waxworms') eat beeswax and honey, resulting in a lightly sweet but mostly bland flavor, perfect for absorbing other flavors while cooking.

Having traveled with their honeybee hosts, they are found practically all over the world.  Scientists theorize that exposure to a wide variety of predators during these travels may explain why wax moths have developed the world’s most extreme hearing. They recognize frequencies up to 300 kHz, while bat sounds are only believed to reach 212 kHz and humans can only hear 20 kHz at best.

Here's some footage Andreas shot for BUGS the film.

Guided by local Ugandans, Josh and Ben go looking for palm weevil larvae in tree trunks.

When the bugs you want to catch are smaller than a fingernail’s length and live underground, how on earth do you get to them? Harvesting termites looks at first like one of the trickier challenges in entomophagy.

A traditional method in Kenya involves literally drumming the insects out.

The success of Crobar is a story of one big gamble that seems to be paying off. You might not have heard of the product yet, but in a few years the energy bars will be filling supermarket shelves and gym bags – so says Christine Spliid, founder of the brand.

‘As difficult as herding cats’, the saying goes – well, try herding grasshoppers. Not only can these guys jump the bug-equivalent of several football fields, but they can actually fly too.

Nevertheless, the idea of farming them like a domesticated food source is actually taking off in parts of the US, and has long been practiced around the African continent. Grasshoppers love the prairie – warm winds, big open plains and lots of tasty grass.

Up to 500g of protein-rich ‘superfood’ could be yours each week, and all you put in is food scraps. It sounds too good to be true; perhaps the catch for most people will be that the superfood wriggles. It’s mealworm, aka beetle larvae. Usually spotted in fish-bait tubs or pet food aisles.

But the creators of the LIVIN farm don’t see this as a catch at all.

Dipping sauces are ubiquitous throughout south-east Asia. Thai cuisine is famous for its Nam Jeem sauce, which is made with rice vinegar, sugar, garlic and chili, and in Vietnam a fish-sauce and carrot-based condiment called Nuoc Cham is common on dinner tables.

The sharp, sweet/sour, hot and vibrant ingredients of these cuisines are increasingly popular all over the world, particularly among budding chefs. Detailed recipes for the creation of ‘authentic’ sauces and dishes are popular, made with chilis, garlic and herbs pounded together into a paste.

Our increasingly urban world demands clever innovation and utopian ideas if we are to have a liveable, sustainable future. The idea of ‘resilient cities’ has taken hold in recent years, and at the heart of this is food and energy sovereignty. It’s linked to the emphasis on community control and localised production, because reliance on distant food chains and their over-packaged products does not foster resilient communities, or indeed healthy ones. 

So people are devising new ways to produce and source food. A noticeable trend has been the rise in urban beekeeping. Bans were lifted in the UK and some US states, and hives now adorn the rooftops of thousands of buildings in towns and cities. There’s even bees on top of the Tate Modern gallery!