Carbovore: Creating a carbon-neutral future for protein production

By 2050, there will be approximately 10 billion mouths to feed!! This means we will have to DOUBLE the amount of food we have. That is insane!

According to FAO, 12% of people rely on livestock for their livelihood. That's a huge amount of people for one industry. The problem with the protein industry is that their methods aren’t sustainable and they contribute a lot to the climate crisis. We need to transition into a sustainable production process for the future to feed everyone and help the climate crisis.

The current process

Every year, over 12,000 megatonnes of carbon are emitted as a result of agriculture practices. The largest sources of carbon emissions in agriculture come from transporting food and factory production. This isn’t sustainable at all and if we keep these numbers where they are we won’t survive much longer.

37% of all human methane emissions come from the agriculture industry, as a result of cattle farming and food waste decomposing. Every cow produces between 70kg and 120kg of methane per year. Worldwide there are approx. 1.5 billion cattle. Methane is 28x+ more potent at warming our planet than carbon dioxide is, increasing the environmental footprint of agricultural practices on Earth’s climate. These numbers are insane!

Another greenhouse gas emission from agriculture is nitrous oxide. It is created when fertilizers soak into soil or water. It lasts approx. 114 years in the atmosphere contributing to global warming and contaminate local habitats.

Most agriculture greenhouse gas emissions come from methane and nitrous oxide.

Besides greenhouse gases, 11% of the habitable Earth’s land is used for agriculture and 70% of all freshwater globally is used for agriculture. One-third of all agriculture freshwater is used for farming beef cattle and another 19% for dairy cattle farming.

TLDR:

• 12,000 megatonnes of carbon are emitted as a result of agriculture practices yearly
• 37% of all human methane emissions come from the agriculture industry
• Nitrous oxide is also being emitted and it stays in our atmosphere for 114 years.
• 11% of land and 70% of freshwater is used globally for agriculture

This is where Carbovore comes in! 😎

What is Carbovore?

Our mission is to create a carbon-neutral future for protein production! To do this we are going to completely transform the protein production process.

How? Well stick around and I’ll tell you:)

For thousands of years people have been eating bugs as a main source of protein but in North America, it has been labelled as “gross”. In 2014 eating bugs became a huge trend but eventually died off.

What people didn’t realize is that bug agriculture or burgriculture is becoming a huge industry! It is estimated that it will become an $8 billion market by 2030!! This is because it is way more sustainable and has higher nutrition levels.

With the current climate crises we are in need or more sustainable ways of doing things, burgriculture is the new sustainable method for agriculture and protein production!

Burgriculture

Farming crickets requires a minimal amount of resources. Crickets need at least 14-gallon containers to live in, so they don’t escape. These containers can be stacked to vertically farm crickets and optimize space, whereas cows are farmed vertically.

They also require small dishes of water and food. Crickets can be fed a wide range of things from cucumbers to pumpkins (anything plant-based). When farming them what you feed crickets can be played with, as it will change their flavour.

Overall cows need 95x more land, 26x more water and 8.3x more food than crickets. Their CO2 emissions are also a lot smaller due to the land, water and food numbers being smaller.

To thrive crickets need to be kept at 85 degrees Fahrenheit. One other thing crickets need to thrive is maternity areas for female crickets to lay eggs. Once eggs are laid they need to be incubated with 90% humidity, so they can hatch.

Baby crickets once hatched, need to be raised separately from the other crickets until large enough to join the batch. This cycle continues.

I have a feeling you are curious about the nutrition of crickets compared to beef, but crickets actually have a way higher nutritional value!

Crickets better optimize low fat vs high energy content with the most amount of protein.

A huge reason people are hesitant about transitioning to burgriculture (besides the social norms) is the nutrition of it. But we get way more protein, a lot less fat and a really good amount of energy.

Carbovores Timeline

Obviously this process can't happen overnight. Here is our estimated timeline:

In the next year, we will work on developing the industry and creating products. By 5 years we want to have launched the carbon-recycled protein products. Our 10-year goal is to reduce global protein GHGs by 75%!

Our overall goal is to have a complete carbon neutral protein production process by 2050!

We are reducing carbon emissions, methane emissions, it is way more sustainable and has higher nutrition levels. This is the future of food and its gonna be pretty cool.

Connect with either myself or my co-founder Adara Hagman on LinkedIn or check out our website!