Bugs were supposed to be the future of food. Now, the insect farming industry is collapsing. 

A worker at Protifly, a France-based insect farming startup, holds black soldier fly larvae. | Mehdi Fedouach/AFP via Getty Images

“We have to get used to the idea of eating insects.”

This proclamation came from, of all people, an insect researcher. Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke pitched eating bugs in his 2010 TED talk as critical to sustainably feeding a growing human population, because insects have a much smaller carbon footprint than beef, pork, and chicken. 

Key Takeaways

• In the mid-2010s...