Insect farming as future of protein nutrition: reality check Currently, about 2bn people consume insects, so there must be a scaled industry already as well.

Then, you can buy cricket powder at roughly $100/kg.

Now my concern is:


if this is already a common nutrition source, why the price? (could not imagine, those 2bn people pay that)
nevertheless insect farming wherever it takes involves lot of manual labour


In my understanding, a future source of food should match the following criteria:


sustainable (OK)
cheap (not clear)
scalable through automation (I think this is currently very limited)


Compared to a meat brewery, if they will mature, seems easier to scale, even if entrypoint is harder.

So why is the price currently so high and how exactly are these insects will become the future of food (media excitement put aside) - is a realistic criteria market turnover?
Currently, the problem lies in the genetic selection to make insects suitable for mass processing. 

Let's compare this to chicken farming


Human society already select chicken that will grow lots of meat for many years
There are machinery available to "process" the chicken
There are existing demands and supply chain.
Currently chicken is cheap


In industrial scale, it is all about ease of processing.  Currently, insects like crickets is not a good competing candidate. However, it is just a matter of time for the food scientist to discover a suitable insect.