Eating insects is not only an act of global salvation – following the advice of the United Nation’s advice on ‘sustainable protein’ – it’s also a way to honour Australia’s Indigenous culture.

At least, according to the CSIRO.

In their 2021 Edible Insects – a roadmap for the strategic growth of an emerging Australian industry, the authors argue that ‘improving Western perceptions of edible insects’ will strengthen culture.

‘Most Western cultures have developed an aversion for insects, perpetuated by stereotypes of insects being dirty, pests, dangerous, only eaten in times of desperation, or having an inherent “yuk” factor.’

It’s a comment offered as a criticism, even though its thrust is true. Western nations embraced agriculture as an advancement – a technological improvement – so that they wouldn’t have to eat bugs. Discarding the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in favour of farming was what we used to call an act of ‘progress’ and it was not unique to Western Civilisation. Agriculture has been at the heart of human development around the world, widely regarded as the most important technological achievement since fire.

Not all cultures became agricultural powerhouses, and some did not develop agriculture at all. There is nothing wrong with this – what is problematic is the re-writing of history to invent a false history of agriculture where none existed to justify modern progressive perceptions of ancient societies. Instead of truth and history, our scientific and educational institutions are infested with a desire to fix the errors of the past by making up their own facts or exaggerating activities.

‘As Australia’s first agricultural scientists, First Nations Peoples have a rich history of farming and harvesting native animal and plant species, including insects.’

Hunter-gatherers as agricultural scientists? Would anyone, anywhere else in the world, refer to their hunter-gatherer ancestors in such a way? In my opinion, it is disrespectful to the lives they lived and their unique challenges of survival.

The claims in this document serve as an example of revisionist history peddled by taxypayer-funded academia to justify public funding of an unpopular business position. As we will discover later in the piece, this waffle is in aid of attracting lucrative grant money to ‘future foods’ that no one wants to eat and would not survive in the free market.

If such liberty is being taken with history, who can take seriously their predictions of the future?

While it’s relatively easy to guilt people into building wind turbines to ‘save the planet’, the marketing job on insects has been less successful, no doubt because even Indigenous people in remote communities would rather eat food from the local servo than scavenge for bugs.

‘By co-developing the emerging industry, we can create new Australian-branded food products and celebrate the long-practised tradition of eating insects to inspire more people to put insects on their plates.’

This is followed by a call to arms to invest public money in First Nations business research.

Why haven’t First Nations people started innovating this on their own, as other Australians do in every corner of the country? Is it because there is no market for bugs? Nobody queuing up for the product? No demand, whatsoever, to justify private investment?

If you’re wondering why we need an urgent audit into Indigenous funding, look no further than this sort of nonsense. The CSIRO’s approach to acquiring funding for unpopular projects breaks these down into ‘First Nations Initiatives’, ‘Western perceptions’, and ‘Media and Marketing’ with the latter designed to ‘overcome negative consumer attitudes’ in a bid to explain the simple reality: it’s a bad idea.

The overt re-education and manipulation of the consumer along political lines to justify public money being wasted is as nauseating as a plate of bugs.

No cry for public cash is complete without a bit of apocalyptic language, blame, and demonisation of Australia’s proud farming industry.

In the same way that renewable energy had to kill coal and ban nuclear to justify itself, insect farms have to paint Australia’s agricultural sector as an unsustainable environmental practice to paint bug farming as ‘sustainable’. Keep in mind, the Victorian government released a report that stated:

…analysis indicates that to meet Net Zero targets using onshore renewables could require up to 70 per cent of Victoria’s agricultural land to host wind and solar farms.

Which means there is a real possibility Australia will see its agricultural land decreased to make way for renewable energy. It is all rather pointless, considering there isn’t a shred of evidence that farming bugs instead of cattle will stop the millions of years of droughts and floods in Australia, but these vague promises are left clinging to the paragraphs of this report as strongly hinted assumptions and nudge-nudge-wink-wink promises.

‘The global environmental footprint of the livestock industry is high. In Australia, 55 per cent of the land is used for grazing. Pastures and crops use about 90 per cent of all agricultural water extracted and contributes to 11 per cent of the total greenhouse gas emissions. From the 30 million tonnes of organic waste generated in Australia yearly, more than a third is livestock manure. Therefore, edible insects provide a unique opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable food value chain by reducing the environmental impact of food products.’

The CSIRO insists on their tag line that they are ‘unlocking a better future for everyone’ and yet their corporate connections suggest that producing puff pieces for the insect industry begging politicians to change policy guidelines for food safety while shaking the begging bowl at the public purse might be better aligned with their corporate partners and co-sponsors.

The portfolio of companies involved with the CSIRO is extensive, many of which include ‘future foods’ which would benefit directly from policy changes and public funding being redirected from traditional Australian independent farmers and into grant opportunities for these companies instead. This is all perfectly legal, but is it the best thing for the future of the Australian food industry?

It would be reasonable to view this as a conflict of interest.

Much – perhaps most – of the insect food report is inaccurate, exaggerated, unfounded, wishful thinking, or plain wrong. Like the decades of fluffy renewable energy reports that came before it, there is not enough scrutiny on the toxic marriage between social politics and science when it comes to absconding with public money.

The CSIRO’s Chief Executive once said of the insect industry:

‘CSIRO has been at the forefront of agricultural and food innovation for over a century, so it’s fitting that … we’re using that expertise to grow a new local industry using native Australian resources like insects.’

Except, no one asked the CSIRO to do this. There is no indication that there is any public interest in eating bugs. Every attempt to force bugs onto the population is met with a few awkward headlines and radio silence as the idea quickly dies outside the spotlight of virtue.

At the same time, Australia’s proud agricultural industry, comprised of inter-generational farmers, is on its knees, cut down by publicly funded reports painting their actions as contributing to the apocalypse.

The people who feed us – the people who sacrifice their lives working the land – the people who have propped up our economy and kept Australia afloat for two hundred years, have been abandoned in favour of ideologies preying on the naive emotions of a generation desperate to save their souls from a faux Doomsday.

The CSIRO would be better off devoting its time to fighting against the dangerous policies of foreign bureaucracies set upon destroying Australian farmers instead of curling up in bed at their feet like the dutiful dog of a tyrannical master.

When it comes to saving Australia’s agricultural industry we have nothing but cockroaches in the halls of power and crickets in the press – perpetuating an all-consuming silence.

When a civilisation starts eating the insects crawling over its piles of rubbish, the end is nigh.

This is a feature, not a bug, of the global United Nations push for ‘sustainability’ where the most productive first-world nations are being conned into dismantling their farming industries so that all the wealth and responsibility of food security can be handed over to the Global South.

The Global South is a term you’ll be hearing a lot more of when it comes to the United Nations. It’s a mixture of geographic and economic definitions that refers broadly to ‘Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia (including China and India but excluding Israel, Japan, and South Korea), and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand)’.

It’s a political conquest easily explained by a UN dominated by third-world nations eager to unseat the West’s food bowls and ‘cash in’ on what they think is easy money.

Australia will not be conquered so easily. One Nation will make sure of it.

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