Minnesota's newest agricultural specialty: Crickets?
Minnesota is an agricultural powerhouse. We produce corn, soybeans, hogs, turkeys and … crickets?
Pat and Madeline Revier run Revier Family Farms, a cricket farm in Moorhead, Minn. There, they raise over a million crickets for human and animal consumption.
How’d the Reviers get into cricket farming? Pat told host Cathy Wurzer that he grew up on a dairy farm, and he recently he got the itch to return to the farming lifestyle. He stumbled upon crickets as a space-efficient agricultural option.
When Pat first brought the idea to Madeline, she told him, “Are you insane?” But after doing some research, she got excited about crickets as a sustainable source of protein. According to Madeline, raising crickets requires less land, feed and water than traditional sources of protein, and it’s lighter in greenhouse gas emissions.
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Crickets are also extremely versatile as a food product, Madeline said. You can fry them whole, but they’re more frequently used in a ground flour/powder form in baking. Madeline shared her recipe for Chocolate Chirp Cookies (made with cricket flour):
Visit the Revier Family Farms website to purchase crickets and cricket products. Madeline is also looking for a catchy new name for her ABCC (apples, bran, cinnamon and cricket flour) muffins. If you've got a great idea, send it to us at minnesotanow@mpr.org!
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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