Hi Andrew Rowan, thanks for engaging with our work! I agree that sometimes graphs where the smallest groups are difficult to see can make it hard to draw conclusions about those animals. That is one reason we moved the graphs with credible intervals to the appendix, as they made it even harder to see animals other than insects. However, for this report, our aim was to provide rough numbers to help with prioritisation, which makes showing the relative trends the most useful visualisation. The raw data is avaliable in the tables and linked methods spreadsheet if you want to examine the other groups more.
Your point about crop yields to support agricultural expansion is really important. This is currently one of the cruxes of how the farmed insect industry might grow β while farmed black soldier fly larvae could in theory eat any substrate, they currently are fed cereal and grains, which as you say could be a limiting factor for industry growth. On the other hand, if insect farming does expand, insects could be used as feed for the other farmed animal groups, which would make crop yields less of a limiting factor.
Hi Andrew Rowan, thanks for engaging with our work!
I agree that sometimes graphs where the smallest groups are difficult to see can make it hard to draw conclusions about those animals. That is one reason we moved the graphs with credible intervals to the appendix, as they made it even harder to see animals other than insects. However, for this report, our aim was to provide rough numbers to help with prioritisation, which makes showing the relative trends the most useful visualisation. The raw data is avaliable in the tables and linked methods spreadsheet if you want to examine the other groups more.
Your point about crop yields to support agricultural expansion is really important. This is currently one of the cruxes of how the farmed insect industry might grow β while farmed black soldier fly larvae could in theory eat any substrate, they currently are fed cereal and grains, which as you say could be a limiting factor for industry growth. On the other hand, if insect farming does expand, insects could be used as feed for the other farmed animal groups, which would make crop yields less of a limiting factor.