Thanks for the comment! The benefits from increasing insect farming come from replacing with cropland biomes which have less nematodes, mites, and springtails per unit area, and therefore decreasing the animal-years of these soil animals. I agree there are more cost-effective ways of achieving this. I have some cost-effectiveness estimates here. However, (counterfactually) decreasing the animal-years of farmed insects would still be harmful if it increased the suffering of wild animals more than it decreased the suffering of farmed animals. Here is an extreme somewhat silly analogy which might help. There are more cost-effective ways of increasing human welfare than giving cash to people in extreme poverty, but millionaires slealing cash from people in extreme poverty is still harmful in the sense of decreasing human welfare.
I think there are at least two relevant aspects hereāthe impact of ceasing insect farming and the question of which policies should be supported.
On the impact of ceasing insect farming, a consideration that itās not clear to me has been taken into account is what the land would be used for if not for growing food for insectsāit wouldnāt necessarily become wild, rather it could be used to grow other crops, and thereby have no large effect on wild animal welfare. Rates of deforestation seem to indicate there is plenty of demand for arable land. Also, biofuels seem to be being held back by land availability and worries over these competing with food crops, again potentially acting as a strong source of demand for land. So the effect of removing one source of demand seems complex, and it seems like it may just result in substitution by another type of farming. The marginal effect may be to affect deforestation ratesābut to what degree these are affected by changes in demand for crops is unclear to me.
Re the question of support this gives for insect farming, even if it had an overall positive effect, itās not clear it should be advocated if there would be other uses for that land that would be better e.g. growing biofuels. So it doesnāt clearly make a ācaseā for defending insect farming.
More generally, if an action A involves doing P and Q, where P is good and Q is bad, but there are ways of doing P that donāt involve the harm of Q, then the implication would seem to be to advocate one of those other ways of doing P and not to defend Aāin this case P = farming crops and Q = farming insects.
Thanks for the comment! The benefits from increasing insect farming come from replacing with cropland biomes which have less nematodes, mites, and springtails per unit area, and therefore decreasing the animal-years of these soil animals. I agree there are more cost-effective ways of achieving this. I have some cost-effectiveness estimates here. However, (counterfactually) decreasing the animal-years of farmed insects would still be harmful if it increased the suffering of wild animals more than it decreased the suffering of farmed animals. Here is an extreme somewhat silly analogy which might help. There are more cost-effective ways of increasing human welfare than giving cash to people in extreme poverty, but millionaires slealing cash from people in extreme poverty is still harmful in the sense of decreasing human welfare.
I think there are at least two relevant aspects hereāthe impact of ceasing insect farming and the question of which policies should be supported.
On the impact of ceasing insect farming, a consideration that itās not clear to me has been taken into account is what the land would be used for if not for growing food for insectsāit wouldnāt necessarily become wild, rather it could be used to grow other crops, and thereby have no large effect on wild animal welfare. Rates of deforestation seem to indicate there is plenty of demand for arable land. Also, biofuels seem to be being held back by land availability and worries over these competing with food crops, again potentially acting as a strong source of demand for land. So the effect of removing one source of demand seems complex, and it seems like it may just result in substitution by another type of farming. The marginal effect may be to affect deforestation ratesābut to what degree these are affected by changes in demand for crops is unclear to me.
Re the question of support this gives for insect farming, even if it had an overall positive effect, itās not clear it should be advocated if there would be other uses for that land that would be better e.g. growing biofuels. So it doesnāt clearly make a ācaseā for defending insect farming.
More generally, if an action A involves doing P and Q, where P is good and Q is bad, but there are ways of doing P that donāt involve the harm of Q, then the implication would seem to be to advocate one of those other ways of doing P and not to defend Aāin this case P = farming crops and Q = farming insects.
Thanks for the clarifications! I seem to agree with all your points.