I think there are at least two relevant aspects here—the impact of ceasing insect farming and the question of which policies should be supported.
On the impact of ceasing insect farming, a consideration that it’s not clear to me has been taken into account is what the land would be used for if not for growing food for insects—it wouldn’t 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 rates—but 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, it’s 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 doesn’t clearly make a “case” 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 don’t 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 A—in this case P = farming crops and Q = farming insects.
I think there are at least two relevant aspects here—the impact of ceasing insect farming and the question of which policies should be supported.
On the impact of ceasing insect farming, a consideration that it’s not clear to me has been taken into account is what the land would be used for if not for growing food for insects—it wouldn’t 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 rates—but 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, it’s 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 doesn’t clearly make a “case” 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 don’t 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 A—in this case P = farming crops and Q = farming insects.
Thanks for the clarifications! I seem to agree with all your points.