Breeding Crickets, a Solution for the Future?
Durocher-Saint-Lambert College Educational Project
The Durocher Saint-Lambert Cricket Project has been running well for over a year now. This project is part of the Grillonnerie (Cricket Farm) project of the Friends of the Montreal Insectarium. The project consists of setting up a small cricket farm as a teaching tool aimed at introducing students to entomoculture and to entomophagy, the eating of insects.
This practice, still far from common, has been identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as a solution to certain environmental and food security issues. Through the project, Collège Durocher-Saint-Lambert hopes to educate young people about this new trend. The Collège positions itself as a pioneer in this field, since it is one of only two schools in Quebec participating in this very first pilot project.
". . . more concrete and relevant learning"
"Making young people aware of new practices that address global issues and offering them the opportunity to collaborate with experts is one way we can make learning more practical and relevant," says Francis Roy, Executive Director of the Collège.
For this reason, an area of the school has been reconfigured to accommodate the breeding of crickets in a safe place for the Secondary IV students. The students are supervised by their teachers as they learn about the breeding process in their environmental science and technology course. Several educational activities related to the theme of entomophagy are components of the program.
The students take part in the various stages of the process, right up to the transformation of the crickets into flour. The process is documented by means of a research project in which the students reflect on issues related to entomophagy. They are also offered the opportunity, if they so desire, to taste insect-based products currently on the market.
Source: Durocher-Saint-Lambert College
