With meat prices expected to soar, agricultural entrepreneurs believe invertebrate livestock can provide the protein we need. But will the mainstream ever be ready to eat mealworms?

It could be the tumbledown, moss-covered drystone walls marking the boundaries of land that has been farmed since the arrival of the Norse settlers. Or the gentle meanderings of the river Eden through the shadows of the Cumbrian fells. Or the proximity of the Settle-Carlisle railway line. All in all, Thringill Farm seems an unlikely setting for a 21st-century food revolution.

Yet just past the 17th-century farmhouse, an incongruous sound offers a clue of unusual goings-on. From behind the large wooden door of a heavily insulated room in the corner of an outbuilding comes the distinctive rhythmic chirping of crickets. The mating call, more usually heard in the Mediterranean than in the Pennines, reveals the location of the UK’s first edible-insect farm.

Inside the room, the temperature jumps noticeably. Some 70 large plastic storage containers are lined up on wooden shelves, three high to the ceiling, each containing house crickets (Acheta domesticus). Dressed in black jeans, sweater and trainers, there is something bee-like about entomologist Howard Bell as he moves rapidly from box to box, checking on the progress of his half a million or so charges.

“I’m quite excited at the moment because the population is growing by about 60,000 a day,” says Bell, whose family have owned Thringill, just south of the ancient market town of Kirkby Stephen, since 1963. “We’ll be around a million in 10 days and by the summer we’ll have a standing army of 2m.”

That might seem like a lot of bugs. And you might think that most people’s squeamishness about the idea of eating them would be a disincentive to farming them. But with at least five other insect farms either in development or under consideration in England, these pioneering mini livestock could soon be joined by a great many more. Some believe this marks the birth of a new industry that not only offers struggling farmers a new income stream, but also could help put our diets on a healthier, more sustainable footing.

First, the bad news, of which there is plenty. By 2050, the number of human mouths to feed is predicted to rise above 9 billion, up from about 7.4 billion today, and demand for meat is expected to grow by 44% on 2014, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Howard Bell at his cricket farm. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

Inconveniently, the planet will stay the same size. The livestock sector already uses about a third of Earth’s croplands to grow feed, and a third of all fish landed from the seas, while generating close to a fifth of our greenhouse-gas emissions – more than the world’s planes, cars and other forms of transport combined. Meat prices are predicted to rocket. Henning Steinfeld, of the FAO, has said beef will become “the caviar of the future”.

“When we consider the amount of land, water and feed being used, and the greenhouse gases produced, the way we are consuming meat at the moment is unsustainable,” says Shami Radia, one of four joint partners in Entovista, the cricket farm at Thringill.

However, Radia and others see some good news: they believe farming and eating insects could play a major role in solving the problems associated with traditional livestock farming. Radia was first bitten by the entomophagy – or insect-eating – bug while working for WaterAid in Malawi in 2009. There, he saw children catching termites, which were later served to him with chilli, lime and a local beer. At his friend Neil Whippey’s 30th birthday party in Camden three years later, the pair decided to launch an insect-food business.

As a sufferer of Crohn’s disease, Neil was especially interested in reports that insects are highly nutritious. Nutrient levels vary between species, life-cycle stage, diet and cooking methods, so it’s hard to generalise, and some of the claims made for insects are far from scientific. For example, suggestions that crickets contain more than double the protein content of chicken or beef are often based on comparing dried insects with fresh meat. Research suggests many edible insects species do contain higher levels of some polyunsaturated essential fatty acids and minerals such as iron and zinc than traditional meats, and comparable protein levels.

The two friends started a popup restaurant in Hoxton Square, London, in 2014 serving up the likes of tempura grasshoppers and crispy citrus buffalo worm noodles. It was a sellout, and they went on to set up their company, Eat Grub, to source, package and sell insects online.

One of the reasons they have long wanted to set up a farm is that importing their stocks from Holland and Canada, as they currently have to, undermines the environmental arguments for entomophagy. “It’s difficult to talk about insects as a sustainable protein source while importing them from halfway around the world,” says Radia.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the crickets at Thringill. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

It was only when they met Bell, who works as an insect researcher for the Food and Environment Research Agency, that the friends saw an opportunity to put their farm plan into action. He was initially sceptical, but Radia won him round. Bell discussed the idea with his older brother, Adrian, who farms sheep at Thringill, and the four went into partnership.

If they get the all-clear from lab-test results this week, they will sell their first crickets this month. They expect to produce about 30kg of dried crickets a month initially – about 250,000. The operation is designed to be rapidly scalable, and they hope to expand to 1,000 kg a month. Their cricket flour will sell for about £40 a kg wholesale, with higher prices for whole dried crickets and smaller quantities sold direct to consumers.

Edible insects are currently expensive. Precise prices are hard to come by, but current wholesale prices for freeze-dried Dutch mealworms, crickets and locusts are believed to be around £40, £90 and £160 a kg respectively. As long as rib-eye and sirloin steaks remain cheaper than the cheapest of bugs, the chances of edible insects breaking out of their foodie niche seem slim.

The bug farmers say larger farms will bring economies of scale and lower prices. Others, however, believe the idea of farming crickets in the UK is misguided, because they need to be kept at 25C or higher.

“Farming crickets here consumes a lot of energy to keep them warm, and that has an environmental cost,” says Nick Cooper, who has been importing insects into the UK mostly from Thailand for almost four years through his Derby-based company, Crunchy Critters.

Cooper considered setting up a farm last year, but decided against it. “I look forward to seeing the prices, but I’d be surprised if UK insect farming is going to be viable until farming methods greatly improve. But I’d like to be proved wrong.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An image from Eat Grub: The Ultimate Insect Cookbook. Photograph: Mowie Kay/Frances Lincoln

Matt Anderson is hoping to do just that. He first ate a variety of insects in Asia, and took inspiration from a friend who co-founded the US cricket farming company Tiny Farms. Last year, Anderson and a business partner set up their own company, Edible Bug Farm. They have opted for mealworms, because they live closer together and can be raised at lower temperatures than crickets. Their plan is to set up a research-and-development farm in Birmingham this summer, and a larger facility next year.

In a cafe not far from his home in Bristol, where he has been testing different mealworm diets in his bedroom, Anderson whips out a sketch pad and draws tray, mesh and netting systems he has considered as ways to help mechanically separate his mealworms into their different life stages as part of plans to use automation to lower prices to £25 a kg. “This is never going to approach hitting the mainstream if it is way more expensive than what we currently eat,” he says.

Meanwhile, two University of Brighton students who call themselves the Brighton Bug Boys are working on modular, phone box-sized insect farms that can be connected together to make larger facilities. They want to use wasted heat from a factory to lower energy and environmental costs.

There are plans to begin production of 50kg of cricket flour a month later this year at Jiminy’s Cricket Farm in Northampton. Meanwhile, chef Andy Holcroft, who in November launched the Grub Kitchen insect restaurant in Pembrokeshire, is planning a farming feasibility study, including experimenting with different types of crickets. The surge in interest in farming insects is all the more remarkable following a recent announcement that all insect-based products will be subject to regulations that require “novel foods” to undergo risk assessments from 2018. The subject will be discussed on Monday at the Insects as Food and Feed conference being organised by Woven, a new networking group representing those in the emerging field.

The only problem is, consumers haven’t quite caught up yet. Mintel, the market research group, last year published a report that included a survey on attitudes towards alternative protein sources. Only 27% had tried, or were interested in trying, insects.

“I think there is undoubted potential and interest in insects, but you have to overcome a ‘yuk factor’ that isn’t there for seaweed and algae-based products such as spirulina,” says David Turner, a food and drinks analyst at Mintel.

Those in the industry point out food cultures change, sometimes quickly. Sushi has a refrigerated berth next to the supermarket sandwiches now, but go back 20 years and most Brits thought it was disgusting. According to the FAO, some 2 billion people worldwide regularly eat insects.

Fred McVittie, the founder of Cornish Edible Insects, is working on plans for a mealworm farm in a shipping container as well as smaller, beehive-like units. “The ‘yuk factor’ thing is easily surmountable,” he says. “People do it almost as a ritual to demonstrate they are part of the same tribe, but most are fine about trying them once you speak to them. Insects do have distinctive tastes, but they’re subtle, so I think that’s an aspect that needs more research.”

Someone who has done a lot of work on that is Sebastian Holmes, the chef who cooked at Radia and Whippey’s 2014 popup. Following that restaurant’s success, he produced dozens of recipes for Eat Grub: The Ultimate Insect Cookbook, which is published on Thursday.

“How insects taste depends what you do with them,” says Holmes. “If you toast crickets with cinnamon or star anise, you can grind them into a powder with a sweet, cocoa-like taste, whereas if you deepfry them and add soya sauce and white pepper, they taste like shrimp.”

If Thringill is an unlikely place for the culinary and farming revolution to begin, Adrian Bell is an unlikely revolutionary. As his younger brother energetically describes the cricket life cycle, Adrian busies himself tending to the newborn lambs huddling together for warmth in a nearby pen. Beneath a cockeyed woolly hat, he wears full grey beard and the glimmer of an amused smile.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A dish from Eat Grub: The Ultimate Insect Cookbook. Photograph: Mowie Kay/Frances Lincoln

“To be honest, I’m sceptical,” he confides in a broad Cumbrian accent. “I can’t see crickets solving the world’s protein problem, not on this scale anyway.”

Adrian says that raising sheep is “more of a hobby” these days. He makes his living mainly by carrying out sheep pregnancy testing for other farmers. His determination to invest in scanning equipment while still at college proved wise given the difficulties faced by farmers since then. While he may not be as enthusiastic about the prospects for their cricket enterprise as his brother and their London-based partners, he’s canny enough to give it a go.

“When I tell other farmers about the crickets, they’re not exactly pricking up their ears. Farmers are traditionalists. They keep the same breed of sheep that their fathers and grandfathers kept, and take them to shows. We haven’t got a Royal Highland cricket show yet.”

Asked if other farmers had laughed at the cricket farm, he says: “Oh no, they’re surprised, but farmers don’t laugh at anything that might pay the bills. Personally, I can’t see how these tiny insects can make money. But, then again, if people are willing to pay a tenner for a bag of crickets, maybe they can.”