Humanity has itself a population problem, and the solution may just be six-legged.

You know crickets as the soundtrack to awkward silences, but you’ll soon know them as everyday foods: snack bars, pastas, chips. The cricket protein industry is taking off, and venture capitalists are taking notice. One cricket startup, Exo, pulled in $4 million in funding earlier this year. Silicon Valley’s cash-slingers are particularly gaga for alternative foods like crickets, and for good reason: All told, sales of edible insects worldwide could top $500 million by 2023.

What venture capitalists and humanitarian organizations are realizing is that our species won’t be able to feed itself if population growth keeps up like this—think 10 billion people on Earth by the middle of this century. So humans need a better way to produce protein using fewer resources, and insects seem to be the answer. Crickets are 10 times more efficient than cattle when it comes to feeding them and 100 times more efficient with water use. And that efficiency will only improve as cricket farmers perfect their methods.

To see cricket production in action, we visited Entomo Farms in Ontario, Canada. Here, farmers care for some 100 million crickets and churn out 1,500 pounds of flour a week. From egg to grinder, this is how they make the food that'll soon power humanity.