Many youth lack patience and seek to set up their lives fast. Inverse proportionality to the efforts and money put in by farmers make them shun agriculture more. In many countries, the education curriculum also does not inculcate agricultural education early into children so, the majority who are being encouraged to go to school grow up with little or no motivation/exposure.

With the estimated population increase to around 9.8 billion people by the United Nations, food will probably become a problem to many as cultivable land and water will have reduced, the weather also hotter and unreliable. Is there a solution we can come up with to tackle this challenge, one that youth may pick up interest in?

In Uganda, insect keeping is an opportunity not so exploited, one that can be made cool for the youth. A variety of insects such as long-horned grass-hoppers, white-ants, termites, red-palm weevils are eaten. The weevil larvae are a delicacy and mostly common to a small oil-palm growing Island called Kalangala and are known as ''Masiinya''. The insect-eating culture at the island dates back to the 19^th Century and has spread to some mainland districts. People have, with time learnt to eat grasshoppers and white-ants and so can for the weevils.

Rectangular boxes made from mostly functioning metallic scrap welded together, small plastic bottles joined together by metal can be used for insect farming. I would actually prefer to use the plastic bottles due to the need to reduce plastic wastes and the fact that they can easily be beautified by painting. The structures are so temporary so they can be placed on vacant land, and in a compound. This way, we put to use some non-biodegradable wastes hence relieving the environment of the pain.

Borrowing a leaf from  some Asian countries' way of handling the Weevils, I also would mash the palms, soak them a bit and add them to the boxes, together with some remains from agricultural harvest (mostly cereals and legumes like beans), later introducing adults from a breeding area. Banana trunks(whose fruit has been harvested) can also be used as a replacement for the palms since these are readily available.

Weevil larvae are bulky, rich in flavor and the important food nutrients making them a good replacement to the famous animal proteins which are expensive and some not good for our health, more so the red meat.

The weevils grow well in enclosures,  have extremely lower environment pollution rates and occurrences of diseases, take lesser space, time, money,  food to farm, are easy to store and yet also have the potential to  be more efficient as compared to the animals, more so when well handled.  Basing on a study  on the life cycle of the red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, mature females lay 300-500 eggs, which hatch in 2-5 days and may take 1 to 3 months to attain full maturity of the larva stage( about 35-50 mm length.

If each grub costs about 500 ugx then one youth would need to sell at least 2000 grubs to buy a cow. In fact, aside from exporting, value addition can locally be done through making of porridge, food supplements, enrichers, spices and oil.

References:

World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100 (2017, July 12), Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html

Alhudaib, K. (2017, July 12). Life Cycle

Retrieved from: www.redpalmweevil.com/life.htm