{"id":213451,"date":"2020-12-07T15:13:38","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T20:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/?p=213451"},"modified":"2020-12-14T15:28:56","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T20:28:56","slug":"bugs-theyre-whats-for-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/2020\/12\/07\/bugs-theyre-whats-for-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugs! They’re What’s For Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

What would an insect need to taste like for you to add it to your diet? How about … bacon? That smoky flavor seems to be the secret behind a Montclair State anthropologist\u2019s success in improving nutrition and saving lemurs in Madagascar through farming the crunchy Zanna tenebrosa, aka the \u201cbacon bug.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cortni
Cortni Borgerson, seen here with a plate of grasshoppers, leads a program to farm the so-called \u201cbacon bugs\u201d in Madagascar to improve food security.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe knew they were delicious \u2013 they taste just like bacon \u2013 but it turns out that they\u2019re also nutritious,\u201d says Assistant Anthropology Professor Cortni Borgerson. \u201cThe farms we\u2019ve created are really taking off, and insect consumption has increased by more than 1,000%.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Borgerson
Borgerson shares sakondry aka \u201cbacon bugs\u201d with villagers in Madagascar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And beyond that, the more insects are eaten in the wilds of Madagascar, the fewer endangered lemurs will be hunted, which has long been Borgerson\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n

Until last March, Borgerson split her time each year between the manicured campus of Montclair State and the wilds of the Masoala Peninsula on northeastern Madagascar, where, for the past 15 years, in one way or another, she has been working on both lemur conservation and improving malnutrition. In the last year, her grant-funded project to farm these \u201cbacon bugs\u201d is proving to solve both problems.<\/p>\n

Her last trip to Madagascar was this past Spring Break, when, while she was there, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, and many areas of the world locked down. Getting back home was an adventure in itself \u2013 starting with having to wait out a cyclone before being able to leave the island in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI managed to get on one of the last flights out of Madagascar before everything shut down,\u201d says Borgerson, \u201cbut our work continues here, as well as [in Madagascar], thanks to our incredible research team there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borgerson has been traveling to the same area near the Masoala National Park since she was a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, long before she joined the Montclair State faculty in 2018. She is fluent in Malagasy and in the local dialect in the Masoala region, where locals first introduced her to \u201csakondry,\u201d the Malagasy name for the bug that tastes like bacon.<\/p>\n

\"Borgerson
Borgerson shows villagers a sakondry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Villagers thought the sakondry were tasty but hadn\u2019t considered it a sustainable food source, Borgerson says. When people get hungry and desperate there, they turn to the forest. Her original studies in Madagascar showed that in some villages, 75% of animal-source foods come from forest animals, including lemurs, and that there are higher rates of malnutrition in households that hunt lemurs, indicating that lemur is a \u201clast resort\u201d food. The sustainability of farming the tasty little \u201cbacon bug\u201d was worth exploring as an alternative food source, especially since they were already picked off plants and fried up in the rainy season as a special treat.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Masoala region where Borgerson works is where the rainforest meets the sea.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, when she returned to Montclair State for the fall 2019 semester, she sought the help of entomologist and Assistant Biology Professor Matthew Aardema to develop ways to farm the bug and better understand the biology of this little-studied insect.<\/p>\n

Aardema says Borgerson\u2019s program to farm the sakondry in food insecure communities \u201chas the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for those individuals who will have direct access to these insects.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Borgerson explains, \u201cThere is a clear correlation between malnourishment, food insecurity and lemur hunting. But that also makes it a very solvable problem. We just need to change what people put on top of their rice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Borgerson\u2019s
Borgerson\u2019s team is using insects to increase food security and save endangered lemurs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>
\n

After getting the nutrition results and designing farming protocols in the fall of 2019, Borgerson\u2019s team has been establishing farms of \u201ctsidimy,\u201d the lima bean plant that attracts the bacon bug, in villages throughout the Masoala region where the rainforest meets the sea.<\/p>\n

Borgerson\u2019s team received a three-year grant from The International Union for Conservation of Nature\u2019s Save Our Species initiative as well as support from National Geographic and Montclair State to test sakondry farming methods as a lemur conservation effort.<\/p>\n

Their project is set in three of the Masoala Peninsula\u2019s remote communities. \u201cOur furthest communities are about four days beyond the last village on the map,\u201d Borgerson says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\n

Her team of 15 research staff distributed lima bean plant seeds to participating households and there are now about 4,200 plants growing across all three project communities. The beauty of farming the \u201cbacon bugs\u201d is that they eat the \u201cphloem\u201d of the plant but not the lima beans, so people can harvest both. \u201cIt\u2019s a win-win,\u201d Borgerson says.<\/p>\n

Early results show that farming sakondry has already begun to improve child nutrition, food security and lemur conservation. \u201cThere\u2019s now food available at the times when people might typically hunt primates,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
\"The
The sakondry\u2019s scientific name is Zanna tenebrosa and it is mostly found in Madagascar and sub-Saharan Africa.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

According to the most recent estimates, nearly 90,000 harvestable sakondry had found each of the communities\u2019 lima bean farms, creating enough food from sakondry to replace 100% of lemur meat, and halve lemur hunting, since the project began a year ago, which had been their original three-year goal, Borgerson says.<\/p>\n

\"Borgerson
Borgerson with then-undergraduate Patsy Herrera in Madagascar in summer 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Borgerson\u2019s work in Madagascar has made her a bit of a celebrity in conservation circles. She has led National Geographic Expeditions and guest-starred on two episodes, where she helped the show\u2019s hosts navigate Madagascar in search of animals thought to be extinct. Her work has also been featured on Vox and Atlas Obscura.<\/p>\n

She serves on the board of the NGO Madagascar Health and Environmental Research (MAHERY), and is a commission member for the Madagascar Section of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission\u2019s Primate Specialist Group.<\/p>\n

\"Borgerson
Borgerson and her daughters take in the view in Madagascar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pre-pandemic, she traveled to Madagascar in the summers and on winter or spring break, often with her husband and young daughters in tow, but since her last trip in March, she has had to find ways to do her research long-distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t wait to get back into the field,\u201d she says. \u201cMadagascar is our second home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borgerson teaches Introduction to Physical Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, Human Culture for Biodiversity Conservation, and Planetary Health. In the summer of 2019, Biology major Patsy Herrera \u201920, traveled to Madagascar with Borgerson to assist.<\/p>\n

\"Borgerson
Borgerson sits in a garden of tsidmy, the lima bean plant that the bacon bugs are drawn to.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a life-changing experience. \u201cIt made me realize how much is out there, diversity of nature, culture and language,\u201d Herrera says. \u201cIt made me want to keep pursuing my interests in horticulture and ecology that is multi-culturally responsive. I also developed a massive appreciation for insects!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Borgerson
Borgerson shows some Malagasy children a sakondry insect.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sakondry program is part of broader efforts in Madagascar to boost insect consumption to reduce malnutrition and protect biodiversity \u2013 including the use of cricket powder in school lunches in the capital city.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a push worldwide for more insect consumption \u2013 crickets, grasshoppers and other edible bugs \u2013 for both nutritional and environmental reasons. Harvesting insects requires less land and water and produces fewer greenhouse gases than harvesting meat. \u201cThey\u2019re a great source of protein, vitamins and minerals,\u201d Borgerson says. \u201cAnd the fact that this one tastes like bacon helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Too bad it\u2019s mostly found in abundance in Madagascar.<\/p>\n