Luke Owain Boult speaks to Dr Sarah Beynon, scientist and founder of Dr Beynon’s Bug Farm about bugs, why we should be eating them, and being named as one of the Wales Year of Legends Legendary People.
What is it that the Bug Farm does?
I founded Dr Beynon’s Bug Farm (or ‘The Bug Farm’) in 2013, with the strap-line of: ‘Conservation through research, innovation and education’. The Bug Farm is my dream – a way of linking academic science, farming and education all at one site! It is based on my original family farm, just one mile outside of St Davids, Pembrokeshire, Britain’s smallest city.
The Bug Farm is first and foremost an academic research centre all about how we can farm efficiently at the same time as looking after the environment. We run fieldwork experiments, host students and link with universities, including the University of Oxford, where I am a Senior Research Associate. Our work focusses on the importance of life in the undergrowth (namely invertebrates, or ‘bugs’) which underpins all our farming systems. We put our research into practice on our picturesque, 100 acre working farm and tell people all about it via our visitor attraction and on their plates in onsite cafe and restaurant, Grub Kitchen.
The visitor attraction launched officially last year and is open to the public on weekends and school holidays. Outside of those times we take bookings for group- and school visits. It features an immersive Tropical Bug Zoo, Bug Museum, Bug Art Gallery, Bug Farm Trail, Walled Garden and Bug Barn (play barn). We also host regular lectures, events and workshops throughout the year. The buildings have been sympathetically restored to their former glory, but now house a hidden world that is bang up to date.
How would you describe what you do?
Day to day life at The Bug Farm is never dull: In fact each day is an adventure in itself. I introduce visitors to Colin the cryptic mantid, Robert the rampant rainbow stag beetle and our prehistoric giant vinegaroon who shoots vinegar out of his backside! Behind the scenes, I’m convincing our assassin bugs to eat crickets (and not each other), meeting with students and weighing pats of dung shaped like cakes for our research projects on dung beetles (as any who know me will be well aware, I am a bit obsessed with dung beetles). I might be helping Andy in Grub Kitchen, making 2,000 Cricket CookiesTM to send to an event, or jumping on a train to London to deliver a lecture! After all this, it is time to traipse through the wild flower meadows and across the river to check the cows by torchlight or design the next wild venture to grace The Bug Farm experience. But I can’t complain, as this crazy life is all my own making!
How does it feel to be named as one of the Year of Legends campaign’s legendary people?
I feel extremely honoured and humbled to have been named as one of the Year of Legends campaign’s legendary people and to sit alongside so many extraordinary Welsh people. It did make me laugh that my father’s comment was: “Surely you’re not old enough to be a legend Sarah?”! I am thrilled that our research and vision is considered to be important and that, as a result of the Year of Legends campaign more people will be aware of just how awesome invertebrates really are.
How did you first get interested in bugs?
My fascination with invertebrates began at a young age. When I was about five, I took on a serious construction project on the school windowsill, building a 7-spot ladybird house out of extremely large boulders (because that’s obviously what 7-spot ladybirds need as a home)! The broken toe, caused by a tumbling boulder, was testament to my lack of knowledge, but I have never tired of creating habitats for invertebrates, and hopefully, today, I’m a little more informed than I was then! I am now in the very fortunate position where I have turned my passion for invertebrates into my career.
Could you tell us a bit more about the Grub Kitchen?
Grub Kitchen is the award-winning onsite cafe and restaurant at the The Bug Farm, run by my partner, and top chef Andy Holcroft. It has been hailed as the UK’s first restaurant specialising in eating insects (known as entomophagy) and was recently recognised as the Most Innovative Business of the Year in Wales (at the FSB Worlpay Business Awards). The restaurant also serves more traditional, local and conservation-grade fare, including produce from our own farm. All dishes encourage people to think more about the food they eat and how it got onto their plate: We want diners to understand how to eat more sustainably and ethically whilst enjoying great flavours and innovative dishes. Think black ant crusted goat’s cheese and Bug Farm heritage beetroot salad and gourmet bug burgers, finished off with a mealworm-infused pannacotta and a top quality coffee and you’ll get the flavour of the restaurant! Housed in the old lean-to calf shed, complete with a stone feeding trough, Grub Kitchen really delivers a truly unique experience to diners.
Why should people eat more bugs?
Above all, insects can taste delicious and are also extremely nutritious, high in protein and low in saturated fat! Including insects in your diet is also good for the planet: Insects are extremely efficient at converting their feed into food for us (at least 12-25 times more efficient than cattle) and require very little land and a tiny volume of water to do this! For example, it takes over 3,200l of water to produce a beef burger, but less than a pint of water to produce a bug burger! However, as Andy (founder of Grub Kitchen) says: “Irrespective of whether they are the most sustainable things to eat on the planet, in order for the western world to accept them in their diets, they have to taste great”. And Andy makes insects taste great.
Any good recipes we should try?
All I can say about insect recipes to try is: “Watch this space”! We have lots of exciting things happening this year here at The Bug Farm and Grub Kitchen, so follow us on social media, or drop us an e-mail ([email protected]) asking to be added to our newsletter list and we’ll keep you up to date!
What do you think is behind a lot of people’s aversion to bugs?
I think that the general aversion from bugs comes from a lack of knowledge and the generally negative portrayal of them in the media and in our language. Computer bug, tummy bug, you’re bugging me…all negative terms using the word ‘bug’. News stories about giant house spiders, bed bugs and wasps are commonplace, but where are the stories about spiders being awesome, parasitoid wasps helping us to control crop pests without chemicals, or dung beetles saving the UK cattle industry £367 million each year by removing dung from pastures? We like to turn bugs into villains and forget that, of the 1 million or so species of insect known to Man, most are actually either helping us to survive, or do us no harm whatsoever! We often forget that we humans are just one species of animal on this planet and we don’t need to look at all the other species and ask the question: “What do they do for us?”. Rant over!
What’s something fascinating about the bugs at the Bug Farm that they may not know?
Really, the question is what is not fascinating about bugs – I could write an essay on why bugs are fascinating! Did you know that our leafcutter ants are exceptionally strong? They can carry leaf disks that would be the equivalent of us carrying an elephant over our heads? Dung beetles can roll balls of dung that would be like us playing football with a ball that weighed the same as 3.5 double decker buses full of people! Or how about that scorpions glow fluorescent blue under UV light and no-one really knows why! To be fair, a way to get even the most hardened bug-phobe to respect bugs is to ask them if they like chocolate. The answer is inevitably yes. Well, we wouldn’t have chocolate without midges, as they pollinate the cacao tree, so try hating bugs now! Come along to The Bug Farm to meet these mini-superheroes and delve into their extraordinary world! I would also suggest that, if you know of a child aged between about 7 and 14, to buy them the wonderful books in the Beetle Boy series by M. G. Leonard – there is no better way to be awed by this order of insects that really do run the planet!
What local bugs do you think are most interesting and why?
Our local bugs are just as fascinating as their tropical relatives, you just need to know where to look for them, as they’re often not quite as large and flashy. A human-sized (metallic green and fluorescent pink) tiger beetle would be able to run faster than the speed of sound, while ladybirds ‘bleed’ through their knees when they feel threatened. Victorians used to chew ladybirds, as this ‘insect blood’ was found to relieve toothache! Our bees and other insect pollinators pollinate the food we eat, while our ground beetles will eat slug eggs! The best way to meet our native fauna is to turn your garden into a wildlife garden – plant flowers for pollinators, leave piles of dead wood and stones for ground beetles and dig a small pond to meet the invertebrate monsters of the deep. You won’t be disappointed!
For more information, visit www.thebugfarm.co.uk, Twitter: @thebugfarmUK, or Facebook: Dr Beynon’s Bug Farm
