Perhaps the greatest revelation of the Department of Government Efficiency, apart from the sheer, staggering scale of the pork, was just how much of it was being funnelled through USAID—and, of course, where it was going and to whom.

All of a sudden, we discovered that literally everything awful in the world—from drag-queen storytime in Vanu'atu and sex-changes for dwarfs in Morocco, to research into rare aardvark viruses and cat-torture in China—all of it was being paid for with US taxpayer money via USAID.

Fancy that!?

So why not insect-farming too?

It certainly fits the bill. It's evil and disgusting and runs counter to all our deepest, most fundamental instincts; it serves no real purpose except to degrade, humiliate and elicit sniggers—if not uproarious laughter—from those who came up with the idea and would never, under any circumstances, do it themselves.

In short, it's perfect.

Well, I did a little digging and, to my surprise, it doesn't look like the US taxpayer was propping up the global insect-farming industry, not really. USAID made a "request for information" in 2022, meaning it was looking for input on how it could invest in the industry, but other than that it was just a few small-scale projects in places like Uganda, Madagascar and Indonesia to help farmers feed their livestock with black soldier flies or dispose of waste by feeding it to worms—stuff like that.

So, it's just a coincidence that insect-farming is on its last… legs, ahem, after Kekius Maximus took his gold-plated chainsaw to the United States Agency for International Development.

Anyway, none of this changes the fact that insect-farmers are, indeed, in very deep trouble.

A long article on Mother Jones examines the industry's woes in detail, from its early days with so much promise, when billions of dollars poured into startups from venture-capital firms and governments; to today's dismal prospects. In recent years, almost a quarter of the 20 largest insect-farming startups have now failed, including the biggest, Ynsect, which came tumbling down last December.

"Things have gone from bad to worse for the big insect factory business model," one unhappy CEO said in a YouTube video.

Plans for further expansion, including the building of a massive insect farm in Nebraska by Tyson Foods, have been placed on indefinite hold.