Beta Hatch

Beta Hatch farms mealworms on organic waste and sells two things: a high-protein feed for poultry and fish, and frass, the insect manure left behind, as fertilizer. Nearly half the crops grown on earth are eaten by animals rather than people, which means the fastest way to feed more people is to stop feeding them so much of the harvest. Feed and fertilizer are also the two largest costs a protein or produce farmer carries.

Mealworms eat what a brewery throws out and convert it into something a chicken should have been eating all along, dense in protein and fat, with an amino acid profile more digestible than the alternatives being farmed at scale. The waste stream is free, the output is high-value, and the same insect produces both products. The work is less about the bug than about the farm around it: genetics, automation, and a process repeatable enough to build a thousand times.