Documenting Grasshopper Catching and Cricket Farming in Indonesia

Grasshopper Catching for “Walang Goreng”

In the Indonesian district of Wonosari, fried grasshoppers, known as “Walang Goreng,” are a long-standing culinary tradition and are also popular with tourists. Despite being considered pests, grasshoppers play crucial roles in ecosystems, aiding agriculture by consuming unwanted vegetation and decaying plant matter, and enriching the soil with their dung.

Indonesia is the second most biologically diverse country in the world but its ecosystems are degrading at a concerning rate due to land-use change and overexploitation. Excessive human consumption of this insect threatens Indonesia’s already dwindling wildlife population, which relies on grasshoppers as a primary food source. This potentially leads to ecological imbalances and adverse cascading effects on the local environment.

A wild grasshopper stuck to a hunter’s catching stick is removed by a grasshopper hunter. Grasshopper hunters use glue-coated wooden sticks to make grasshoppers dwelling in teak trees easier to catch. Wonosari, Gunung Kidul Regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2024. Resha Juhari / We Animals Media

Locals and foreign tourists frequently purchase fried grasshoppers from stalls along the Wonosari Highway, a popular tourist route. One seller, in business for 25 years, attracts customers by preparing the live grasshoppers and frying them on-site.

Fried wild-caught grasshoppers are removed from a pan and transferred to containers at a roadside fried grasshopper stall. Wonosari, Gunung Kidul Regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2024. Resha Juhari / We Animals Media

Cricket Farming

In Indonesia, the nocturnal chirps of crickets are a familiar sound, and these insects have long been used in Asian regions as ‘fighting” animals or as a food source for farmed animals and humans.

Like many insects, crickets naturally benefit ecosystems by consuming decaying plant and animal matter and enriching the soil with their dung, reducing the need for pesticides. Despite these benefits, the rise in popularity of bird and fish ownership has increased the farming of crickets in Indonesia as a source of pet food.

A single medium-sized cricket sits on the knuckles of a cricket farmer’s hand, who displays the animal to the camera. Wonosari, Gunung Kidul Regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2024. Resha Juhari / We Animals Media

Cricket farming requires little space and typically occurs at people’s homes. The insects are kept in wooden boxes and fed leaves, such as cassava and papaya, or pelleted chicken feed. One of the cricket farmers our photojournalist spoke with harvests 20 to 30 kilograms of crickets every two days and approximately 300 kilograms per month.

After approximately 30 days, when the crickets have grown to a saleable size, they are sold to Javanese regions as animal feed or fried as snacks, a relatively new trend popular with tourists. These snacks are made with live crickets, who are cleaned, seasoned, and then cooked in hot oil.

Farmed crickets crawl over trimmed cassava leaf stems, displayed to the camera by the farmer. The crickets also receive chicken feed pellets to eat. Wonosari, Gunung Kidul Regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2024. Resha Juhari / We Animals Media

With the farming and consumption of insects rising around the globe as pressure amps up to find solutions to feed our growing population, insect cognition and sentience are being researched and discussed more than ever. These visuals offer a glimpse into the experiences of these previously unconsidered animals.

Data sources: XERCES SOCIETY/ USAID / IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science/ Institut Pertanian Bogor / Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology / ScienceDirect