Robert Nathan Allen

Robert Nathan Allen, known as RNA to friends and colleagues, founded the Austin based nonprofit Little Herds in 2013 as an educational resource to the public about the nutritional and environmental benefits of edible insects and insect agriculture. In 2014 he worked with Aspire Food Group to start the first edible-insect farm in Texas, growing insects and transforming them into food products. In 2016 he co-founded the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture and co-founded a startup upcycling Austin’s wasted food nutrients into high quality chicken feed using insects. After organizing what would have been the largest food-focused event at SXSW 2020, “The Future Of Food @ SXSW,” the Covid19 pandemic shifted his focus from “feeding people bugs,” to “feeding people, period.” He helped organize and manage programs for “Keep Austin Together,” under The Cook’s Nook’s leadership, to ensure vulnerable community members in Austin and Travis County had access to safe, nutritious and nourishing food, helping distribute more than 120,000 meals. He produced and organized “The Future of Food @ SXSW Online” in 2021, with headliners including Questlove, Dr. Temple Grandin, Moby, Kari Byron, Chef Kwame Onwuachi and more. He is currently thrilled to be organizing #FutureFoodSXSW 2022. RNA currently organizes partnerships and public/private collaborations to fight hunger in Austin, coordinating emergency meals to students, seniors and other disproportionately impacted and historically under-resourced communities. He regularly consults with companies and organizations interested in the growing BugAg (insect agriculture) movement, speaks on and moderates panels at academic and industry conferences and is an industry expert for a variety of publications and media outlets, including NPR, Reuters, the Associated Press, National Geographic, Washington Post, Pacific Standard, Newsweek, Popular Science, Entrepreneur, Buzzfeed, CNBC’s On The Money and more.