Cutting Chemical Use on Farms by 80%

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When I was a small boy my grandfather, who had a market garden, told me of how worms mated. My sister and I gathered all the worms we could find, and mated them, revitalizing some very poor soil in his garden. When I was a bit older, my memory was jogged after reading a book about Charles Darwin and his study of worms. I ran an experiment in an attempt to improve the poor soil in my garden by digging a spade sized hole in the poor soil. I then dug up all the worms that I could find in a good quality area of soil in the garden. (It is easier to gather worms from paths after it has just rained, during the rainy season). I put the worms I found in a bucket. Worms are hermaphrodites and can double their population in about 60 days. I then mated them all, ensuring that the worms I mated looked the same so that I would not be breeding an entirely new species, I made sure that they were the right way up by ensuring the saddles were at the same end and then wound them around each other in a clockwise spiral, they locked on in two seconds. The breeding worms were then put in another bucket and when all worms were mating I put them in the hole I had dug and broke the soil from the hole over them gently. My other grandfather was a farmer and saw me do this, he then looked at the poor soil area the next year and told me it was now of a good quality. Adam Henson demonstrated my method for improving soil on the BBC TV program ‘Countryfile.’ A friend had previously managed to increase crop production on her father’s farm by 5%. This not only improves food taste but also cuts down on disease, and thus chemical use by 80%. Crops taste much better and flowers smell much better. You can aerate lawns much more cheaply than conventional means, and faster too. Worms must be used every year. ‘The Guardian’ newspaper reported this year “...more than 60% of the EU’s agricultural soils are degraded due to intensive agriculture, with similar damage to about 40% of British soils.

Experts from the Save Soil initiative said nourishing and restoring agricultural soils could reduce the impact of the climate crisis and provide protection against the worsening extremes of weather, as well as the food shortages and price rises likely to accompany them.” Let’s do it with worms.