It's all business for worms

Yuck! Vermiculture is booming once again BY BRENDAN I. KOERNER

Reprinted from U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 22 1997

In the late 1970s, vermiculture-the scientific name for worm farming-joined bridge selling in the annals of consumer rip-offs. Thousands of Americans were victimized by hucksters claiming that backyard worm breeders could easily gross over $14,000 a year by tapping the wrigglers' potential as bait, soil enrichers, and even food. The worm business collapsed after a 1978 expose' in the Wall Street Journal detailed suspicious buyback guarantees and other scams by unsavory worm salesmen.

Fast forward to the environmentally correct '90s. A more reputable cast of players has begun turning the lowly earthworm's voracious appetite for fetid garbage into a viable waste-disposal alternative. The tiny creatures' ability to devour virtually any organic waste-livestock manure, rotten food, even ratty T-shirts-and excrete it as premium organic fertilizer (dubbed "black gold" by organic farmers for its nitrogen richness) is proving profitable for a host of nonsqueamish entrepreneurs. "Worms," declares Sherrel Hall of the Alpine, CA, vermiculture firm Environmental Recycling Systems, "are the missing link That makes sustainable agriculture a reality."

Vermiculture ventures, the biggest of which involve 50 million worms chowing down on almost 90 tons of waste per week, have boomed over the past few years. "I've gotten so many calls in the last 18 months that I've contracted to edit a book just to get people off my back;' says Clive Edwards, an Ohio State soil ecologist acknowledged as the world's leading vermiculture authority. In response to the rapid growth in the industry, nearly 300 large-scale vermiculturalists formed the International Worm Growers Association earlier this year to help promote the trade. Edwards estimates that the IWGA's membership represents a fraction of the "thousands" of vermiculture operations he believes are now up and running.

Call for castings.

Many outfits are prospering thanks in part to the growing popularity of organic foods, which are expected to become a $6.5 billion-a-year business by 2000, up from $3.5 billion last year. With the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimating that 25 percent of Americans purchase organically grown foods at least once a week, organic farmers' demand for worm feces far outstrips supply. Charlotte based Vermicycle Organics, which harvests worm droppings in high-tech greenhouses, each year produces 7.5 million pounds of a fertilizer it markets as Nature's Ultimate Plant Food. The company expects sales of the fertilizer to grow by 500 percent this year. In Orange Lake, Fla., Vermitechnology Unlimited has doubled its business every year since 1991, despite prices that can run twice as high as those of synthetic fertilizers. The company sells around 100 tons of worm droppings-also known as castings-to local organic growers. "In five to 10 years, every commercial fertilizer company will be selling worm castings," predicts Vermitechnology founder Larry Martin.

Other wormers are cashing in on "think globally, act locally" environmentalism by targeting homeowners. With many local and state governments trying to divert waste from dogged landfills, forward-thinking cities are promoting "back-yard vermicomposting?" Traditional compost piles can take weeks to produce a relatively low-quality humus; a pound of worms, on the other hand, needs only 48 hours to convert a pound of waste into nutrient-rich castings. Last year in San Jose, Calif, where state law has mandated that the amount of garbage going to landfills be cut in half by the year 2000, about 1,200 residents used city-distributed discount vouchers to purchase garbage-eating worms from Jack Chambers's Sonoma Valley Worm Farms. His small operation sells 4,000 pounds of worms a year-about 4 million of the critters-at around $20 per pound.

Alas, as vermiculture has returned, so too have the con artists. Although their numbers now appear diminished compared with what they were two decades ago, disreputable dealers claiming the worms can rid the world of nuclear waste or make the Arabian desert bloom continue to prey on innocent would-be entrepreneurs. The new breed of worm businessmen has tried hard to distance itself from such pie-in-the-sky promises. "I try to avoid misleading others into thinking this is a get-rich-quick opportunity;' says Peter Bogdanov, publisher of the bimonthly vermiculture newsletter Casting Call. "There is great potential, but potential and reality are two different things." By getting the word out, he and other serious vermiculturalists are hoping to prevent worms from once again being used as bait to lure gullible humans.

US.NEWS & WORLD REI'ORT, SFPTEMBER 22,1997 page53