Science Forums 2

[Michaelangelica]

Just found this interesting Australian site.
Well worth exploring.

LeftClick: Composting with worms-- another sustainability lesson from Cuba

Wednesday, May 7
Composting with worms-- another sustainability lesson from Cuba

The English Green Party's Derek Wall dug up (so apt!) this piece by Matthew Werner on worm farming in Cuba for compost week.Worms as Charles Darwin insisted are important critters.

"Food for worms..." can be almost anything as the medieval Church and Shakespeare's Hamlet have pointed out. Food like...very dead human beings.


Not where he eats, but where he is eaten:
a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your
worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all
creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for
maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but
variable service, two dishes, but to one table:
that's the end.

Worms are also highly efficient carbon sequestors. By taking organic matter underground, the worms reduce carbon release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and worm farming is akin, in my estimation, to such practices as Agri Char (aka Terra Preta) in the role it could play -- rather quickly -- to ameliorate global warming.But no major Vermicompost project has been initiated with that thesis in mind.

David Murphy's book , Organic Growing With Worms addresses that possibility in its pages with great verve such that the irrepressible Peter Cundall writes in regard to it:

"This is an amazing, inspiring book..it should be on the bookshelf of every farmer, gardener, conservationist, scientist or anyone who comprehends the environmental dangers now threatening all life forms on earth."

Murphy writes that "...if [the world's agricultural soil] were raised to 5 per cent [organic matter] to a depth of 25 cm, 150 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide would be sequestered into the soil ".

Healthy soil could sequester up to 350 tonnes of carbon per hectare (Jones 2007), this being equivalent to about 1,285 tonne of carbon dioxide per hectare removed from atmosphere....This exceeds the estimated 15 billion tonnes per annum global emissions of carbon dioxide from all sources (Murphy 2005) 10 times over.

Hence soil represents the largest potential sink (storage capacity) for carbon - if natural soil quality is restored and maintained -- Sunnyside Projects.

*Yep. Worms are really something to get excited about -- not only as a means to bed down waste (3% of national carbon emissions) but also as a means to invigorate the extremely poor nature of Australian soils while helping to reduce the share agriculture plays in our total carbon emissions. -- 16% from Agriculture (larger than transport-- 13%-- and second only to stationary energy ).


Trends in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from the agricultural sector, 1990-2004


Sixty percent of emissions from the agricultural sector come from enteric fermentation in livestock. These are emissions associated with microbial fermentation during digestion of feed by ruminant (mostly cattle and sheep) and some non-ruminant domestic livestock. Emissions associated with agricultural soils (e.g. disturbance of land by cropping, improved pastures and the application of fertilisers and animal wastes) and prescribed burning of savannas also account for a significant proportion of net emissions.

While enteric fermentation is the main driver of emissions from agriculture, to replace that caloric output with plant foods behooves a major shift in soil management .

--Dave Riley

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