In Their Own Words Edited by Peter Bogdanov Interviews With Vermiculture Experts
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In Their Own Words
Edited by Peter Bogdanov
Interviews With Vermiculture Experts
Copyright © 2000 by Peter Bogdanov All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Published by: Petros Publishing Co. Merlin, Oregon 97532 The publisher does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in In Their Own Words whether such errors or omission result from negligence, accident or any other cause. Printed in the United States of America Library in Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
In their own words : interviews with vermiculture experts/ edited by Peter Bogdanov.
p.cm. ISBN 0-9657039-1-6
1. Vermiculturists—Interviews. 2. Earthworm culture. 3. Vermicomposting. 4. Earthworm culture—United States. 5. Vermicomposting—United States. I.Bogdanov, Peter, 1951-
SF597.E3 15 2000 639’.75—dc21 00-065247
In Their Own Words
Edited by Peter Bogdanov
Interviews With Vermiculture Experts
Petros Publishing CompanyMerlin, Oregon U.S.A.
Introduction: What Do We Learn from Interviews? Chapter 1: Mary Appelhof
Flowerfield Enterprises
7
Chapter 2: Jack Chambers Sonoma Valley Worm Farm
15
Chapter 3: Barry Meijer Pacific Southwest Farms
23
Chapter 4: Jim Jensen Yelm Earthworm and Castings Farm
33
Chapter 5: Al Eggen Original Vermitech Systems, Ltd.
42
Chapter 6: Larry Martin Vermitechnology Unlimited, Inc.
52
Chapter 7: Al Cardoza Rainbow Worm Farm
67
Chapter 8: Ed Berry U.S. Department of Agriculture
79
Chapter 9: Mario Travalini American Resource Recovery
90
Chapter 10: Dr. Clive Edwards Ohio State University
102
Chapter 11: Dr. Scott Subler Pacific Garden Company
129
Chapter 12: Bruce R. Eastman Orange County Florida Environmental Protection
161
Table of Contents
nderstanding how we learn and how information may be transferred are subjects of perennial discussion. We seek and obtain information visually and audibly
as well as experientially. In the quest to promote greater understanding of vermiculture, our company has published straightforward written information (in the form of books, a manual and newsletters) and produced videocassettes. But we have found that the interview format provides a different approach to picking up information. Our culture is actually quite absorbed with interviews. It seems we all yearn to discover more about personalities in the news. Television leads the way. Early morning network news/talk programs feature guests who are interviewed by TV show hosts. Afternoon talk shows and late night talk shows are emceed by some of the best-paid and most famous television personalities in the US. Some, such as Rosie and Oprah are known merely by their first names. And their format? The interview. From a Barbara Walters Special, to a Mike Wallace interview on 60 Minutes, producers and advertisers know that a significant percentage of the Nielson audience will tune in and watch. There’s just something about a one-on-one interview that will seize a viewer’s attention and hold him or her captive. Whether this curiosity comes from the cult of hero worship or attraction to tabloid gossip, there is something that draws us to know more about our own kind. Our fascination with the interview stems from wanting to know more than merely what an author or narrator might
U
Introduction: What Do We Learn From Interviews?
In Their Own Words
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choose to say about a given subject. The interview can be more spontaneous, more informal and perhaps more revealing than reading an author’s carefully chosen words. While the interviews presented here, quizzing experts in the area of vermiculture, are not so self-revealing that one might learn intimate personal details, there is ample opportunity here to read between the lines and examine motivations that may not be revealed elsewhere. The human side, or better, more of our humanness is allowed to come across through the medium of an interview than other means of written expression. Another benefit to this format is that an interviewer may ask the same sort of question that someone else has longed to ask. Or, the interviewer may ask a question that the interviewee has not considered or developed or commented upon previously. In short, the interviewer introduces the subject material rather than the person being interviewed. Again, this difference in format may bring to life what an author or expert might not have been able to express elsewhere. The subjects interviewed here consist of experienced worm workers representing a variety of special interests. World-renowned researchers such as Dr. Clive Edwards and Dr. Scott Subler have published their findings in scholarly journals, as has Dr. Edward Berry who worked for over 30 years with the USDA. These researchers have spoken to groups all over the world and have committed their lives’ work to the exciting frontier of soil ecology. Operators of worm farms such as Al Cardoza (Rainbow Worm Farm), Jack Chambers (Sonoma Valley Worm Farm), and Jim Jensen (Yelm Earthworm & Castings Farm) bring a perspective that comes from being a sole proprietor. Their small businesses provide excellent models for future entrepreneurs. Two of the largest vermicomposting operations in North America, Pacific Southwest Farms and American Resource Recovery, are
Introduction
5
represented here by Barry Meijer and Mario Travalini, individuals whose facilities process tons of organic residues with acres of earthworms in arid California climates. Here we learn more about the opportunities and pitfalls of large-scale vermicomposting with a waste management focus. The incentive of collecting a tip fee (or gate fee) for processing waste in a capital-intensive operation provides new challenges and potentially greater rewards. Al Eggen’s Original Vermitech Systems have been installed in over a dozen institutional facilities and Larry Martin of Vermitechnology Unlimited has consulted on a wide variety of projects in the US and abroad. Bruce Eastman, a Florida-based environmental regulator is leading the way in demonstrating that earthworms can transform potentially harmful biosolids (wastewater residuals) into a pathogen-free product that has useful properties as a soil amendment. And others, such as author/educator Mary Appelhof, contribute still another perspective about the value of including earthworms in educational programs geared for people of all ages. These interviews first appeared in Casting Call, a bi-monthly newsletter published by VermiCo that features reports on vermiculture, composting, soil fertility and issues concerning organic residues. Interviews published here were conducted over a three-year period, from February 1997 to February 2000. If there is a Vermiculture Industry, it is made up of the individuals interviewed here and others like them. It includes people who make their living through some kind of association with earthworms that now has a soil ecology and environmental focus more than the worms-as-fishing-bait emphasis of years ago. Strangely, however, even though
In Their Own Words
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words such as industry and association are used here, there is, as of this date, no American organization for those involved in vermiculture or vermicomposting. Yet, even without a uniform or cohesive mission, the individuals you will hear from in the following pages seem to share a similar worldview, at least about earthworms. If nothing more, they would at least agree with Charles Darwin’s famous words:
It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these
lowly organized creatures.
The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. 1881
7
Mary Appelhof
Flowerfield Enterprises
Mary Appelhof is popularly known as “The Worm Woman” from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 1981 she compiled the Proceedings from the Workshop on the Role of Earthworms in the Stabilization of Organic Residues, from a conference she helped organize at Western
Michigan University. This precedent-setting event featured academic scientists who met with entrepreneurs in vermiculture as well as members of the public sector. Her 1982 publication, Worms Eat My Garbage, explained home vermicomposting as a means of reducing kitchen waste while producing a valuable soil amendment for houseplants and gardens. Newsweek magazine (“Kitchen Help: Wrigglers Under the Sink,” Feb 12, 1996), gave national attention to Mary and her book sales. In 1993 she published Worms Eat Our Garbage: Classroom Activities for a Better Environment, a curriculum guide and activities book for educators co-authored by Appelhof. In 1995 she released Wormania! a 26- minute video featuring “Worm Woman” Mary along with songwriter/entertainer Billy Brennan and his kids who explored the world of worms. This production features a number of songs as well as close-up footage of worms at work, including a worm hatching from its cocoon. As president of Flowerfield Enterprises, Mary markets educational materials, “Worm-a-way” worm bins, earthworms and a variety of vermicomposting incentive items. Mary is a frequent contributor to Worm Digest, typically reporting about
Chapter One
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her visits to vermicomposting sites abroad, such as Australia, New Zealand and Belarus. She has been a featured speaker at conferences around the US and throughout the world. In September 2000, Mary organized The Vermillennium, a week-long conference of scientists and worm workers in Kalamazoo, commemorating the 20th anniversary of her 1980 Workshop. She holds master’s degrees in education and biological sciences and is also known to be a skilled photographer. This interview appeared in the February 1997 issue of Casting Call newsletter. Casting Call: Let’s talk first about the success of your books and educational materials. Can you tell us something about their reception worldwide? Mary Appelhof: I’m not sure when, but fairly soon on we had books [Worms Eat My Garbage] in each of the 50 states. My guess is that there are at least 50 or 60 countries that have a least one copy of my book. We seem to get more people from different countries that are corresponding with us such as a recent letter from Lima, Peru. Just yesterday I heard from a woman in China whose work is in family planning. She uses worms for medical purposes as an agglutinating agent for sperm with is used as a contraceptive. Also, I’ve just gotten a letter from Russia. People are inquiring about translating the book. In fact, the book as been translated into Russian. But I don’t know what the current status is of that. CC: Several notable vermiculturists have credited you with being a pioneer in the field. How does the “worm climate” today differ from the days in which you were first starting out? MA: When I first started out 25 years ago, people would cut me off after 4 or 5 minutes. They’d laugh at me. They’d say
Mary Appelhof
9
“You’re out of your mind, you’re never going to get people to do this. Worms? In your house? You’re weird, Appelhof!” [Laughter] And now, I give three and four hour seminars and readily talk on the phone to people with them paying the bill for a half hour or 45 minutes (if you can get me on the phone). The fact that there are nearly 100,000 copies of Worms Eat My Garbage out there is to me an incredible thing. The interest now is just growing—more and more people are doing it. It’s definitely changed, not only in my life, but now there are large-scale projects. I used to think in terms of tons of worms—once I know that a pound of worms could eat about a pound of garbage a day—I envisioned tons of worms eating tons of garbage. I envisioned large-scale projects and literally thought of huge piles of stuff and huge masses of worms. But I didn’t have the wherewithal to make that all happen. At the time that I started I don’t believe there was an industry. I believe there is a developing industry now. The thing that I’m grateful for, what I’m seeing is that there is a fairly good nucleus of reputable, credible people who are in the industry. And I couldn’t have said that in the mid ‘70s when there was very little credible stuff going. Now in the late ‘90s I feel we’re on the verge of developing this potential for large-scale vermicomposting. CC: As an educator and publisher of educational materials, your work has influenced thousands of teachers and children. What has motivated you to focus upon reaching school-age children? MA: Well, for one thing, remember that I come from an education background. I am in education. I was teaching high school biology for a number of years. When I write I believe that the function of communication is to communicate. In other words, I’ve never been comfortable with the academic type of jargon, where you just use big
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words and complex sentences and obfuscate information. I wrote my book in a way that I could communicate with people. I wrote it with simple sentences and anecdotes and stories and illustrations and tried to get technical information across to people in a way that they could understand it. I didn’t intentionally go after school-age audiences, but because my book was so accessible to people, I would have many teachers who were calling me up saying, “This would be great to have in the classroom. Can you give us some more ideas on what we can do with worms in the classroom?” It wasn’t really an intentional decision or focus or steering. It was a response to a need that I saw was out there. So I realized that as an educator and as a person who can interact with the scientists, I can take technical information and put it into more understandable terms for teachers or for kids. That’s a gift that I have. Publishing, writing, and speaking are tools I use as well as the visual arts found in the video Wormania! CC: Take us on a brief, whirlwind tour of where you have been and what has impressed you most through your travels. MA: I coordinated the conference in Kalamazoo [1980] and what we were trying to do was to get the worm growers to talk to the scientists at that conference. Since then there have been a number of international conferences and I have been very privileged to participate in several of these. The first one was a Darwin Centenary, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, and that was in Cumbria, England. At Kalamazoo I was able to meet scientists and establish relationships in the scientific community and now I see them on a regular basis going to these international worm conferences. There was another international conference in Avignon, France. This past summer I went to Ireland. I went to the Philippines in1983.
Mary Appelhof
11
At that time there was considerable interest in worms. But I have no idea what’s happening there today. In the U.S. I’ve been out to the Pacific Northwest and done some work in New York. But travel is very demanding. What I’m viewing more as my role in what I need to be doing is that I need to limit my travel to 2 or 3 times out in the course of a year and produce these materials so that other people can make use of them. CC: You must have several “irons in the fire.” Can you tell us about any upcoming projects? MA: The biggest one right now is doing a revision of Worms Eat My Garbage. I’m wanting to update it and so I’m including information about plastic worms bins. I’ll have more on different worm species, so there are some things I definitely need to address in this revised edition. Hopefully it will be available this spring. It won’t be a greatly expanded version, but there are some areas that have grown. At the time that I was starting there was not such thing as a plastic worm bin. So I’ll be addressing that as well as some other things. CC: Your understanding of the role of earthworms in waste management goes back some 25 years. Clearly, much as happened over this time period. How do you assess the current state-of-affairs in this area? Do you foresee large-scale vermi-conversion sites processing organic waste to be a growth industry or could it just be a temporary phenomenon? MA: No, I don’t see it as temporary. There are large-scale sites that are going and they’re processing large amounts of material. They’re producing an end product which has value, and it seems to have enough value that it’s paying for some of the infrastructure to get there. With the number of states that are mandating that organic waste be kept out of landfills,
In Their Own Words
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vermicomposting is going to be a part of the composting mix. I think in most cases the majority of the materials will be processed by larger-scale composting projects. But I think that vermicomposting has its place and I think it’s going to have a bigger and bigger place than it is now. There are some fine people working out there. They are making real contributions. CC: You have an abiding interest in soil fertility due to the association of vermicompost and the activity of earthworker-type worms with horticulture. What data, wither anecdotal or scientific, do you have in support of organic practices in agriculture/horticulture versus the prevailing dependence upon synthetic fertilizers? MA: When I talk to people about worms, it’s important for me to try to get across that there are earthworkers and there are composters—that there is more than one type of worm. You’ve got to use the right kind of worm to perform certain functions. For years I’ve tried to discourage people from buying a pound of worms to put into their garden. The other side of the coin is, although we’re sympathetic with their wanting to save money on buying worms—“Can’t I just go out and dig ‘em?”—the worms they dig from the garden are not the kind they can use in a worm bin. I’ve become more knowledgeable out worms and soil fertility through my association with John Buckerfield in Australia who has been working with CSIRO on earthworms and soil fertility. I’m very interested in [Uday] Bhawalkar’s work. His idea of taking organic waste and putting it directly on the soil. His worms, Pheretima elongata, work as bio-managers. I want to find out more about that, about the role of worms working in the root zone, encouraging the growth of bacteria that are more favorable for that plant to grow. The influence of rock dust, containing many, many trace elements, which may have
Mary Appelhof
13
been removed through our contemporary agricultural practices. These are very exciting concepts, and I’d like to see more work done that can be scientifically validated along these lines. I’m very much interested in this movement call “Remineralize the Earth,” using rock dust. CC: There has been some concern expressed by those inside our industry as well as outside, that there might be a handful of folks engaging in questionable, if not dishonest business practices in selling worms and making misrepresentations. Please comment on your perception of this. Is it a significant enough problem that must be remedied soon? MA: One problem starts with the idea that the average number of worms hatching out of a cocoon could be two to twenty. I’ve read enough scientific papers now that I don’t believe there’s ever been a cocoon that’s had 20 worms hatch out of it. Normally, the average seems to be 2.7 to 3. If one assumes you have 10 worms hatch out of a cocoon, and builds projections based on that, it leads to an erroneous conclusion because the initial assumption is wrong. And so I have a quarrel with that. But what nobody every mentions is that if you are going to have say, 128 beds that are 3’x8’, nobody spells out that you also have to have a back that can handle the material for sorting through the processing through that material. That is just glossed over. It’s misleading just by the very serious omissions. I believe greed must be there. So, what-----‘s promotions stuff does is to key into people who are also greedy. I’m glad there are reputable people out there. There’s another thing I don’t like, this tendency to come up with your own trademarked name for a worm. To me, that just grates against me. How can we know what we’re talking about if we’re not talking about the same thing? I also don’t give the hybrid any degree of credibility in the worm business. The species are genetically isolated. Hybrid is a
In Their Own Words
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tern in popular literature, but there certainly aren’t any that exist as far as I’m concerned. When people think that they can’t get a certain kind of worm from someone else, it can lead to an inflated price. CC: What do you hope to see happen by the end of this century and into the next millennium? MA: More worms processing more garbage, both at an individual level and at a larger scale. We also need definition of a scale. What is large, scale, mid-scale, small scale and micro scale in vermicomposting? I suggested to Dr. Clive Edwards for the forthcoming project on worms to be published by BioCycle that someone work on defining these terms.
15
Jack Chambers
Sonoma Valley Worm Farm
Jack Chambers, a commercial airline pilot, received national attention with the publication of the article, "The Business of Vermicomposting," in the September 1996 issue of BioCycle, The Journal of Composting and Recycling. In 1992 he purchased a five-
acre farm from Earl Schmidt who had taken over a chicken farm and began using chicken manure to grow worms. Chambers bought the property and expanded the operation by adding more windrows, obtaining dairy manure, hiring an employee, installing an irrigation system, and purchasing equipment such as a tractor and worm harvester. Both worms and vermicompost are sold at retail and wholesale prices. Vermicompost is sold at $40 per cubic yard (retail) and $30 wholesale. A five-gallon bucket of screened material is sold for $5.00. Worms are most commonly sold in 1, 2, 5 and 10 pound increments, but larger amounts have been sold to bait dealers. Chambers has experimented with feedstocks such as alfalfa and has discovered variations in worm activity according to the amount of moisture applied to the worm beds. A few months before this interview, robins had been removing earthworms from some of the windrows that left Chambers searching for a solution to remedy the theft problem. To facilitate harvesting, Chambers covers a three-foot section on one end of a windrow with sheet metal (thereby withholding food and water) which encourages worms to move laterally in search of feedstock. The cover is
Chapter Two
In Their Own Words
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removed several days later to harvest the vermicompost. This interview was published in the April 1997 issue of Casting Call newsletter. Casting Call: When you purchased the property on which you now have your vermiculture operation, it had been converted from a poultry operation to a worm-growing facility. What attracted you to this site and to vermiculture? Jack Chambers: There was a combination of factors which led us here. The principal reason was to grow worms but we wanted some land and my wife is an artist so there is a place here she uses as a studio. Just coming out here and learning from Earl was a big incentive. I had read an article in the January 1992 issue of Organic Gardening in which Mary Appelhof had done an article on a worm bin. That really intrigued me. Then in the summer of '92 I came out here and bought some worms and put them in the compost pile at my other house. I began to like what I was seeing, both in the compost pile and with what Earl was doing here. CC: Earl served as a kind of "mentor" for you initially. How have you retained or modified his instruction? Who else has been instrumental in your development? JC: We still do things pretty much the way he had done it. We put in a little more sophisticated drip irrigation system that is on a timer and watered the beds a little more evenly. We still harvest the beds the way he used to and we're on a six-week rotation like he used. Whenever I get an idea I'll run it by him because he's been involved his entire life with worms and he's a wonderful observer. He always has good input on what we can do. As far as others who have been influential, I went back to the ISEE 5 [International Symposium on Earthworm Ecology] the World Worm
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Conference in Ohio in 1994. I met Clive Edwards and bought some of his material. And then I talked to Mary Appelhof and began reading as much as I could. But just being here and doing it--you can see what works and what doesn't work. It's kind of a combination of actual experience, talking to people (with Earl especially), and then reading about what other people are doing. CC: You've had some success with municipal sales through distribution of worm bins and coupons or certificates that could be redeemed to purchase worms from you. What effect has that had on your business? JC: It's had a really good effect. We don't sell that much in the way of worm bins. We have a nice recycled wood bin that we get from the Master Gardeners. But the certificate program has been probably one of the biggest successes we've come up with. My wife actually came up with the idea. We make a certificate available to an organization like S.L.U.G. (the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners). The City of San Jose was one we did last year and sold about 2,000 pounds of worms--almost half of the amount of worms we sold for the entire year. Most of it was one and two-pound orders, but the city itself bought about 400 pounds which they had us distribute. After these worms were given out, people could get a coupon with a worm bin. When the people were ready to order worms, they would send us the coupon--which gave them 10% off--and their check, and we'd ship them their worms. The nice thing for the city was that they didn't have to be involved in the worm distribution. It was a win-win situation all around--the city was happy, the consumers got a discount, and it was a good program for us. The distributor of the worm bins continues to refer people to us and city residents who bought worms have told their friends. It's still a little early for repeat business. Sometimes people want to get
In Their Own Words
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their worm bins going a little faster and will buy another pound, but it's still early in the cycle. CC: Your region and climate are well known for the prolific viticulture industry in Sonoma and Napa counties. And you have arranged your worm beds so that some are covered while other windrows are fully exposed. How do the two systems differ?
JC: The big difference is that the covered beds do better in the winter and summer months. In the spring and the fall, like right now for example, before it gets too hot, we're doing more with the
outside beds. As far as feeding goes, we feed the exposed beds heavily with alfalfa in the winter. This helps shed the water because it forms a kind of crust, and it's also a good nitrogen source for the worms (but the alfalfa makes harvesting more difficult later on; it clogs the worm harvester.) But the alfalfa is almost all gone now. Now we're applying manure. As for the covered beds, we stay pretty much just with manure. This was the first year we were able to stay in business year-round. We had a voucher program with the schools of Alameda County which pretty much kept us going in January and February. Usually there's a pretty distinct bell-curve over the year. This winter was unusual (because it was busy). The phone starts ringing in late March and fairly steadily in April. Things really go until about the Fourth of July when there's a little dip, then they start soaring
Jack Chambers
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up again to the top of the bell-curve until about October, and that's when it starts to cool down. That's seems to fit along with the weather pattern here. People get interested in their gardens in March and April and then putting things to bed around Thanksgiving. CC: Your advertising has been principally through the yellow pages. Few, if any, competitors seem to be using this medium, at least in your area. How has it worked for you and what plans do you have for advertising/marketing? JC: That's pretty much all we have done. It's worked well for us. We have an 800 number that's in the yellow pages all throughout the Bay Area. I know in some counties we are the only listing under worms--right after "word processing" where there's hundreds of listings. A number of people have told me that the reason they called is because we have an 800 number. The other thing we have done to expand our marketing is to associate ourselves with the local Master Gardeners and Master Composters. They'll help us by distributing coupons through their classes. It gives them a source they can send people to that they feel good about. People have called from all over (like Colorado and southern California) because they haven't been able to find where to get worms. CC: In constructing your worm beds, you begin by laying down a layer of straw or hay, then applying cow manure as a feedstock (to a total of about 12-18" in height). The drip irrigation system is mounted over the rows supported by posts. Are you content with this system? How does this affect harvesting? Are there any modifications planned? JC: We're pretty content with the way we do things. We recycle everything. After harvesting, the smaller worms go back out to the new beds as well as the larger material from
In Their Own Words
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the screened vermicompost. The drip irrigation system works well and we're going to install a sprinkler system as well so the entire bed gets watered. We think we'll increase our worm population this way. So we'll go to a hybrid system, using both drip irrigation and sprinkler irrigation. CC: You've used shredded paper on top of the worm beds to increase cocoon production, particularly in spring. How did this idea come about and what have you seen as a result? JC: In one of the articles found in Clive Edwards' Earthworms in Waste and Environmental Management, there was something about paper and manure. Earl told me that he used to shred up newspaper and then put manure on that. A few years ago we bought 2,000 lbs. of shredded paper from a recycling facility and then laid it on the beds. Nobody seems to know why, but Earl's supposition is that the paper provides a way for the worms to slip the cocoons off, providing an edge or something hard or crusty. I used to find that there were just tons of cocoons along the edge of some redwood bins I had made, because the wood fibers helped them slip off their cocoons. Unfortunately, I found that in the recycled shredded paper we bought, there was also some shredded microfilm from the police department. So mixed in with the paper were all these bits of plastic film which was a big nuisance. We've gone to alfalfa now to give us similar results and provide extra nitrogen as well. The only down side is that it costs us more. CC: Tell us about the production of worms versus vermicompost. Last year you sold about 4,000 pounds of worms. About two years ago you sold about 200 cubic yards of vermicompost, but only 75 yards the following year. Do these fluctuations depend upon the market demand, or is it a matter of your own emphasis.
Jack Chambers
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JC: Well, the market demand is there. With the coupon program we were just swamped. With my other job, I'm limited at times. You want to put out the flames where the fire is, and last year the worms were that fire, so that's what we concentrated upon. There wasn't an easy way to sell the castings. It wasn't convenient. This year we've made an arrangement with someone who brings us a 15-20 yard container that we fill up every week. We're selling this in bulk every week, perhaps 70-80 yards a month. We may sell 600 cubic yards of vermicompost this year.
CC: One large composting facility in a nearby county has contacted you about purchasing your vermicompost. And another
composting operation in your own county is looking into doing a
joint venture with your worms and their feedstock. These seem like two exciting developments. Do you see this kind of thing happening with greater frequency in the future as commercial composting facilities see value in vermicomposting as well? JC: I think the future is really very good. One of the things that I saw when I went to a composting workshop in '93 is that the composting business can be a real "cut-throat" business. But I see vermicomposting as a kind of "gourmet" end of the market--a little higher priced but a better material. The people who get into it know that they can get a better price for it than
In Their Own Words
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for compost. There's increasing interest in organic gardening too. We're a small to medium-size worm farm. There's room for that and other kinds of operations. I'd like to see a worm farm in every town. You could be a neighborhood worm grower all the way to an international exporter. CC: You serve as an example of an individual who may have a chosen career, yet may opt for a wholly different pursuit later in life (although you are still an airline pilot). What tips or suggestions could you give to the person who is looking into commercial vermiculture, yet has some anxiety about how to proceed? JC: If you could go work for somebody or [find] a mentoring program or an intern program, or if you can't do that, just think about starting a small worm farm in your back yard and see if you like it. You could make a raised bed. Start out that way and see if that's fun. Then try a couple. I guess my major recommendation would be to start out small and see if you like it. When you think of selling worms for $10 or $12 per pound, that's more than steak and I think people mistakenly get the idea that they're going to be rich. There's a lot reflected in the price--it's not inflated. It reflects the cost of what goes into it, from the trucks to go get the manure, to a tractor to harvest, to lay the manure down, to harvest the worms, to package them up--it's an amazing process that requires a lot of steps. I would discourage people from getting into it when they think they're going to get rich quickly. People should take a longer term view. One of the best things about this business is the people. There's just a lot of really good people who are trying to do the right thing. They're enjoying it and genuinely enjoyable to be around.
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Barry Meijer
Pacific Southwest Farms, Ontario, CA
Barry Meijer operates Pacific Southwest Farms (PSF), a 54-acre vermicomposting facility in Ontario, (San Bernardino County) California. Beginning in 1994 with earthworms transported from the Worm Concern in Simi Valley, California, Meijer has steadily built his site into what may be the largest operation of its kind. Three Orange County Municipal Recovery Facilities (MRFs), send the biodegradable fraction of collected waste ("green material" as defined by California's compost regulations) to PSF which charges a tip fee. Worm-stocked
windrows measuring eight feet in width by 100 feet in length are fed at the rate of four tons of material per row per week. Situated east of Los Angeles in an arid climate, PSF's water usage amounts to 120,000 gallons per day. Sources for water include
Chapter Three
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residential sprinkler runoff and barn water from local dairies. More than 100 tons of worms can be found in the 360 windrows. Finished vermicompost is currently being marketed to agricultural users. Due to the mixed quality of feedstocks which contain a significant portion of inert material (glass, metal, rocks, plastic, etc.), the final product must be screened to 1/8" to remove these residuals
Meijer has been a consistent proponent of maintaining the agricultural exemption for vermiculture under California's Food and Agriculture Act. Over the past several months he has been involved in defending his operation against county suits intending to close down PSF. On November 26, 1996, the San Bernardino County Local Enforcement Agency (LEA) issued a Notice and Order to PSF requiring PSF to obtain a solid waste facilities permit as a transfer/processing station. It also stated that "any on-site processing of any green material prior to vermiculture bed application after March 30, 1997, is strictly forbidden and considered in violation of this order." This effectively shut down PSF. The operation, it was told, could not "process" any of its incoming feedstock. Processing would include either blending with manure or pre-composting the incoming feedstock. PSF appealed the Notice and Order. On February 26, 1997 the San Bernardino County Independent Hearing Panel issued a decision regarding the Notice and Order which specified that the worm bed activity was excluded from regulation by the CIWMB's compost regulations and that the handling of the 1-1/4" material did not require PSF to obtain a solid waste facilities permit. At the public hearing, San Bernardino County stipulated that the Hearing Panel decision was not intended to, and did not, restrict PSF's processing of the 1-1/4" material on-site, or similar material that might be brought to the site in the future. PSF, it said, may continue to process this material, including screening and composting, without obtaining a transfer/processing solid waste facilities permit.
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San Bernardino County, attempting to close down PSF because of its location in a dairy zone, ruled that PSF may be operated only by virtue of a conditional use permit and that it does not possess such a permit. Pacific Southwest Farms filed an appeal of this ruling. On April 28, 1997, in the Court of Appeal, State of California, Fourth Appellate District, the following decision was issued: "The court has determined that petitioner [Pacific Southwest Farms] has shown a viable chance of prevailing on appeal and that the balance of hardships lies in his favor. Under Food & Agriculture Code Section 23.7, vermiculture is an "agricultural use." Very arguably it also qualifies as an agricultural use under the County's own ordinances, as petitioner's establishment [PSF] is operated for the purpose of producing an "animal product." As such, the vermiculture operation would not need a conditional use permit but could legally operate in the Agricultural Preserve. In this context, we have noted with interest that County appears to concede that the Preserve is not formally limited to dairies, and its argument that the Preserve is de facto limited to dairies and therefore should be legally so limited as well is not certain to prevail. Accordingly, the petition is granted. Pending resolution of the appeal or further order of this court, respondent [San Bernardino County] shall not attempt to shut down the vermiculture facility...." This interview was published in the June 1997 issue of Casting Call.
Casting Call: You're obviously very pleased with the decisions rendered in your favor by the Appellate Court and CIWMB. Before we discuss some of these recent rulings, let's talk a little about PSF's operation first. Are you the only vermicomposting facility using green material from a MRF as a feedstock? Barry Meijer: Some of our material comes from what's called a "dirty MRF." Originally, the MRF screened all the commingled material it received and sent us all the fines under four inches.
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This material is approximately 95% organic. Our problem was, it contained a certain amount of plastic which began to blow around once we started processing the material. We went back to our waste haulers and asked them to please reduce the size of the material. We found that 1-1/4" was the perfect size. It didn't contain much plastic at all. The other product we receive is ground paper which has come into contact with food material or other green waste. What we feed our worms is really "green material" as it has been defined by the CIWMB: "'Green Material' means any plant material that is either separated at the point of generation, or separated at a centralized facility [a MRF] that employs methods to minimize contamination. Green material includes, but is not limited to, manure, untreated wood wastes, paper products, and natural fiber products. Green material does not include treated wood waste, mixed demolition or mixed construction debris." I am definitely the only person using this product to feed worms. There is an agricultural concern in Temecula that is currently plowing this material into the ground and using it as a soil amendment, but we are the only vermiculture site using it as feedstock.
CC: The size of your operation has grown tremendously over the past three years. Can you tell us about the stages of its growth--initial worm inventory, TPD [tons per day] of incoming material, initial number of windrows, staff growth, increase of water usage, etc? Do you have plans for expansion; obtaining other sites?
BM: Initially, from Simi Valley we brought about eleven tons of worms. The problem we had at first, when we signed contracts with waste haulers, was that they were giving us more material than we could consume. Consequently we went through a "catch-up" phase where we were trying to breed worms as fast as we could. We ended up with kind of a stockpile. Last July that turned around. We really had achieved the ability to handle
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more than we were taking in. It was extremely hard to deal with. You can't really go and get a contract and say, "I'm only going to take a portion of the material you're sending me." So initially we obtained contracts and couldn't really use all that we had. But that really turned around last year. And it was really unfortunate that once we had turned things around, that the problems with the county developed. So initially we were taking in about 75 tons per day (now we're up to 100 tpd). If we were now where we would like to be, we would be receiving about 300 tons per day. We started with 11 rows of worms with the staff from my landscape company spending a couple days a week out here. Really, this facility, to handle 300 tpd., requires approximately 23 employees. Interestingly enough, we cannot use all the water that is running down the street. It's all free water. Our biggest expense is pumping it. Our plans for expansion include a 120-acre site in Bakersfield and two other 50-acre sites.
CC: Other than the problems you've had to face with the LEA, what kinds of operational challenges have you had to face, with regard to incoming feedstocks and marketability of a product with inerts?
BM: One of the major problems we initially had with our incoming feedstocks was the problem with plastic bags. During the afternoon winds, these would just blow all over the place. Any kind of film plastic in the feedstocks sent from the MRF created a problem. The MRF has recently installed a vacuum system across the [conveyor] belts that removes the plastic a lot better. Lower tip fees from Orange County landfills also pose a problem. We'd like to take material from San Bernardino County, but none of the cities around us has a clean-waste program. There is an enormous amount of manure here. The Chino Valley basin has approximately 300,000 tons of manure a year that they need to dispose of. The problem is, there is no tipping fee available. As far as dealing with the inerts in our
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material, initially we were going to install several air knives to clean the material and that process actually works reasonably well. Last July and August we were going on trips looking at people separating peanuts from the shells, and it was absolutely fascinating to see how this was done. We felt that a system like that would work extremely well for us. But unfortunately we got into this situation with the county and it has put a lot of those innovative programs on hold. In the interim here, we are screening down to 1/8 inch. Our market will continue to be the bulk market, but the retail market is there.
CC: How has the media treated PSF in its coverage of what you're trying to do and the litigation prompted by the San Bernardino LEA?
BM: We haven't really had that much media coverage. We've had some coverage of the hearing, but none of the media has covered the court ruling or anything like that. We've really not pursued the media. I would really like to have peace with the county and it has not been my intent to inflame the situation. The waste problem in California is really limited to people that are involved in the industry, in my opinion. The population is, as yet, not up-in-arms about us putting our waste in a landfill. I think [the interest] is not this generation, but the children who are much more aware of recycling than their parents.
CC: On one visit to PSF, I saw a truckload of spent tea leaves being brought in from a company which had used the material to brew iced tea. Other than material delivered from the MRFs, what kinds of feedstocks have you handled?
BM: We get tea, a couple times a week, and the worms really do enjoy it. Unfortunately, we just don't get enough tea. We mix in manure from the local dairies. The worms, just like any animal, really need a mixed diet. I think where we are really lacking is in
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knowledge of what is the optimum diet for worms. I don't think there has been enough study of that. Obviously worms on cow manure do well, worms on green waste do well, but somehow what we have to be able to do is blend it. My personal worm bin, which is a Can-O-Worms bin, is one that I just feed food waste in, and I find the worms do extremely well on that. Especially if you take the food waste and run it through your blender before you put it in there.
CC: What kinds of things do you monitor in your worm beds? Moisture? Salinity? C:N ratio? pH levels? Particle size? Worm count? What height do the windrows achieve before they are altered (for harvesting, splitting)?
BM: What we do every month is take samples from any castings that will leave the door, and what we do in that casting test is test for heavy materials and things of that sort. We check for Salmonella and for coliform. We do the testing as if it's regular compost. In the worm beds what we do is blend the material to a nice texture that we like the look of, and then we feed that to the worms. As far as salinity is concerned, we don't actually check for that. The worm beds really tell us if they're happy or unhappy. I had an instance where I had received some particle-board material from a speaker factory. I put it on the worm beds, it was all very, very fine. And I thought, "Gee, the nitrogen level has got to be high because of the glue from formaldehyde, you've got to be able to feed this to the worms." I put it on the worm beds and five minutes later the worms were crawling out of their beds at noon! I immediately raked off the material and picked up worms, watered them down, got them settled. But it really scared the heck out of me. So those are the kinds of things you have to watch in our feedstocks. When we are only going to split beds we do so when they're full of worms; that's not a height determination But in the case of where we're actually harvesting the castings, we allow them to get about 3 feet high. The problem
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with doing that is that we lose nitrogen content because we're watering all the time. Our material is actually testing with about 1/2% nitrogen. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't believe that it's the nitrogen content that makes the worm castings as good as they are. It is in fact, the bacteria content. NPK measurements are the traditional ways of measuring fertilizer.
CC: What kinds of things have been triggering the attention of CIWMB and LEAs with regard to vermicomposting activities in California? Are there some facilities trying to avoid the permitting requirements for handling solid waste by using the agricultural exclusion for vermiculture as a smokescreen? Are there some in the composting industry who might be trying to "blow the whistle" on vermicomposting in order to subject it to the same regulations faced by compost facilities?
BM: I'm including my own facility with this. This facility has approximately 125,000 tons of material on site. That is an enormous amount of material. The mass balance for this facility, meaning the point at which the material equals the material going in and out, and everything sort of works, is realistically at about 110,000 tons. The real heartburn that we've been causing the CIWMB and the LEAs has been the storage of material. With the storage of material, comes fires and vectors and all kinds of other problems that they have serious concerns about. If one looks at our facility, we have at any given time approximately 6 months of feedstock on site. We never turn the compost before we feed it to the worm beds. We just let it sit and become anaerobic. Just the fact that it's killed all the weed seeds is good enough for me. That is really all I'm trying to accomplish. Also the bacterial count is relatively high, so that when it goes on the beds the worms go through it extremely rapidly. Now what has happened is, there are facilities with very few worms beds that have enormous piles of material, and I think that causes a real concern. But I also want to say that I have a certain amount of
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empathy for people in the business, because they have to initially get started and, you know, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? I think the big concern of the composting facilities [wanting vermicomposting to be similarly regulated] is that they have spent a lot of money on getting solid waste permits. In Northern California, more than in Southern California, urban areas are able to take most of their green waste to farmers and have them use it as mulch without taking it to a permitted solid waste facility for composting. There's competition for feedstocks at a price. That's really what this is about. In my opinion the vermiculture facility has to receive a tipping fee that is at least as high as a regular composting facility, or you won't be able to make money at the facility. Things will change when more and more castings are used. In 1995, our sale of castings amounted to about 45% of our total income.
CC: The legal battles you've been waging have been very costly ($212,000). You hope to recover most of this by virtue of prevailing in the recent decisions. Now that you have paved the way for vermicomposting to continue in California with minimal hindrance, what do you see as the future of vermicomposting in the state? How do you assess the viability of vermicomposting in other areas of the country that may not enjoy southern California's enviable climate?
BM: It needs to be understood that vermiculture cannot be the end-all and the be-all to recycling. It's a small part of recycling. The state of California is the major producer of just about every agricultural product in the country. We cannot continue to grow crops without some return of organic material to the soil. I feel that compost as well as castings can meet this demand. As farmers become more aware of the importance of the livelihood of the soil itself, I think that there will be a greater demand for organic products. That, coupled with the mandated [50%] diversion, means there is a great opportunity for vermiculture on
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an economic scale in California. I definitely think that in the arid, or southern states, you are going to have some vermiculture. The problem, of course, in the northern states is that you have to be indoors and you have basically a downtime in the winter.
CC: Perhaps the most frequent question asked by those who are looking at the economic aspects of vermiculture is, Where are the markets? Since you really don't sell worms, your principal end-product is worm castings. What is the marketplace like today and where is it headed?
BM: We've been fortunate in that trucks coming from central California to deliver feed to the dairies here have been able to take worm castings back to the agriculture area they started from. We've been selling a great deal of our product to organic farmers who have been getting tremendous results. I believe the market for worm castings will get stronger in the days to come.
CC: What does the vermiculture industry need most at this time in order to assure its continued success?
BM: I think a Best Management Practices Manual for vermiculture needs to be produced in conjunction with the CIWMB. As for a stronger industry voice, we don't have a strong industry association now because there aren't enough vermicomposting sites. Perhaps we could be a sub-organization under the CRRA [California Resource Recovery Association]. We're [PSF] a part of the CCQC [California Compost Quality Council]. We've talked about the few who are out there selling worms and making exaggerated claims that are a blight to this industry, but unfortunately, you're going to find them in any industry.
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Jim Jensen
Yelm Earthworm and Castings Farm
Jim Jensen, a consultant with Seattle based Sound Resource Management, has recently added a new duty to his job description: Worm Wrangler for the Yelm Earthworm & Castings Farm in Yelm, WA. Nestled in Smith prairie southwest of Mt. Rainer, the farm
is located approximately 20 miles east of Olympia, WA. and qualifies as one of the largest vermiculture operations on the West Coast.
Jim is no stranger to vermicomposting. With Sound Resource Management Group, Jim provided planning, development and implementation for the Food Lifeline Waste Reduction Demonstration Project sponsored by the King County Solid Waste Division from the project proposal date of October, 1991 to the Final Report issued in January, 1994. During the 18 months of actual vermicomposting, from start-up of the bins through the end of the demonstration project, the total amount of waste diverted was estimated to be 27.5 tons of food scraps and 20.2 tons of bedding, mostly derived from on-site leaves and brush. Based on data collected during the steady-state period, the worm system demonstrated that as much as 60 pounds of food waste, plus a minimum of 30 pounds of yard waste or paper waste, can be composted in a pallet-box worm bin each week. Food Lifeline is an organization that distributes food to many of the food banks and meal programs in King County and Western Washington. It receives, evaluates, and recovers foodstuffs from
Chapter Four
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food processing companies, warehouses, and supermarkets. During the time Jensen and SRM were involved with the vermicomposting project, Food Lifeline kept track of and distributed approximately 825,000 pounds of food to people in need each month. While the highest quality food is distributed to the public through its many programs, food that is not suitable for human consumption must be disposed. During 1991, the agency's dumpsters contributed as much as 42,000 pounds of unsalvageable food (spoiled produce and canned and packaged food) to the nonresidential waste stream of King County each month. Some of these residuals were sent to pig farms. Vermicomposting offered an alternative to disposing unwanted food at the landfill. In addition, vermicompost generated from the worm bins was used in a nearby community garden that grew food for Food Lifeline's programs.
The Yelm Earthworm & Casting Farm was, at one time, site of a mushroom farm. About six years ago it was converted to a worm farm and came under the ownership of Resource Conversion Corporation (RCC) of San Diego, CA. RCC's Canyon Recycling composting and vermicomposting site brought worms from the Fallbrook Sanitary District where wastewater sludge was fed to worms (see "Vermicomposting in a Rural Community," The BioCycle Guide to the Art & Science of Composting (1991), 143-145). RCC also brought in worms from its Yelm farm in Washington. While worms raised in Yelm were fed cow manure, the San Diego site used manure from zoos and Del Mar racetrack as well as composted yard trimmings. Under the "VermiGro" label, vermicompost was blended with composted yard trimmings and sold in bags and in bulk. Now the Yelm Earthworm & Casting Farm has come under the ownership of SRM and the guidance of Jensen. As its name proclaims, both worms and castings are the products sold. This product "Earthworm All Purpose Potting Soil; Natural Castings and Bedding," contains the following description: "This all-
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purpose soil enhancer provides the look and feel of peat, plus the added benefits of earthworm castings--the rich, all-natural source of organic matter, nutrient- and moisture-holding capacity, slow release nutrients and trace minerals. A little goes a long way!"
The Yelm operation uses two systems to convert cow manure to vermicompost. One system utilizes 4'x6' wooden trays formerly used for mushroom production. These trays have legs at the four corners and can be stacked on top of each other. They are fairly shallow having 6" sides. Periodically, perhaps every two months, half the contents of the trays (worms, castings and manure) are removed and used to start a new tray or bin. Up to 200 of these trays can be placed in a room, maximizing the usefulness of the indoor operation by stacking the trays four high. The second system in use is the windrow design. These are found both indoors and outdoors at the facility. Typically, rows are fed until about 30 cubic yards of material is ready to be harvested. Jim estimates each row contains about 1500 lbs. of worms (50 lbs. of worms to the cubic yard). Overall, he figures his operation currently has about 38,000 lbs. of worms. This interview appeared in the August 1997 issue of Casting Call.
Casting Call: Even though you've had prior experience with vermicomposting through your work with the Food Lifeline project and for years you have been associated with many others in the vermiculture industry, there must have been a tremendous shift in your role as "coat-and-tie" consultant to the additional role of managing the Yelm Farm. What have your new duties taught you?
Jim Jensen: You know that saying, "Where the rubber meets the road?" That's what this feels like. Where the rubber meets the road--it's really hot and it can be really stressful, but it can be really exhilarating. The work as a suit-and-tie consultant is a lot of theorizing and reporting what other people do. A lot of it is
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projecting out what you think should happen. And now this is a real life situation where the projections sometimes match, sometimes don't, sometimes they exceed your expectations. You always hope it's more of the latter. But it's definitely very, very exciting--trying to do what you've been thinking about or what you've been suggesting for years.
CC: You have put together a two-page Literature Search on Earthworm Castings, drawing together a series of quotes from leading researchers around the world. Additionally, through sales of your product, you've undoubtedly heard reports about its performance. What do you tell folks about the value of worm castings?
JJ: I try to encourage people who are looking at castings to think about it as an additive to other organic products that they're using. That's why we say "a little goes a long way" on our bag of product. I'd love to have people do their whole landscape with castings, but it's really not cost-effective to use them that way. If what you're looking for is organic matter, there are a lot of other cheaper sources. But castings are valued for their health-giving properties. And using them in combination with other products gives you more than just the sum of those two. The combination of those provides you with much greater value than either one by itself. CC: Taking over a worm farm that has been in operation for six years must have meant that you acquired a turn-key operation. What modifications have you made or do you plan to make in the future?
JJ: I don't know that I'd exactly call it "turn-key." Certainly there was some equipment there and a worm population we started with. What we're doing is moving deliberately. We're trying to hold on to what works really well. The first few months
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were involved with cleaning up and getting a sense of the operation. The people who were there before are still there. I have a lot of respect for what they know and what they do. We'll be looking at some equipment possibilities and how we'll be positioned in the market. Certainly worms are big part of this--this is really a traditional vermiculture operation, a worm farm,
but we'll be trying to do something with castings along the way too, trying to get connected to a network of businesses that are involved in soil improvement and restoration--that's really where the focus of this is, in
soil improvement. We'll probably look at some sort of bagging operation and using the facility to be a source for bagging for other operations as well. We're looking into a strategic alliance with a company that's involved in organic gardening and farm supplies. We might include working with other worm growers as well.
CC: You have surveyed some of the worm industry's producers, taking note of the prices being asked for worms and castings. How do you feel your price position stands? What are the factors that account for differences?
JJ: From what I've been able to gather, we're one of the biggest farms in the western U.S. There are not a lot that operate at this scale. I know that in terms of providing worms for the home or for bigger vermicultural projects, I'm certain that we're very competitive and maybe even setting even the low end of the price, relative to what others are doing. I think with castings, we're very competitive. We find a lot of interest from the locals. We're gearing up for next spring and the next soil push that
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comes around. We're looking forward to that. The biggest challenge we face is distance. The Puget Sound region offers a lot of opportunity. But we're about 30 minutes from the main interstate corridor. That's a pretty good distance. Price is one thing, but getting it to one place from another can add 20-30% of a person's cost. But I think people will pay for quality.
CC: Dr. Clive Edwards' forthcoming Manual on Vermicomposting will contain a chapter on the Commercial Potential and Economics of Vermicomposting that he has asked you to write. Have your experiences at the Yelm Farm influenced your conclusions?
JJ: Having a few months of hands-on experience has opened my eyes to a lot of what's out there and a lot of opportunities. There's the traditional worm farm, which is what this is--it's a vermicultural operation. There are a lot of people working in resource recovery doing vermicomposting, and I don't really see us doing that on a large scale. There are some compost operations doing large-scale organics recovery. I think we'll do a little bit of that on a small scale to provide a service for local people. And then there's a lot of interest in home vermicomposting--providing worms and supplies and books--I don't see us being involved in that so much. I think more than anything I've become more aware of the seasonality of this business. The worms go through their seasonal times. I think there's a lot of opportunity for technological development. But I think that's got to come from where's the value going to be. The market for castings most likely is where the technological development is going to happen.
CC: You've been experimenting with shipping small quantities of worms in breathable plastic bags. What have you discovered? What other ways do you ship worms?
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JJ: Wax-coated boxes are still a great idea and are probably the best practice for shipping. But I've been thinking about all the packaging that's used: What's the most efficient, most effective, most cost-effective but the least impacting kind of package to use? I've been thinking of some other ways to make the packaging lighter weight and more recyclable. We've had some good success with the bags but wax boxes are still great and we'll continue to use those. I want to do lots of bulk sales--that's really what we're set up to do. We've got something in the works there. But I'm also looking at the packaging for the soil products too. I just hate the idea of all these plastic bags. We're still researching what other alternatives there might be that might work effectively. Imagine people buying 20 or 30 bags of soil amendments and having all this plastic around at the end—it seems so self-defeating.
CC: Tell us about the dairy manure used for feedstock. How is it prepared, delivered and applied? What are the results? JJ: We're paying for delivery of dairy manure that has been separated after sitting in a lagoon. The solids are removed from the bottom and then the manure goes through a heating process to dry it. We think this may have some value in reducing pathogens. It has very consistent properties. It's better than the wet manure that was brought in before.
CC: Your operation has approximately 33,000 square feet (almost 3/4 acre) under cover. Currently, it looks like about 95% or more of the material being worked by worms is under cover with just a couple of outdoor windrows. Yet you still have a lot of acreage which is not in use. Do you have plans for this area?
JJ: We hope to grow! There's nearly 10 acres total here. We are interested in receiving leaf material this fall, and maybe wood chips. I think the leaves could make a nice addition to the dairy
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manure. I'd like to get our castings looking a little darker, or maybe offer two kinds of castings. I see potential for moving windrows outdoors with floating row covers over them. I see potential for using the indoor space for product development, packaging and warehousing. And we're interested in looking at technology development too. You know I've worked with Dan [Holcombe] over the years on his system. There's the potential of adding something like that into the building or trying some of the other technologies that have been developed. Maybe we could be a testing ground for things like that—a place where people can come and see different technologies in operation.
CC: What kinds of things would you like to see happen in order for the vermiculture industry in general, and your business in particular, to achieve greater growth? JJ: I think it would be helpful if more of the opinion-makers had more knowledge about the capabilities of vermicomposting. It's interesting that people who are depended on for information about nutrient and soil management don't know a lot about composting and they know very little about vermicomposting. I think there's a lot that could be learned and could be shared about the value of castings. In the same way that compost has received a lot of research dollars, I think worm castings need that same kind of emphasis. We suspect and our customers believe that there are growth enhancing properties there that aren't necessarily found in compost--that the worm itself adds something to this that is vital--that's why they're on the earth--they add value to soil. We should know more about what that value is and the economic value of it. We also need to show people that we're about serious business, the serious business of improving soil. I think research dollars would help--R&D in sustainable agriculture.
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CC: Where do you see vermiculture headed in the coming years? What obstacles lie ahead?
JJ: What I see is a lot more of the same. I still think there are a lot of possibilities for the small and medium scale. There are some big resource recovery operations in California. I think you're going to see a good size scale of one of these new technologies, something like the continuous flow reactor or some other beast, that's engineered for doing worms and I think you'll see that on a big scale. I think it'll come from the private sector or a maybe a public-private partnership, but I don't think the municipalities will do it on their own. There's some natural advantages working with worms--their ability to control odors. Obstacles are financial. A continuing obstacle is the lack of information in the market about the added value of worm castings. We're trying to set up field trials where we can. I still think the agriculture market has huge potential. I think you're going to see continual improvements made in technology like automatic feeding and automatic harvesting.
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Al Eggen Original Vermitech Systems, Ltd.
Albert Briggs Eggen was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He spent his early years in San Jose, CA, attending San Jose State, DeAnza and Foothills colleges. He graduated with a degree in Aeronautics, with a minor in technical and performing arts. He also pursued a course of study in speech and
voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Ontario, Canada. Al served in the United States Army Officers School (OCS), and was a U.S. Army paratrooper in Asia. He has also been an airline pilot. Albert holds three international patents. These include the self-harvesting Vermi-Organic Digester, a paper and food waste processor, and the Original Vermicomposter, an indoor home/school vermicomposter. He is also the co-author of three books on vermicomposting, two of which are college course manuals. A fourth, "The Canadian Vermicomposting Guide," is scheduled for publication. In 1990, Al founded Original Vermitech Systems, Ltd. (OVS) of Toronto, Canada. While at one time the bulk of company sales came from the manufacture of small, household worm bins, Eggen's larger in-vessel systems, capable of handling from 50 to 850 pounds of organics per day are now the company's chief focus.
Chapter Five
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In 1992 OVS began marketing vermicomposting units capable of processing 50 to 100 lbs. of organics per day from restaurants, schools and institutions with food waste. In 1993, the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital in Ontario, Canada installed an OVS unit with 600 lbs./day capacity. The system was equipped with heat panels and temperature sensors to maintain the proper climate for the earthworms. ("New Horizons for Commercial Vermiculture,” BioCycle, October, 1994, 58-59.) In March 1996 an OVS unit known as the Vermi-Organic Digester was installed at Metro Hall in Toronto. Metro Hall is the head office of the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, a 28-story, 953,500 square foot building located in the heart of downtown Toronto. It houses two thousand employees and has a 325-seat cafeteria with an additional 200-seat patio. It produces almost 14 metric tons of food waste and almost 30 metric tons of paper towel waste annually. (Casting Call, Feb. 1997). Eggen believes his Vermi-Organic Digesters will appeal particularly to military bases and hotels. Recently, proposals have been submitted to Arnold Air Force Base (Tennessee), to Camp Lejeune Marine Base (North Carolina), and to the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, one of the Canadian Pacific hotels. Pre-consumer vegetative food waste (source separated) provides an optimum feedstock along with shredded paper, most often available from discarded paper hand towels. Somewhere between his early years in California and his subsequent migration to Canada in order to pursue a career in acting, Al developed an interest in earthworms which he has maintained for over 25 years. By 1990, leaving his acting career behind, Eggen was ready to launch into vermiculture
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full tilt. He estimates he has visited over 200 worm operations over the course of his years in the industry and he continues to maintain contact with many in the field. This interview appeared in the October 1997 issue of Casting Call. Casting Call: You've had a wide variety of experiences during your lifetime: paratrooper, actor, inventor, vermiculturist. But this interest in earthworms has persisted for over 25 years. What attracted you initially and what continues to maintain your interest in vermiculture? Al Eggen: Initially, I became aware of earthworms while building some ski chalets. In building those chalets I never noticed any earthworms whatsoever while doing excavation work. On completion, I went fishing and needed to find some worms. Near an old miner's cabin where refuse had been discarded I found all kinds of worms, some of which I brought back to the ski chalet I had built. I put some near a septic tank, thinking that the heat from the septic tank would keep them alive over the winter. That winter, the temperature went down to 44 degrees below zero. In the spring, I kicked around the septic tank and found a prolific growth of worms. I began to build worm boxes on the third story of the deck of my ski chalet, 18 inches high, and two feet wide. I built many boxes feeding the worms horse manure, hay, paper, and food waste. I also started growing things up there. It was absolutely mind-boggling to see the growth rate of plants. The flowers grew so fast that the stems got weak. The vegetable plants became big and bushy. The next thing I saw was an operation in Alberta and I have never been able to go back and see them again. They were using an airplane hangar bringing in semi-trucks [of waste] and doing heat pasteurization. They said they were using a worm from China. It may have been an African nightcrawler. Although it caught my interest and made an impact on me, I didn't get involved with them, turning to an
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acting career instead. Later, through the Recycling Council in Canada, I got involved with building worm bins. It was a lot
of work and cost some money. But it was something I enjoyed. But I was working in other areas too. Then, in about 1989, I began looking at a waste site in Toronto, finding
tons of worms. That's when I saw that we could do this in a big way. After that I put together the Original Vermicomposter. What continues to maintain my interest is the worldwide problem we have with waste and problems with erosion and poor soil. Getting rid of garbage and creating a soil product (castings) are extraordinarily important. CC: There seem to be three levels, or tiers, of interest in vermicomposting: home vermicomposting, schools (educational systems), and large-scale commercial vermicomposting. There may be a fourth tier, an institutional level, consisting of hotels, hospitals, prisons, restaurants, and the like, which have an abundance of food waste to dispose. You've tried to impact all these markets. Can you assess where these levels of interest are heading? AE: In Ontario, Canada, we've pretty much exhausted the box system, because of the lack of government subsidies and saturation in the market. Because of that I think the future is in larger systems. In the educational field, we have to develop
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workbooks along with a system that coordinates with that--not just to teach the biology of it, but the whole program including business projects selling castings. This is what we tried to do in Pennsylvania. The next level is on-site composting, because it saves money by reducing hauling. These go up to a certain size, 1,000 lbs. or a ton per day. If we can take care of that, we've got a market we can't even begin to fulfill in my lifetime. What happens is you get into a square footage situation. I figured one time, that if you're doing 3,000 lbs. per day you'd need 10,000 square feet of working area. That's the next area for someone to conquer. The Christenberry's (Vermicycle Organics, North Carolina) are getting very close to that. CC: Your manual, Worms Go To School, is a teacher's guide for vermicomposting. You've tried to show teachers how involvement in a Vermi-Lab can have an impact on the arts, language, mathematics, science, technology, and social studies. That's a pretty tall order. What has been the response? AE: We really haven't gotten the book out there to a lot of people yet I'm hoping that's going to change. I've got about 5 different models of my Vermi-Lab. It's been a cost thing for marketing. I have an order for about 300 of the teacher's guides for Nova Scotia. A number of local teachers in Toronto reviewed the book and liked it very well, saying it's a well-structured book. Generally, from all the professionals as far as the worm people, they've all pretty well liked it, and I'd asked them to pick it apart as far as the technical end of it. CC: The Vermi-Organic Digester can handle a wide range of organic waste volumes, from 50 to over 850 lbs. per day. The key to the system's effectiveness seems to be in attaining a consistent particle size and proper mixture proportions so that
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the digesting ability of the worms can be optimized. How do you ensure this?
AE: The biggest difficulty, initially, was coming up with a shredder that works. We've gone through a number of shredders. The first couple I did cost over $10,000 apiece. They were a different type, and were very powerful. They were high torque/low rev. They crunched a lot of things up but we couldn't get the particle size we needed. In order to get that we had to get a higher speed motor that would chop it up more to give us the smaller particle size. The shredder has been one of the main keys to this whole process. Without the right particle size the material doesn't disappear fast enough in order for the worms to keep up with all the material being put in. The moisture and temperature are also factors we have to control, monitoring with a thermostat and offering an optional misting system. The more items you tack on, the higher the cost. CC: Without mentioning names, you have said that you have visited a number of vermicomposting sites, or know about them, and have learned that some of these sites have serious problems. What are the problems that these folks are experiencing and what are your recommendations?
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AE: The reason I've gone to this automatic system with all the controls on it is that for years and years everyone has been doing the "box system," i.e. a container you could raise worms in. The problem with that is that you can only put so much into it. The problems occurring are that the system either heats up or goes anaerobic. When you get into larger systems you see these problems, and if too much food is put in and it heats up, you can have a worm kill. A box means that the worms have nowhere to go and it acts like an oven. These were the problems I've had and I've seen it in other systems that others have used. Other problems some have had have been with rodents and odors in open systems. CC: Canada does not seem to be a likely place to establish a business in vermiculture. Here's a chance to disabuse us of our false perceptions. What exactly is happening in Canada with respect to vermiculture? AE: Through the Recycling Council of Canada, I've received a lot of support and probably wouldn't have gotten here without that support. My first project was funded for the Harbor Front area, a city-owned project down by the waterfront. Some smaller ones came along for schools, and then I did a project at the University of Ottawa, and then Brockville [Psychiatric Hospital]. Then the Toronto Metro project came along. Government funding for the small worm boxes got me started in 1990. Interest has been spurred largely by the government. In Nova Scotia, a year from November, there will be a ban on landfills and thermophilic composting. They're either going to ship all this stuff out or there will have to be an alternative for handling waste on site. The government will fund, through a works program, 50% of a program to create jobs and handle waste. We've been working with a large steel corporation to do manufacturing, and a consulting company to build Vermi-Digesters. Pilot
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projects are proposed for a college and another Canadian Pacific Hotel in Halifax. The proposal speaks of a $12 million market manufacturing approximately 275 Vermi-Digesters at a cost of $43,000 each. The target is to process 16,500 tons of material which represents about 10% of the organic waste stream. We're looking at starting this in about 6 months or less. CC: You've got a terrific system for converting organic waste into a usable soil amendment. It is relatively odor-free, is much faster than composting, uses little energy, reduces collection, hauling, and landfill costs, and, with the sales of vermicompost, not only offsets the cost of operation, but can become a profitable venture once the system has been paid for. Is this too good to be true? What are the drawbacks or potential pitfalls? Is the system trouble-free? AE: On a smaller system, it really isn't going to pay a lot (our V-200 or V-300). But when you start getting above that capacity, you start getting into a break-even situation or even making some money. On a 550 lbs. per day system, one pay-off projected is three and a half to 4 years. Using another way to calculate from sales of castings, the pay-off is between 2 and 3 years. It depends on the volume of material being processed. Up to this date, the main pitfalls have concerned moisture. We've taken care of problems with heat build-up, so now we're trying to take care of dehydration. An automatic misting system will take care of that. The very biggest pitfall is operator attention--not monitoring conditions in the system. CC: Launching a venture such as this entails a great deal of thought, organization and, of course, money. There may be skepticism to overcome, and proof required that the systems you've created actually work. In all, there seem to be a number of challenges you must deal with before your systems
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of vermicomposting will become widely accepted. How are you planning to face these challenges and possible objections? AE: We've built a system that we've operated for almost a year and a half now. It's still being maintained by people other than us and is doing very well. So we've proven that it works. Anybody can call up Chris Fernandez at Metro and get a straight answer from them. Then some other people came up to look at the system--from Arnold Air Force Base--and now want a larger system than they originally planned. That's what you have to do. Whoever is building a system has to let it operate for at least a year and go through the cycles where other people take care of it and you don't have a problem. We have plans to do a 1,000 lbs. per day system at a Food Bank in Pittsburg. These people came up to see it. Just about every sale we've done so far has been as a result of seeing it. CC: What has caused you the most discouragement during the course of your involvement in vermiculture? What experience has brought the most elation? AE: Money. It's the old entrepreneurial thing. I've gone long periods not being able to do anything because I have no money. That's the frustrating part, that I know what to do, but I have no money to do it. The other part of it is the same thing in reverse--to be able to see it and know that it's going to work. Until you actually see it working, so that you can know that you can walk away from it and somebody else operates it, then you know it works. Knowing and seeing that the thing works, that's what's brought me the greatest elation. CC: Tell us about your vision for the future, not only with respect to the success of your own business, but for the direction of vermiculture as a whole.
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AE: Unfortunately, in our society today, you've got to go to a machine-oriented unit with all the bells and whistles so that people will believe this thing works. It almost has to be a hands-off situation, where you go in and press a couple buttons and do the proper maintenance. Then the big people, the money people will take a look at this thing and say, "OK, this thing really works. We believe in worms." I think once that happens, the rest of the vision can go on. The machines are going to help. But the real essence of this worm composting, as I see it, is that let's say in third world countries with a handful of worms and the right conditions, worms will propagate. If we can get to the point where we can solve a lot of problems for people to compost and create topsoil: That's my vision, that vermiculture and vermicomposting can create topsoil and help feed all mankind. CC: Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven't talked about? AE: I guess I'm the same as a lot of people in this particular field. I get really upset with people trying to make money doing a quick scam operation with worms. It's been the history of the worm field--this whole worm-scam thing, whether it's a pyramid or people saying you can make millions in a short time. At some point in time here, I think there's going to have to be some real exposure of these people.
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Larry Martin Vermitechnology Unlimited Inc.
Larry D. Martin heads up Vermitechnology Unlimited, Inc., in Orange Lake, Florida. For over twenty years, he has been both a student of earthworm ecology and leader in the field of vermicomposting.
Martin grew up on a Midwestern farm and witnessed how worms produced healthy soil. In 1974 he purchased two pounds of redworms from Ron Gaddie's Southern California operation, put them in a patio planter box, and began feeding them kitchen scraps. Within a year, Larry constructed about 80 feet of worm beds, thus beginning his career in vermiculture. From that time to the present, Martin continued to expand his worm inventory without buying additional worms. In 1990 he moved his West Coast operation, Solano Worm Farm, to Florida, along with 400 pounds of worms shipped to him by the buyer of his California property. During the late 1970s, Martin saw firsthand how unscrupulous opportunists bilked investors out of thousands of dollars promoting exaggerated buy-back schemes. By the end of the decade the pyramid scheme had crashed, leaving many disheartened and bitter people in its wake. The devastation caused by these scoundrels has prompted Martin to repeatedly warn would-be growers of a resurgence of nefarious worm-rogues. In the Earthworm Buyer's Guide 1996-97, Martin's full-page ad includes the following caveat: "THE BIG RIP-OFF
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SCAM OF THE 70s has reared its ugly head again!!!! Keep in mind that it is better to spend $250 for a consultant than spend your life savings on a buyback, get-rich-quick scheme." He concludes: "Let's bury this UGLY PARASITE before it ruins the vermicomposting industry." During the first half of the 1980s, Martin's focus was mainly upon the bait industry. He experimented with special nutrients, different combinations of animal manures, produce, feeds and supplements. He found an amino acid combination which grew a slightly larger redworm and increased cocoon production and hatchling viability. In 1986, Martin began working with Al Eggen of Toronto, Canada and met Mary Appelhof. It was during this time that his focus shifted from the bait market to that of vermicomposting. In February, 1995, Larry assisted Goodwill Industries of Chattanooga, Tennessee in constructing two 50-foot long worm beds on a concrete floor. The six-foot wide, two-feet high beds process half a ton per week of cow and rabbit manure, along with some produce and shredded paper. The project, dubbed "Goodworms Industries," uses disabled workers to attend to the worm beds and produce bags for selling worms and castings. Vermitechnology Unlimited offers pre-fabricated, modular, insulated (R-30) worm beds, four feet wide by 18 inches high, with lengths up to 65 feet. Such beds have been set up for schools in the Chattanooga area as well as in Florida. Heavy-duty shade cloth is used on the bottom to keep out ground moles. Forthcoming projects include vermicomposting cow manure and food waste in Northern California, using composted leaves as worm feedstock in Connecticut, hog waste projects in Iowa and Missouri, and work with Florida's Office of Environmental Education to include vermicomposting into classroom education.
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This interview appeared in the December 1997 issue of Casting Call. Casting Call: Over the past 20 years you have undoubtedly seen many folks "come and go" in the worm industry. Certainly there must have been times when you have been discouraged. What continues to maintain your interest in vermiculture and to serve as motivation? Larry Martin: I think the reason most people come and go in the worm industry is because of all the hype. I saw through this hype (during the 70s) and didn't go through the disappointment of facing reality. This is a very huge stumbling block. My research shows after one year about 1% will pick themselves up and remain in business. A disappointment, but sort of a fun thing for me was trying to prove UC Davis wrong when I was at Solano Worm Farm, in creating a hybrid worm. They said it couldn't be done, and I knew it, but I just had to see for myself. There's still a lot of people out there who use the term "hybrid" worms. But I've yet to see one, let alone develop one. If I could, I would cross an "Alabama Jumper" with a redworm. You'd get the size of an "Alabama Jumper" and the durability and reproductivity of a redworm. That would be my ideal. I have been importing a European nightcrawler that has been exciting for me. I don't know species of it yet, but I do know that it is everything that I just described a bait worm should be. I think I was discouraged in the first few years, learning by trial and error. I had all these worms and nobody would help me as far as marketing, and nobody would talk to me when I had problems. I finally found somebody to buy my worms. By the time I traveled 150 miles to sell the worms for $3.00 a pound to them, I made about a buck-and-a-half or $2.00 a pound. At least it was money! But that was probably the most discouraging part. And it was also very hard to move from California to Florida. Probably the most agonizing time I've had was an hour spent on
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a talk show talking about vermicomposting and vermiculture, and I only got one caller. But that caller made it all worthwhile. What continues to motivate me is the same thing that has been driving me all these years. It's when you see the feedstock being consumed, instead of being buried, and the beautiful, finished product. Castings have the same kind of feeling as good virgin topsoil with that earthy smell that can only come from the high organic content. It is just something that gets into your blood. That has been more or less the driving force, more than the monetary aspect. CC: You've built your worm business on both coasts, in California and Florida. Obviously, a warm climate has contributed to the vitality of your redworms. How practical is year-round vermicomposting in colder climates and what provisions need to be made? LM: There's two different things we need to address: There's vermicomposting and vermiculture. Vermicomposting is no problem. If you want to build and maintain a windrow or static pile, however you want to do it, you can vermicompost the year round. It's not easy. When it's 40 degrees below zero, you aren't going to be out there putting out material. Ideally, you'd at least have a cover, even if the materials were frozen. Inside, in the inner shell, it would be like an igloo. I put worms in an operation in Canada, during the coldest year they ever had, in a compost bed. Those worms, come spring, were still alive and they were big and fat and all kinds of egg capsules were hatching. It was 40 degrees below Centigrade then--that's cold! In vermicomposting, you can do that. In vermiculture, no. You need some type of auxiliary heating, green houses and the like. Ideally, you wouldn't use ambient heat, either. In a warehouse, if you were doing large-scale vermicomposting, you would need something in the floor, like a hot water heating unit. It becomes very costly in very cold climates. Heating costs are going to
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reduce your profits in vermiculture in colder climates. That was my main motivation for moving to Florida, to go year-round, but it really hasn't been that beneficial. I don't get that many more sales in wintertime, because a lot of people don't think anybody can ship then, for one thing. And I'm not high profile as far as advertising goes. But I am putting in a website, though. CC: In Florida you've been faced with armadillos, migratory birds, raccoons, moles, and the dreaded flatworm. You've also said that "just when you think you have seen it all or know it all, the big reality stick hits you up along side of your head." Where are the problems today, both for those just starting out and for the larger operations? LM: You're going to have minor problems no matter where you're operating. But nothing major like the land planarian, commonly called the flatworm, which was the most devastating experience I've ever had. And I've experienced this for a period of 3 out of 5 years. The Cubans have had the same problem and you'll have this in any tropical or sub-tropical area. That worm has wiped out over 3,000 pounds in less than seven days. That's how fast they reproduce. When all the worms are gone they start turning cannibalistic and start consuming each other. I have no idea, and neither does the University, where they go from there. Very, very few people ever rebound from being wiped out. I've been contacted by 8 people this year who were wiped out in Florida, from northern Florida all the way down to the Keys. I don't know how many other people were wiped out in small farms or backyard operations--they never knew what hit them. But the growers who contacted me wanted to know why they weren't getting any reproduction. Well it wasn't the reproduction--they had it--it's just these worms came in and consumed all the small worms which were feeding on the surface. The flatworms only go a couple inches below the surface. So the larger worms, being down further in the bed,
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survived until they came up to feed. And then they were wiped out too. But everybody that is vermicomposting is going to run into a problem, sooner or later, of some type. The biggest problem is contamination from insecticides or toxic anaerobic bacteria. If that is not washed out of the material you're feeding, you're going to kill worms. That's why, in a very large operation, where you can't afford to reduce your input of feedstock, then you need a backup. And that means raising worms differently, for the sake of raising worms. For intensive propagation I use an insulated incubator, made of fiberglass and polystyrene with a thermostat keeping the optimum temperature within plus or minus one degree. It's used to produce between 500,000 and 650,000 hatchlings per month out of one unit. The bedding is composed of organic peat, some horse manure and cow manure, all run through a pulverizer. The feedstock is something I've developed over the years. In sum, I see no difference in problems encountered in small operations as opposed to large commercial ventures, except for capital outlay. The most difficult vermicomposting operation is the plastic classroom or home bin. It's very unforgiving. I've always told folks, if they can do it in plastic bin, they could run the largest vermicomposting operation in the world. A plastic bin doesn't allow any room for error. That is the most difficult, for me personally, and for me to teach. The worms can't get away from bad material in a plastic bin. CC: You've consulted and worked with many others throughout the vermicomposting industry. Who is demonstrating that this can be a successful, profitable enterprise? LM: That, I'd rather not cover. That's private, actually, between me and the people I consult with. Whatever has been published out there, I feel you can contact those folks and talk to them directly.
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CC: You've been an outspoken critic of fraud and the charlatans who deceive would-be worm growers. What are the best weapons against the pickpockets? Can reputable worm growers do something? LM: The best thing I think we can do to clean up the industry is don't participate in perpetuating hearsay. That can be very damaging to new people in the industry, but also it helps the person who is running a scam by perpetuating their operation. Another thing is to write letters to the media, when you see them reporting information that is bogus or erroneous. But it takes more than you and me and a couple of others in the industry. I've spent a lot of my own time and money, and I'm just getting tired. It's not very rewarding when you talk to people, spending your own money talking to them on the phone. It gets a little depressing when somebody has put their life savings into a scam. It's something that's a real downer for me. But I've not done much in that area in the past 3 or 4 months. I think it's time for someone else to pick up the ball. People send me newspaper ads, wanting me to answer if this is for real--"Can I make a thousand dollars a day?" I answer them, and with my answer I send information to the Attorney General of the state, alerting them. I've gotten back a few letters of thanks from Attorney Generals, damn few. Anyway, it takes a real commitment to do this, year after year. When you see this guy making a couple million dollars off of scams, and you're trying to eke out a living doing something right--there's been difficult years, you know. I think everybody needs to get involved. If you had an association--they should do the policing, not me. If there's any association that I ever get involved in, it will be one that will police the integrity of the industry, not just collect dues. There's more to a worm grower's association than collecting dues. I won't elaborate on that because that's another issue that I get a little upset with.
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CC: You told U.S. News & World Report that your company sells around 100 tons of castings to local organic growers. Additionally, you predicted that "in five to 10 years, every commercial fertilizer company will be selling worm castings." How is it that you have sold so much and what is attracting so much interest in castings? LM: Actually, what I've sold isn't a drop in the bucket to what I could have sold. My focus has been on promoting vermicomposting and worm sales, brokering worms for my growers, because I do feel a commitment to them. I estimated aggressively marketing castings in the year 2000. Recently, before that article came out, I modified my business plan to start next year. To do that I figured I needed an automated system which is coming into play. As an example of aggressive marketing, I can tell you about a Florida TV station, with a call-in program on gardening and landscaping. I plan on presenting a joint project to the host of that show. I can give you an idea of a joint venture of bagging castings under his name, through his nursery and other nurseries in just the Orlando area. From the market research I've done, with $250,000 in start up costs, with one full-time and 2 to 3 part-time people, you could produce about ten tons of castings per week. The first year's projected income is about $15,000 per week for the first year's spring and fall marketing. Within 3 years, still in just the greater Orlando area, you could generate about $250,000 a month in sales. It would take some time to show people that you have a nice looking bag they'll buy. And then they'll find that each time they buy this nice looking bag, they're getting the same material, not different each time. But it helps if you have someone, like a TV person, that could give some spot promotions. That could give instant success. But you could double or triple that if you set up a composting and casting market where you did custom blends and bulk sales. A blend of both compost and castings is what I like. Compost is long-term therapy; castings you get almost
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immediate results--although it’s slow-release. Good quality compost is very slow release. I have reassessed my impression of worm castings longevity. I have fruit trees in my orchard that were planted in old worm beds. They have been there now for five years now and I have not put one bit of castings on or one bit of fertilizer. And they are still growing fruits like you can't believe, just as if I had done 2 or 3 applications of castings. CC: Let's talk about the international interest. You have been consulting with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. What can you tell us about the interest in vermiculture in the mid-East and other places around the world? LM: The interest isn't in the sales of worms or castings but in the technology so that they can produce their own high-quality castings. I have representatives in both the United Arab Emirates and in Asia. I'd like to say that it's easy marketing, but that would be a lie. It's taken me 2 or 3 years of very hard work to establish my credibility in marketing overseas. My representative right now is negotiating with a company in U.A.E. to do a commercial automated facility on a very large scale. The feedstock they're interested in vermicomposting is waste from the fishing industry, manure and produce. In turn, they want to see if I can set up a meeting with a U.S. company in producing fish bonemeal. An Asian company wanted me to agree to market castings for a system that would not be automated--because labor is so cheap there. I expect to hear more from them, but I haven't had the time to pursue it. We're still in the beginning stages of negotiations. It may never come to pass. I never get my hopes up until it does. But I feel better about this than any other venture overseas that I've done. Other countries I've talked to have been Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, Indonesia, and China. The technology that the U.A.E. is interested in is an automated unit, 16 feet wide and 100 feet long with a center divider down it. It sits on a slab. The divider has supports for a
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roof, which may be solid or shade cloth. What I try to do in any system I set is to try to simulate the natural, the native environment of the worm I'm using. So, if it rains, it comes down from the roof, it's not sprayed in from the side, it's not doused with water--it's misted from the top. The surface needs the moisture, and the bottom of the bed should be at about 40% moisture content. It's got an automated misting system in it that's set on a timer. If you're in an area where water is a concern the misting system acts as a coolant to cool down the beds and to keep the top portion of the bed damp. It has a casting extractor which is powered by a hydraulic motor. It fits on a 3-point hitch of a tractor. You hook up the hydraulic pump to a tractor. It will produce an average of 20 cubic yards every 3-4 weeks. You have a natural system, i.e., feeding the surface and removing finished product from the bottom. As you're going down the bed removing the castings from the bottom, the top just drops down 4 or 5 inches and you keep feeding. When it gets up to the top again then you remove the castings. You've got 2-foot sides on
there so the bottom part of the material is 99% pure castings, i.e., all the feed is consumed and the worms and egg capsules remain in the top 10 to 12 inches. You top feed with a mixing wagon. I develop recipes for the feedstock: 1500 lbs. of this, 2,000 lbs. of that, and 3,000 lbs. of this, mix it for about 5 minutes and then run it right down the worm bed. It's 8-feet wide on one side and on the other side it's 8-feet wide, for a total of 16 feet. The guy actually has to get off the tractor and rake it out. The sides of the
Design for Casting Extractor
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beds are elevated 8 inches between the slab and the bottom of the sides. The casting extractor goes right underneath the sides. It starts at the end, and it pulls the castings out from the bottom. The sides don't sit on the slab; they're supported by the center divider. You start out with 12 inches of bedding on the concrete floor. In about 3 to 4 months, the bedding is turned into castings. The bed begins to fill up the rest of the way. You never want the bed to be less than 16 inches in height. You can harvest more often, but you want to give the worms time enough to clean up all the organic waste. I want 99% pure castings, not half compost and half castings. If I want to mix compost with it I can do that. What comes out of my worm beds is castings, not a mixture. You would stock 1800 lbs. Of worms in the 16 by 100 area, just over one pound per square foot. You don't have moving parts with this, you don't have down time, you don't have breakdowns. It's as natural as you can get, the worms are on the ground. You know why I recommend a slab? For nematodes. This way you will not have to sterilize your castings and kill all the normal bacteria that you need, the microorganisms is what really makes them so beneficial. And if you can assure the people there's no nematodes in there--if it doesn't come into contact with the soil then you aren't going to have a nematode population. To be shipped to places like Japan, the Japanese aren't going to buy any castings if they know that they've been in contact with the earth. They won't buy them, period. They demand it. CC: Technology. What does that mean in the growing vermicomposting industry? Where are we headed with mechanization and what can we expect with regard to application of feedstocks, harvesting, and other factors? LM: Where has technology taken us? Not really far. The proof of the technology is in the finished product, not in how you get that product. You can have all the bells and whistles, modems,
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monitoring systems--you can have all that. But if you're producing a poor quality product, so what? When castings smell like garbage, it probably is garbage. If we're going to sustain the industry we must be more concerned with the quality of the product than the high dollars in the front end that you'll receive from a tipping fee. The design I talked about setting up over there [in the mid-East], hopefully, if things go well, the first one will be going in in Northern California. It all depends on money. I don't set up the worm beds themselves. I've got the plans. To save money people can do it themselves or sub-contract it. I'm working with the University of Florida. Hopefully, I'll get some funding to do a pilot here. I can build a single unit that will take care of 250 head of dairy cows or about 2,000 head of hogs for under $5,000. That's for the slab, the supports, the sides of the bin, the roof, and the misting system. That's not a big outlay. The biggest outlay is $20,000 for the extractor and another $18,000 for the standard pulverizer. But the pulverizer is also used so you don't have to screen your castings. When the castings come out, it comes out like in a little windrow, on a concrete slab. You come on with a bucket loader on the concrete slab and load it up. Or you can get real sophisticated and use a "walking floor" and the castings can be taken right over to a processing facility. It all depends on how much money you've got to play with. I don't care how you do it, just so you do it right. If I do aggressively start marketing castings, I can enter into an agreement with these farms so they can have the good income, and not give them away for $5.00/yd like some compost people do. CC: You've spent considerable time working with schools. What has attracted your interest in educational institutions? LM: When I retire from this industry, that's all I'm going to do is schools, because that's what I enjoy most. It was my kids that pointed out that I shouldn't throw a gum wrapper, etc., on the
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ground because I was contributing, like millions of other fathers, to the pollution of our earth. And these were elementary kids at the time. So they really opened my eyes. I was not into recycling. Six, seven, and eight-year old kids convinced me that I should be setting a good example and that I could make a difference--one person at a time. (The kids started an educational pyramid.) This is what led me into the local elementary school with the worm bin. I saw the excitement in the kids, and the parents, who came over to buy worms from me, because the kids wanted to take their scraps to a worm bin. The parents didn't understand it, but they knew their kids were excited about it, and it was good. It is self-satisfying. You come away from doing a workshop for a school feeling good about yourself and what you just accomplished and, hopefully, the changes that will come from the fruits of your labor. CC: If you knew twenty years ago what you know today, what would you have done differently? LM: Probably nothing. I'd probably even trust the liar that cost me my credibility in Japan and the Japanese casting market. I just believe in people. That's something that was instilled in me by parents that were born before the 1900s. Sort of old-fashioned, but I still believe in people. But anyway it was a blow. Two years of hard, time-consuming work, establishing my credibility that was blown with one blowhard that lied to me about what he had already up in place. And when the meeting was scheduled for the Japanese to come visit, all of a sudden it's not there. His projections were presented to me as fact, when in reality it was no more than a figment of his imagination. That's why I don't depend on anyone else in this industry but myself. That was a hard lesson to learn. But it hasn't shaken my faith in mankind. Maybe once every two years I'll get a bad check. I probably wouldn't put my family through what I put them through in re-establishing myself on this coast. It was hard to
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leave the comfort of a $60,000 a year income to pursue a vision and what you're really committed to--helping to establish a worthwhile industry. But not once did my wife or the kids ever ask me to set it aside and get a "real job." But the kids, when they became teenagers, didn't tell their friends their daddy is a worm farmer. They'd say "he's a pharmacist--although he isn't practicing pharmacy anymore," or "vermitechnologist," or "vermiculturalist," but never a "worm farmer." But I was committed too early. It would have been much easier if I had waited until it was in vogue. It would have been so much easier. In the past two years it's just incredible--people craving for knowledge how to do this. Not just commercially, but for to use it in their homes. Now I'm doing some consulting with some schools in Illinois on the Internet in a private chat room. They've purchased 8 hours of consulting time to do it, so that's great. CC: Interest in vermiculture continues to escalate. There has been national media attention (both good and bad), and a proliferation of activity on the Internet. Inquiries come from around the world asking for information. What role do you hope to have in vermiculture in the 21st century? LM: The growth is going to be exponential, I believe. It's there. With the advent of an automated unit, it will make available a quality product that is consistent. Not only from one bag to the next, but from one year to the next. I do believe, and I'm really committed to this, that the unit I have is the answer to filling the pipeline with castings. And that's where the money is going to be. The money is not in the worms. It's a living. But the money is in the castings. Nationally, from last year, the demand for organic produce is up 30%. And do you know why it's not up higher than that? Because that's all that was available. They sold everything they produced. It would have been a 100% increase if they would have had the products to sell. I worked with a 5,000-acre citrus grove in Vero Beach. Indian River fruit is some
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of the best fruit produced in the country. He is now certified organic and he uses compost and worm castings. So that's where it's at. The home organic grower, the commercial truck farmer, and the very large commercial farms. It's there. And the bottom line is availability. Either you set them up on each large farm where they do there own there, or you provide them with a quality product at a price they can afford. I'm not saying, "give it away." But I'm not saying charge them $500/ton for castings, because they aren't going to buy it. But you don't give them away at $15 or $30 per yard either. Our prices here will settle between $80 and $120 per yard. I've been in a very poor part of the area here and I get between $40-$80, depending on quantity. Brokering is all I have, because I sold my worm farm. I have a demonstration farm here; that's all I have time for. I know how to grow worms. I don't need the practice anymore. I don't need those damn flatworms to come in and wipe me out. After being wiped out twice, I said, "That's it." I got rid of a partner, the farm, and the worm problem at the same time. And that's the best thing that ever happened. I didn't really start to grow until that happened. That's when I got time to really focus on the business, instead of growing worms. In closing, I will say that to be really successful in this industry, you must be knowledgeable in the principles of composting as well as recognizing a quality compost and apply this to your vermicomposting operations. Maybe one day Drs. Harold Hoitink and Clive Edwards of Ohio State University could collaborate on this very subject.
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Al Cardoza Rainbow Worm Farm
For twenty-two years Al Cardoza's Rainbow Worm Farm has seen steady growth, largely due to Cardoza's talents and persistence in single-handedly creating a full-service operation. Cardoza obtains dairy
manure from Dixon, a small community adjoining his vermiculture facility in Davis, west of Sacramento, California. In addition to the expense of trucking this product to his own farm, Cardoza periodically visits the dairy farm to turn the manure, speeding up the pre-composting phase of the feedstock. Four-foot wide windrows, called "ricks," cover some 3 acres of his twenty-acre farm. Sprinkler irrigation is used to spray a fine mist on the unshaded beds where temperatures frequently hit triple digits in the summer. The exclusively outdoor vermiculture operation currently has 30 ricks, approximately 200 feet long. "That's over one mile in length," says Al's son Dan Cardoza, who now manages Rainbow after Al's recent retirement. The rows receive about one inch of material every two weeks, amounting to about 4-5 cubic yards per row. Earthworms (Eisenia fetida) to be sold are harvested in a trommel designed and built by Al. Custom-made worm harvesters and blueprints are available for sale. Harvested earthworms are
Chapter Seven
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packaged in wax-coated cardboard boxes and shipped by ground carrier and by air. Cardoza applies the wax to the interior of the boxes, perforates it with enough holes to allow ventilation, and applies a red-ink stamped warning: "Alive! Earthworms. Do not expose to heat or cold." A specially-blended bedding mix of peat moss, shredded paper and oyster shell flour is used in packaging earthworms for shipment. The senior Cardoza has designed a heavy-duty blender for mixing worm castings with other ingredients to create custom potting soils for nurseries. He also has designed bagging and sealing machines which are used for packaging Rainbow Worm Castings, available in one-quarter and one cubic foot bags. Cardoza's video thoroughly covers all aspects of his operation: sprinkler set-up, creation of ricks, feeding, harvesting worms and castings, making wax-coated boxes, and shipping procedures including preparation of bedding, and bagging. Two-day seminars and consultation services are also available. Over the years, Rainbow Worm Farm has steadily increased its product line. In addition to worm castings (sold in bags or bulk), a blended potting soil mix has been created, using castings, forest humus, peat moss, sand and leaf mold. Other soil blends are also available and are sold by the cubic yard. Custom-built Bagger-Sealer machines produced by Rainbow allow a single operator to bag and seal 400-500 1-cubic foot size bags per day. Other equipment offered for sale includes soil meters, boxes for shipping worms, and supplies for sprinkler irrigation. Meeting the increasing market demand for earthworms was very challenging for Dan Cardoza during the peak spring and early summer months. The addition of several more rows was necessary in order to try to keep up with orders. For many years, Rainbow has shipped worms all over the world.
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Compliance with foreign regulations has sometimes meant that additional measures must be taken to satisfy import and customs requirements. Israel and Mexico, for example, have presented unique challenges. And Hawaii, known for its restrictions pertaining to imported soil and soil organisms, has within the past 3 years certified Rainbow to export organic soil products to the islands. Now that Al is "officially" retired, he has more time for enjoying leisure activities, although he is still in demand for seminars and consultation. During his time on the farm, suited up in blue coveralls, he has granted television interviews at his site and has also been a participant in a variety of videos pertaining to the composting industry. This interview was first published in the February 1988 issue of Casting Call. Casting Call: The idea of going into the worm business sort of "simmered" in your thinking for some ten years, while you worked as a production superintendent in the chemical industry. What started your interest in vermiculture and what steps were taken as you began this new undertaking? Al Cardoza: Well, I was always interested in the soil. I was a farmer before I was a superintendent. We farmed for 20-some odd years. But the farm just wasn't big enough for the family and the family was large. So I decided to move on, and worked my way up to superintendent at the chemical company. Later, I was looking for something else to do and I went to a seminar. I liked the idea, but there were so many people in it at the time, and without the knowledge that was required. So I studied up on it. Finally, when I got tired of the corporate structure I went into the worm farm. And I've never been sorry that I've done that--never. Being my own boss wasn't really the criterion for me getting out of the corporate structure. Doing something worthwhile and achieving
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something was my main focus. It just worked out that we were our own boss. But it's making a contribution, more than anything else. And I feel I have, within the industry. But it was very difficult for us too, you know. It wasn't all cut and dried. The wife [Avis] is who carried the load. She was an office manager and carried the load until we got this thing on its feet which took a few years. It took us awhile because I didn't have anyone to "show me the ropes." But eventually we got it, and now I can save people a whole lot of time. Many trials and many errors, but you learn from your errors--you'd better! CC: Your talent in engineering has been effectively put to use in the creation of your model worm farm. Sprinkler systems, special shipping boxes, a soil blender, worm harvesters, bagging machines--you've designed a lot of equipment. Naturally, this equipment was designed for your own operation, but Rainbow custom builds these items for other growers. What has been the demand for the items you offer apart from worm sales? AC: I'm not an engineer, a certified engineer. I'm what they call a "shade-tree" engineer. I'm able to put metals together and make them work. [Laughter] That's somewhat of an engineer but I'm not a "sheepskin" engineer. There's not a great demand [for the equipment]. But there's enough of it out there for us to keep our fingers in it, to keep improving the machinery. And we've made several improvements since Dan's come aboard because it gives us a little more time. One more set of hands, you know. I didn't see anything out there, I didn't see where they [other companies] were doing a good, clean job of harvesting worms. So, with trial and error we've come up with a machine that's far faster, that can harvest a lot more worms than any other machine out there, and have them cleaner. When you bring them into the shipping room you're
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ready to start packaging. We do several bag machines, sealers, a year, but mostly we do the harvesters. Ours is probably the most expensive harvester on the market today. But I can guarantee that that harvester is going to outlast any of those others 3 to 1, maybe more. I've got harvesters out there now that I've never heard from the people. Either they're not using them [laughter] or they're not having any trouble with them. It's the only one can change the screens in, in about 15-20 minutes. The others are all outside skeletons and it takes them at least a minimum of 4 hours, sometimes more. And time is money. CC: You're located in an agricultural setting west of Sacramento, CA. The temperature gets quite warm sometimes in the summer and you have been extremely cautious about shipping, particularly during the hottest times of the year. In fact, there are probably a number of stories you can tell about shipping problems. What have you discovered? AC: Well first off, when we first started shipping it was a miserable mess, because we didn't know what we were doing. We had to do a little research on peat moss, finding that peat moss differs from one bog to another. So we had to maintain at least a 5.5 [pH] on the acid level. The other thing that you have to worry about is the salt. Those two things are the reasons we use the 2 meters that we use, to make sure that the acid levels are high enough to keep the worms alive. We ship in the summertime too and we do lose a few, but I'd say that 95-96% of them all go through without any problems. But we had to come up with the best type of blend. We found that paper and peat moss and oyster flour makes a very good combination for shipping. Probably the biggest amount of worms we've lost is 20 pounds [at a time]. But we do ship 'em and do replace them if we lose them. The customer is always
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right. We've shipped to Israel, Portugal and Japan and never had a big loss. At the very beginning we used to ship worms twice, and it wasn't working, so we had to come up with something or else we were going to be out of business. We re-shipped worms 2 and 3 times at the very beginning. There's no profit in that! Then we came up with this mix and that was through trial and error. I did learn from a chemist at the university that there was an acid level in peat that varied. That's what we started focusing upon and we got the results that we wanted. We've been using wax-coated cardboard boxes for 15-18 years. CC: In establishing your business, you've worn a lot of hats. Watching your video on how to grow worms can make one feel exhausted, not only because there's a lot of work involved, but because you're a hard act to follow. You take folks from one step to the next, explaining all the factors in doing things properly. Your two-day seminar packs in a lot of information too. The result for many people is, after this intensive training, they decide it's just too much work. How does that make you feel? AC: It makes me feel good, because I've saved those people a lot of money. As I tell people in the seminars, "I would love to see you come aboard, but you've got to realize what you're getting yourself into." If someone decides that's too much work for them, then I've saved them a lot of money. And that's the whole goal of my presentation. I don't care what kind of business it is, but by golly if you don't stick to it and pay attention to your sense, you're going to lose. I wouldn't tell people they're going to make a small fortune on it, because it's not true. I've worked at it for 22 years and I never got rich. I've made a good living. Rich means a millionaire, or I think it does. But I'm still comfortable and healthy and that's all that matters. And I don't think you ever "retire." I love the
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business too much to say "Hey, I'm gone, I'm not going to do any of this." When I come back [from time off] I'm always working with Dan on new ideas and things that he's thought about. I don't think that I could ever leave the business totally. CC: California's Food and Agriculture Code, Section 23.7 identifies vermiculture and its byproducts as agriculture, and the California Marketing Act describes products produced from worms as a commodity. In essence, this exempts worm growers from regulations that affect composting sites. While this is good for worm growers, it can lead to abuses which may impact the future of vermiculture. Do you sense any threat that California's Integrated Waste Management Board may restrict vermiculture in the future, because of some who are taking in organic waste and using vermiculture as a "smokescreen?" AC: They're not doing composting, that's the big fallacy of the whole thing. What they're doing is taking in a tipping fee, and some of those fees get up around $20/ton. And they're just piling this stuff up and hoping that someday they'll have compost. But you have to work material in order to make compost. They're not doing that. They're just stacking this stuff out there. And I've seen it time and time again. These people should be regulated because they're not doing the job that said they were going to do. But I don't think that will happen to us. I'm in close relationship with the people at waste management and they know my operation. They go by here all the time. They stop in here once in awhile to visit, because they know we have a clean operation. But as long as you play by the rules, they're not going to step on you. But if you go out of line, they have every right to, and it's for the safety of people too.
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CC: Staying with the idea of vermiculture and waste management, what do you see for the future in the establishment of large vermicomposting facilities for municipal-scale organic waste? AC: I worked with a worm grower for awhile, and he's probably going to have the largest vermiculture business that I know of, but it's strictly for digesting [paper] waste. I think he's got about 20 acres in now. And I don't think anyone's going to bother him about it because he's doing it right. I don't remember exactly how many tons he brings in a day, but he goes 24 hours a day with his trucks, hauling that stuff away from the paper mill. I really don't know about others in California. I certainly see a future for vermicomposting waste. The green waste that they're composting now, they're not getting the true benefit of composting. It looks good, but it doesn't have the nutrients that the worm can develop in the material. By that I mean the worm gives off auxins and cytokinens and those act as growth promoters, like nitrogen, but it isn't nitrogen. I learned about this from Herb Lanser. I honestly believe that these landfills, by sorting these materials, that there's a lot of material that worms could digest. They could come up with a product [vermicompost] and stretch the life of the landfills a lot further. The worms could reduce 10, 15, perhaps 20% of the material going into the landfills. I think the thing [large-scale vermicomposting] has not really exploded yet, and I think it will. But the problem is, getting enough growers to raise enough worms to supply these people. Because, my goodness, if they start going that route, it's going to take many, many tons of worms. There's an operation in northern California where they have 800 to 1,000 yards of material and they're composting it. But these mounds are just humungous. And they bought [just] 10 pounds of worms! So you tell me. It is not going to happen! That's one of the things that Waste
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Management is looking at. And they really should. These guys get out into areas where they're not highly visible. But that's another story. I've talked to people in Kings County, the officials there. They had a problem with a guy there. They asked me if 100 pounds of worms would take care of 100 tons per day. And I said, "Absolutely not! There's no way!" I think they just closed him down, because they were making a mess out there in the desert. CC: There is a great deal of interest in castings these days, and there are a whole series of questions being asked about the present and future market. What needs to be done from agencies like California Compost Quality Council (CCQC), organic farming groups, and other agencies in establishing the quality of worm castings? AC: Well, that's a good question and I really don't know how to answer that. The quality has to come from the people that have the worm farms. We can only do here our very best to get out the best castings that we know how to do. I've seen castings where they hardly resemble castings--they're very light. Of course castings are a very dense material and heavy. I've seen so many of them that do not comply with the true word "castings." I don't know how...the state is going to have to regulate that. They've taken samples from here to use it as a guide for people selling castings. But I haven't heard back any information on whether or not they're still doing that. But castings, I think it's [now] in the eyes of the beholder. But I would like to see a standard. We harvest out castings out of a row once a year. That way we're assured of getting quality castings out of the bottom. We take the top off by hand until we get down to the castings. Then we scoop the castings out and pile them up. We let them sit there for awhile and if there's any bits of manure, the worms that are left there will go through it and clean that up and give us a better quality. It
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isn't 100% [castings] but it's as close to it as we can get it. I would say that they're at least 80% pure. The average farmer will not regulate himself. They won't do it. It depends on the pressure they're under as to the quality they're going to put out. I hate regulations, but there's got to be some kind of quality control on this stuff. Most all the castings are going to baggers [soil blenders] who put castings in their mixes. They're using castings as a sales tool. But some blenders will buy whole rows with worms and manure left, because it's cheaper. And that stuff can heat up. CC: What has been your experience with the international marketplace? Can you tell us whether the interest has been in buying worms, castings, or your equipment? AC: With us here it's been a little bit of all the above. We have sold the plans for machinery to Australia, Germany and Portugal. The equipment and the worm end of it is not that great, as far as we're concerned. We ship maybe 3 or 4 big shipments a year, at the most, to these different people. Mexico has become very hot. But some of these people are buying from growers that are selling for $3 or $4 per lb. Sometimes they get there, sometimes they don't. There's no guarantee on them, either. That's the thing we have to put up with. And those people are just a thorn in our sides, you know, and pretty soon they go away. But there's always someone to take their place. We've shipped just about all over the world at one time or another. As for the plans, the problem has been that everyone reads plans differently, and sometimes they don't end up with a machine that's exactly the same. And then they're disappointed. So then they have to come back and get a machine built to send over there. It's happened several times. One guy bought the plans from us in California and did it successfully. But he paid more in the long run than if he bought the machine directly from us.
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CC: What is the greatest opportunity awaiting vermiculture? What is its greatest threat? AC: The opportunity is wide open for someone's that ambitious and wants to make a living. If they're not afraid to do a little work, and I say "a little work," but it's quite a bit of work, they can make it in the worm business, because the future of the worm business is going to be big, I feel. And it's going to be wide open for the next 10 years. Here's the way it works. If you get your name out there first, and you do quality work, and you do what you say you're going to do, people are going to come back. Dan's shipping out 100 pounds today to someone who's been buying worms, and they keep coming back. I don't pretend to have the cheapest price, but we have quality and we come through with the timing [service]. The greatest threat to vermiculture? People making a bad name for it. And that's people not doing the job right, sloughing off things where they should really pay attention. That's just detrimental to the business. CC: You've worked hard in building a business that clearly demonstrates a pride in quality and value for the dollar. After all the years of straightening out windrows while sitting on your tractor, after all the equipment you've designed and built, after all the seminars you've conducted and thousands of questions you've answered, and after packaging up all the tons of worms and castings, what can you say has given you the greatest sense of enjoyment? AC: Meeting the people. I enjoy working with people. And I enjoy helping people do the things that we're doing here. That's my whole thing in the worm business. I've helped a lot of people "out" of the business, too. I've had people that have wanted to get into the business that have had heart surgery.
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They're working on borrowed time. I had a fellow in Washington that wanted to get into it in the worst way. He came down here and I talked him out of it. It was about a year later that he wrote me a letter thanking me that it wasn't for him.
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Dr. Ed Berry U.S. Department of Agriculture
Dr. Ed Berry has been a scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for 32 years. At the National Soil Tilth Lab in Ames, Iowa, Dr. Berry has
conducted a variety of research projects, published papers, and has consulted with farmers. Some of his speaking engagements have included the topic of earthworms in soil quality and their effect on water movement in soils. Dr. Berry, although not a taxonomist, can readily identify most of the common species of earthworms. Samples sent to his lab from worm growers who do vermicomposting have usually turned up to be Eisenia fetida, but samples sent by farmers and extension agents tend to be in the group of Lumbricus terrestris (nightcrawler), including as many as 8-10 different species. Mary Appelhof’s 26-minute video, Wormania! (March, 1995) used videomicroscopy of live earthworms, both in their natural habitat and in the laboratory. Microscopic views of young worms show the rhythmic beating of their five pair of hearts and there is a captivating sequence in which a baby worm may be seen hatching from its cocoon. These scenes were captured in Dr. Berry’s laboratory where Ms. Appelhof spent about a week conducting research for her project.
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Dr. Berry’s interest in earthworms stems from their impact on agriculture and soil fertility. Farmers have begun to realize that reduced, or “no-till” production allows earthworm populations to increase--provided that earthworms are there in there in the beginning. Questions from farmers to Dr. Berry include, “How many worms do I need to improve my yield?” Berry says that this is difficult to demonstrate. Earthworms improve the hydrology of the soil. “It’s not as easy as putting a gallon of earthworms in the soil to increase the yield by ten bushels,” he says. “It’s more the idea that soil and water quality are improved.” Some of Dr. Berry’s published research includes the following: Berry, E.C. and D.L. Karlen. 1993 Comparison of alternative
farming systems. II. Earthworm population density and species diversity. Journal of Alternative Agriculture. 8:21-26
Alban, D.H. and E.C. Berry. 1994. Effects of earthworm invasion on morphology, carbon, and nitrogen of a forest soil. Applied Soil Ecology. 1:242-249
Berry, E.C. 1994. Earthworms and other Fauna in the Soil. In J.L. Hatfield and B.A. Stewart (ed.) Soil Biology: Effects on Soil Quality. Lewis Publishers, New York, NY., 61-90.
Munyankusi, E. and S.C. Gupta, J.F. Moncrief, and E.C. Berry. 1994. Earthworm Macropores and Preferential Transport in a Long-Term Manure Applied Typic Hapludalf. Journal of Environmental Quality. 23 (4): 773-784
Parkin, T.B. and E.C. Berry. 1994. Nitrogen Transformations Associated With Earthworm Casts. Soil Biol. Biochem. 26 (9): 1233-1238.
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Shapiro, D.I. and G.L. Tylka, E.C. Berry, and L.C. Lewis. 1995. Effects of Earthworms on the Dispersal of Steinerema spp. Journal of Nematology 27 (1) 21-28.
Berry, E.C. and A.A. Swalla, D. Jordan, and J.K. Radke. Impact of Freezing and Thawing on the Stability of Casts Produced by Earthworms. Proceedings of the International Symposium of Physics, Chemistry and Ecology of Seasonally Frozen Soil. Special Report. 218-223.
Although now retired from the USDA, Dr. Berry continues to identify earthworm samples, review papers, consult with farmers, and make himself available for speaking engagements. This interview first appeared in the August 1998 issue of Casting Call. Casting Call: You’ve spent many years with the USDA and have undoubtedly seen many changes in agriculture as it is practiced in this country. When did you begin to look at the connection between earthworms and their impact on soil fertility? Ed Berry: I’ve been working specifically with earthworms for the last 15 years. The real interest in earthworms began when we began to change our farming practices, specifically, when we started to reduce our tilling. Of course this leads to more residue on the surface. Plus, since we’re not tilling the soil, we begin to form a crust on the surface. The earthworms are able to, through their tunneling activities and casting formation, have opened up avenues for the movement of water and gases down through the soil. It was really when the change in tillage occurred that we really began to see more interest in earthworms.
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CC: Using the right earthworm for the right application is important. Eisenia fetida is a surface-dwelling detritivore—thriving only where there is sufficient organic material. But for enhancing populations of soil dwelling species, such as Lumbricus terrestris (nightcrawler) for agriculture, what do you recommend for farmers? EB: First of all, you have to consider, where did our earthworms come from? Most of them are not native North American earthworms. So, they had to come from someplace. What this means is the farmer may or may not have earthworms, depending on whether they were transported to a specific location, then they’re not gonna be there. My recommendations to a farmer, are, first of all, modify your tillage practices. Go more toward no-till or reduced tillage. This is the primary thing. Of course, if he doesn’t have earthworms there he should introduce earthworms. We have to modify the environment so that it’s favorable for earthworms. This is primarily through reduction in tillage and increasing organic matter. Leaving the surface with plant residue—that’s the most important thing. That acts as a food source as well as modifying temperature and soil moisture. CC: You’ve investigated certain beneficial nematodes that have great potential as biological control agents and the effect earthworms may have in dispersing these more widely throughout a soil area. Do earthworms provide this and other benefits to crop production? EB: Yes they do aid in dispersing nematodes as well as some of the other microorganisms. A lot of this has to do with having a tunnel there. A tunnel also has large amount of nitrogen and microbes associated with this. The other thing, of course, with nematodes, most of these have to have free water for their movement. And the earthworms provide this
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in their tunnels. You have to keep in mind that there are several species of nematodes, but we have seen only dispersal of beneficial nematodes; no one has looked at dispersal of harmful nematodes. We saw with the nematodes we were working with, that they passed directly through the earthworm gut and were not destroyed. CC: Are you finding that farmers are concerned with the effects of insecticides, fertilizers (such as anhydrous ammonia), and pesticides upon earthworms? Other farm management practices, such as the mechanical action of plows, may expose earthworms or injure them. Do you see a willingness to change long-held practices on the part of farmers? EB: Yes I do. There is a lot of interest, for example, with pesticides. I get a lot of calls, asking which pesticide is the most harmful and which one is the least harmful. And they’re willing to use those that are least disruptive to the earthworms’ environment. Most of the farmers are very interested in conserving their population [of earthworms]. Of the question about anhydrous ammonia: The earthworm is just like you and I. If we get anhydrous ammonia on us, it’s going to burn us; if we get too much of it, it’s going to kill you. It does the same thing with the earthworm. If we broadcast anhydrous ammonia, which we do not, but if we did, we’d have a sterile environment. Normally, the anhydrous is injected in rows 30-40 inches apart. You’re going to kill some of the earthworms, but you’re not going to completely eliminate the population. Many of our test fields have had anhydrous used in them for years. We really don’t see a detrimental effect of the anhydrous. Some of the other fertilizers that have a lot of sulfur or sulfate change the pH. Earthworms are very sensitive to rapid changes in pH. But the farmers are very interested in what they’re putting on, and
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they’re willing to modify their practices to maintain their earthworm populations. CC: The market for organically grown foods has been steadily increasing and is projected to continue to grow. How are commercial producers of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers handling the concern that consumers and farmers have about these products? EB: I’m not sure how to answer that one. I heard on the radio the other day that Monsanto is getting out of the chemical business and going more toward biotech. You have to keep in mind now, that the pesticides we have now, the newer ones are relatively safe, both from the earthworms’ standpoint as well as our standpoint. Then, as these varieties are developed that are genetically altered, then pesticides become less important, at least at this point in time. I’m sure that in the future that some of our insects are going to become resistant to modified corn plants. And then we’re going to have to revert back to something else. Now where the genetically altered foods fit into organically grown foods, I’m not sure. But I know there’s a lot of concern about that. There are some countries not willing to import our genetically altered corn. CC: It has been speculated that the great damage caused by the Mississippi River overflowing its banks in 1993 due to excessive rainfall may have been caused in part by farming practices. The speculation was that had a sufficient number of earthworms been present in the croplands, water infiltration earthworm burrows would have absorbed much of the abundant rainfall, and the resultant damage would have been mitigated. Is this contention valid?
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EB: No. The reason I say that is that any time you dump large amounts of water on the soil, it has to go someplace. And I’m not sure that the amount of water we had to come down in that short of time, that it could get down into ground. We have the same thing here today. Just the other day we got about an inch of water in about 20 minutes. You’re just asking for the impossible. Once this ground gets saturated, and earthworm tunnels don’t go forever, any excess water is going to go downhill, that’s all there is to it. Earthworm tunnels, they’re beneficial, but you have to say under what conditions. If you say anytime it rains it’s all going to run down into [earthworms’] tunnels, well it’s not. Could it have lessened some of that flooding? Probably so. But could have it prevented it? No. You’re just asking the impossible. CC: Your chapter, “Earthworms and other Fauna in the Soil” (1994) reviews a good deal of the scientific literature and closes with a dozen questions posed for further research. Some of these questions have been discussed above. Since writing that chapter, you must have thought of still more questions. In what areas would you like to see research conducted? EB: There are several areas. I think the biggest question we have is, Why are earthworms in some locations and they’re not in others? We can take single factors and show that they’re related to monitoring or changing or enhancing or whatever you want to call it—earthworm populations—but we have to look at this thing holistically, and ask, how do all these thing interact? We’re beginning to do this, but up until this point we’ve been taking a single factor approach and tried to relate this. I think this is one of our challenges right now is that we need to look at these things as a system, over a long period of time. Again, in previous research, we’ve looked at the effect of earthworms in a small plot for a year or two.
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Well, what about ten years down the road, or twenty years? This is one area we need to concentrate on. The other is, there are a lot of earthworms out there, different species of earthworms, but there aren’t many taxonomists that can identify these things. So we need to concentrate on getting more taxonomists and getting more surveys, and looking at all of these interactions, trying to put these into a long-range system, so that we can really see the value of earthworms. [As far as the USDA is concerned] the interest is there, but one of the problems is that there are very few classes in our colleges that teach you anything about earthworms. What one knows about earthworms, you get through reading, talking, speaking, and doing experiments. Right now, I only know about 2 or 3 other people within the federal government who work specifically with earthworms. At one time I was the only biologist within the federal government who was working with earthworms. There are other people who look at the effect of earthworms on soils, mostly the tunnels and their effects. CC: Uday Bhawalkar of Pune, India has written a work called Vermiculture Ecotechnology. He is an avid proponent of anecic or soil-dwelling earthworms, particularly Pheretima elongata. However, epigeic (litter-dwelling) redworms, Bhawalkar contends, are “pests” in the same category as cockroaches, ants, rats, flies and mosquitoes. “Redworms assimilate about 80% of the food nutrients," he says, so “their excreta (that is, vermicompost) therefore contains 80% less nutrients as compared to the organics fed to the redworms.” He claims anecic earthworms, on the other hand, produce castings of about 5 times their body weight per day. In short, Bhawalkar’s contention is that vermicomposting by redworms is far less efficient than his “vermiculture ecotechnology” where organic residues and rock dust are applied near the root
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zone of plants and trees (the root zone enhances earthworm activity). How would you answer these claims? EB: Well, I would not disagree with him, but I guess where I would have my problem is that we’re leaving this very wide open. Are we talking about agricultural situations, are we talking about home gardens? Are we talking about nutrients? Soil structure? If we just want to get rid of residue… If you look at fertilizer values of castings, it’s pretty low. But, when you use this material out there, something else is going on. You’re altering soil structure. You’ve got a lot of carbon in there, a lot of nitrogen, you move gases and water; so there’s a whole lot going on in this system; and not just providing fertilizer, if you will. If you’re talking about just converting waste into something to get rid of the waste, you cannot beat Eisenia fetida, because of its reproductive capabilities. It’s really a reproductive machine. But it gets back to, are we talking about a waste problem or are we talking about plant production. And I think there is a big difference in there. I don’t look at the materials coming from a vermicomposting system as a very good soil amendment. That’s not saying a whole lot, but there are other things that are a whole lot better. There are more efficient ways of increasing plant yield than using compost. I dislike hearing people say, Well we can compost this material with earthworms and increase our yields by 30 bushels, or whatever. I think you’re on shaky ground and I think this gives earthworms a bad name. CC: Your study of nitrogen transformations associated with earthworm casts stated that earthworm casts are enriched in mineral nitrogen. As a soil amendment, earthworm castings do not have impressively high N-P-K values, mostly in the neighborhood of 1-1-1. Yet Dr. Clive Edwards and others are impressed with the results of plant growth trials in which vermicompost comprises 10% or less of a plant growth
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medium. He speculates that this may be due to increased microbiological activity. What are your thoughts about worm castings and soil fertility? EB: I agree with him 100%. I have no problem with that at all. That N-P-K value that is given there, I agree with that. One of the problems that we have is that we can show these increases in laboratory conditions. Now when we go out into the real world and you don’t see that many increases, (you see some), but, you have to ask the question then, Would you see those yield increases without the earthworms being there, just from the compost material, or do you need the worms there at the same time? Because if the worms are there at the same time, then what you’re doing is increasing water and air movement, and so forth. So we have to keep that separated. Now there are definitely increases shown in the laboratory, due to using earthworm compost. I expect it’s due to the microbial activity, the carbon, the nitrogen, etc. associated with that casting material. You’ve got a material that, when you use that compost, you decrease bulk density, if you will, this improves soil conditions. And all this is going to trigger into increasing yields. And I think there’s more to it, and a lot of it we don’t know. But there’s more to it than just the fertility, the N-P-K. I expect Edwards comments about the microbes are completely right. CC: There seems to be a good deal of interest in the subject of earthworms in waste management and earthworms as producers of vermicomposts as an aid to soil fertility. Would you say there is a similar or growing interest in the role of earthworms” (At the risk of sounding like the question, “Will a gallon of earthworms increase a crop by 10 bushes”), Is it possible to raise or harvest vast quantities of soil-dwelling earthworms in order to inoculate an agricultural field to increase its productivity?
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EB: On a small scale, we’re doing some of that now. Kevin Butt in England has developed ways of producing nightcrawlers and putting these out into the field. He’s doing that, but is it economical to do that? That’s going to be the big question. Satchell in New Zealand took little mats, like turf, and put earthworms out in the field and increased populations. But I’m not sure we’re at that point, because the economics have to be there. I think before we try to do that, I guess what I’d like to see us do is look more at native species, and try to determine what they’re doing and how we can introduce them into our systems. And this goes back to our need for taxonomists. Once we know what’s there, we can learn about their biology and how they can fit into our systems. I had rather these native earthworms and work with them than work with introduced earthworms. We can go out here and dump earthworms out there, but if we don’t consider survival and reproduction, we’re not doing very much. Again, it goes back to a system. In most of these situations, if you change the environment, meaning tillage systems and all things associated with this, given time, you’re going to have earthworms. You may not have nightcrawlers, and people get hung up on nightcrawlers, like that’s the only worm. Well, I disagree with that 100%. There are some 6 or 8 different species out there, and they perform different tasks. Really what you need is a system of worms out there, a variety of species. You don’t need just one type of worm. Each one has a different niche, and this is what we’re looking for.
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Mario Travalini American Resource Recovery
American Resource Recovery (ARR) is located in Vernalis, California, ideally situated along Interstate 5 in California’s agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley, about 90 miles south of Sacramento. Part of its 320 acres consists of two paved airplane landing strips covering
75 acres, a remnant of the military air base once located there, providing an added benefit for its waste management operations. Another 70 acres is used for vermicomposting. Non-hazardous commercial wastes (organic residues) totaling more than 75,000 tons are processed by earthworms annually. Feedstocks include short fibers (paper pulp) generated from recycling cardboard, along with varying amounts of tomato waste, green waste, and manure. The vermiculture operation has been in operation since 1993, as an earthworm inventory was steadily built. Today ARR has an estimated 500,000 pounds of earthworms on its site that continue to multiply within 3-foot-wide outdoor windrows, some of which stretch as far as one-quarter mile in length. In 1997, ARR began processing and selling earthworm castings. During its busiest season, the facility has shipped up to 100 tons of vermicompost per week. In the spring of 1998, ARR began offering earthworms for sale, harvesting, packaging and shipping them throughout the U.S. Recently they have begun shipping earthworms outside the U.S.
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ARR is the largest vermicomposting site on the West Coast and may very likely be the largest vermicomposting facility in North America. Owner Jim Davis and Organics Division Manager Mario Travalini are dedicated in their objective of demonstrating that large-scale commercial vermicomposting is economically viable, environmentally useful, and beneficial in producing a high-grade soil amendment. Mario Travalini graciously spent a few hours with us, talking about his experiences in the past and his hopes for the future. His boundless energy and enthusiasm for vermicomposting go a long way toward accounting for the success that ARR has enjoyed. Future leadership in the burgeoning vermicomposting industry will emanate from visionaries such as Travalini and Davis as they “raise the bar” a little higher for the rest of us. This interview was featured in the April 1999 issue of Casting Call. Casting Call: Tell about the various aspects of ARR. What are you doing in the area of organics recovery? Mario Travalini: ARR started up about a year-and-a-half ago by Jim Davis and Steve Anderson. Initially they began by processing various non-hazardous waste streams--whether through drying, milling, crushing, mixing, and blending--and hoped to come up with a way to sell the product on the back end. Soda ash, for example, is generated in great quantities by IBM. It can be made into kitty litter. After several months Anderson left and Jim Davis approached me about a position with the company. I came on in the winter of ’97-98. We started getting into soil amendments, taking in mushroom compost, composted greens, and blending these with worm castings. We began talking to some landscapers but we really didn’t know what we were doing, or what we had, or other aspects such as costs for trucking. We hit our heads a lot. As
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time went on we had to ask, “What are we doing here?” Then I got a hold of a mill operator who generates redwood sawdust. This material is slow in decomposing and that’s why a lot of formulators in soil blending like to use this product. This enabled us to step up to another level in our operations and generate some better income. I became the marketer and coordinator and manager. I had to go out and get on a tractor and figure it out. Then I would train the people. We started with one idea and as time is going on we’re starting to understand what we have and what are the realities in trying to make a profit in the recycling industry. You don’t want to just go out there to keep yourself busy. We analyze waste streams, transportation, processing and what’s the end use. Jim Davis had the worm castings production going a few years before I got there. He was also taking in tomato pomace. I was able to start marketing the castings and establish some relationships there. Sometimes we get a tip fee, sometimes we take material free, and sometimes we pay for it, such as the redwood sawdust. CC: How did it come about that the decision was made to use earthworms to vermicompost cardboard sludge? MT: Jim had been taking in the cardboard, drying it, and selling it in two different fashions. Some he’d sell to “co-gen” plants to be burned to produce energy. He’d also dry some of it and sell it for cattle bedding. Substitutions are often made in these markets depending upon price, so that if rice hulls are cheap, that is what they’ll use. This [cardboard] was just one of those commodities that happened to have a window of opportunity where he’d have a market for it. But when the price of oil came down, the co-gen plants shut down and the markets for cattle bedding were too volatile. Yet the cardboard kept coming in and Jim had to figure something out. I don’t know how he got into the earthworms, but he
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started doing some minor test plots and had Al Cardoza do some consulting. At any rate, Jim had to get creative fast, and he found that the earthworms worked well managing this waste stream. He put in something like $75,000 in equipment and irrigation and basically used the tools he had available, such as spreader trucks, loaders and other equipment. The property is next to the Delta Mendota canal and water usage is measured by the acre-foot. Feed and water are very important. We’re harvesting about three-quarters of a pound to one pound of earthworms per lineal foot of windrows. The rows aren’t real wide, measuring in between a wheel well. If you take a stick to it, they measure about 3 feet from center to center and are about 12 inches high. As soon as the row hits the differential in the rear end of the loader, that’s about as high as you can go. When we put rows on a hard surface it works out much better. The rows can be built higher, the worms don’t run out of feed, and the moisture stays in longer. These beds can get up to three feet high. But when the 12-inch high beds run out of feed, the worms leave or die. We have six cells and I’d like to take one of those cells and come up with some different farming techniques. We’d have to get some side spreaders and feed from the side. Unfortunately, we are crunched for time and have a lot going on. CC: Can you describe the process used in vermicomposting cardboard sludge? MT: We obtain up to 300 tons per day of the sludge [short fibers] from a cardboard recycling plant. It is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week account that we manage. The material is ready to go when it gets here; we just load it on a spreader truck and go to town laying it out. We can apply about 8 inches on the rows at a time. It comes in fluffy and wet. The worms begin eating the material and the material eventually settles down. We might feed four or five times a year, maybe more often in
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the summer. We can’t get the trucks out there in the winter, so we’ll feed real big just before winter. We do mix other waste streams in there occasionally; sometimes if leaves are available from some municipality we’ll mix that with the paper. This can be a problem in harvesting, though, as the leaves don’t have time to thoroughly decompose. Once we’ve harvested for earthworms we’ll stop feeding the area where we want to harvest for castings. At this point any remaining worms will migrate from the area or decompose within the rows. When we harvest a cell, which might be about 5,000 yards, we’ll bring it to the hard surface and leave it in that
state. Then we’ll screen upon orders. Let’s say somebody orders three loads, we’ll have it ready because we always have at least 10 loads in inventory at all times. When we start getting down we’ll schedule to screen worm castings for
three or four days. We’ll produce perhaps 150 to 200 tons of worm castings during that period. On the average, each of the six cells is roughly 1,000 feet long containing about 75 rows, although some have different shapes. We’ll get to the point where the trucks can’t feed anymore, probably to a height of around fourteen inches. Then we’ll just harvest that cell. We estimate that if we bring in about 100 tons of material at 75% moisture content, we’ll produce about 25 tons of castings. It’s a good material to work with, but plastics can be a real hindrance. That’s why we have a 3-way screening process and screen to 1/8 inch. When we provide a product to the consumer, they want to see a nice, clean product.
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CC: It gets very warm in Vernalis in the summer. What are some of the problems you’ve faced and how have you solved them? MT: In the summer months we try to start early in the morning and may only be able to work until 11 a.m., and perhaps not even that late if the temperature is going to be 110° that day. We’ll have a crew of three to four guys harvesting. We have a diesel-run refrigeration unit in a trailer we use for packaging. We can get that place cooled to 55° in 15 minutes on a 100° day—it’s nice! Everyone wants to do the worms then! Sometimes it’ll be 90° out there at 9:30 in the morning. There’s no shade available. Sometimes we’ll start harvesting at four o’clock in the morning under artificial lights. I’m out there too! It can be miserable later in the day! That’s why we want to get an automated program installed—perhaps a blade pulled by a tractor that would feed onto a belt that goes into a tumbler [trommel]. We’d really like to do that because it’s very physical out there. We have gotten to the point where we have to delay filling certain orders because of the heat or cold. At first we were very excited to ship worms, but we found out that we had to start writing our own rules. I think our system is a lot better now too. The peat moss [for bedding] is refrigerated; we drop them off at the last minute; we can drive them to the shipper at 5:00 instead of doing things at the convenience of the shipper. Sometimes we have to say to our customers, “we recommend that you do this at another time.” I think they’re all pretty understanding about it. Cold weather can be a problem too. I’ve got guys that are sitting on orders right now, just waiting for it to warm up. We just don’t want to risk it. Unfortunately the [worm] farmer bears most of the risk. Basically we have to say, “If it gets to be 95° and up, we don’t ship. If you have to go elsewhere, that’s fine.” But we have become better at controlling aspects of our operation to minimize our risk.
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CC: You’ve begun shipping earthworms outside the U.S. How’s that been going? MT: Actually, it’s been going excellent! But it’s a new area for us. We just shipped an order to Amsterdam in Holland the other day. We’re getting a lot of inquiries about shipping to other countries and they are very big! Some of these countries are trying to manage their renewable resources. It’s an enormous opportunity. In one case a man from Southeast Asia has a plan to create jobs for his countrymen in vermicomposting. There, earthworms can also be used as a protein source for animals. This will allow the people to become more self-sufficient and less dependent on importation of grain and other products. CC: In your experience, what is the market like for earthworm castings? MT: It’s an expensive product and it’s a heavy product. So for people in the soil amendments business, the landscapers and others, it makes no sense economically for them. We’ve had all of our success with the bagging formulators. The reason is, you’re paying $2.00-$3.00 per cubic foot for some potting soil; well there’s 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard, so three times 27 is $81 per cubic yard on the retail market. There’s more profit in the retail market. It’s also trendy. It’s a new marketing thing they want to put on the bags. But it does have a lot of value. If we had some more marketing people out there, it would help spread the word. I’ve been giving product away to some of these growers. I just want to get it out there. I’ve told them, “Hey, I will bring it to you!” There are a lot of vegetable starter companies—they grow the plugs. A big one went up right around the corner from us. I’m going to bring them a load of worm castings. There’s also a new
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vineyard that I’m giving some worm castings to and I’ve got a new nursery that moved into the area; I’m going to give him a blend. We’re going to mix 15% worm castings with some redwood sawdust and some sand and some other things. But I’m really trying to get it into the hands of the consumer, trying to prove its value. It’s an infant market and an education process is involved. I’ll do whatever it takes to get the product into people’s hands. We’ve had some success. We’ve sold up to 100 tons per week during the peak season, but that peak season isn’t long enough in our opinion. CC: Some California vermicomposting sites have attracted negative attention from state and local regulators, mostly due to poor management practices. Are regulatory agencies such as California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) doing enough or too much to regulate the state’s vermicomposting industry? MT: Well, I have a limited knowledge of the history of the unfortunate things that have happened. It’s my personal belief that regulations have value, but to over-regulate puts up barriers. I can see how we’re getting to the point where something needs to be done to help professionalize what we’re doing here. I think that might actually help us be recognized as somebody that’s real out there. There are so many smaller operators that are doing things from the seat of their pants or with limited resources. So I can see how things have gotten out of hand in the past. If I look at it as, “What’s it going to do to the industry?” I think it might actually help bring some seriousness to the industry. They’re the “Integrated Waste Management Board.” So they’re focusing on waste, not hobby gardeners, not little guys that want to improve their garden, not even worm growers. They’re focusing on waste. We try to show through our consistency that we’re good operators. We really value our relationships
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with the county and state agencies. We give them free worms when they need them. We do a lot of work with the schools and I’ve spoken to a number of schools. We’ll just continue going about doing our business until, I mean, how many years is it going to take for these guys to say, “Wait a second; it is working.” The nice thing that we’ve got right now is that we have the 300,000 to 500,000 workers out there managing this waste. But it takes some time to get to that point. I don’t know whether many people could realistically do that without having some other kind of business; that’s something that takes time. It’s like a farm, like any other farm. You’d better be able to pick the walnuts off these trees while you’re planting your new trees. Otherwise, it’s a period of time with not much income. CC: The recent New Horizons in Vermicomposting Workshop was held in Stockton and the tour site was your facility. What observations do you have of that event? MT: Oh, I thought it was a good location and, in terms of
geographic location I thought it was pretty well centrally located. And the way it was designed around the BioCycle [conference in San Francisco the following days], I thought it was real advantageous, because a lot of people
went on to the BioCycle conference. So it was a nice little stepping stone for that. The turn out was very impressive. I don’t think any of us thought that it would turn out that way. I think it had to do with speakers. It was easy to sell, “Come and see Clive Edwards speak,” and Mary Appelhof. These
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are the people that are writing the books that people are reading, and they wanted to hear them speak. I thought that the geographic location was real good—Sacramento, Stockton—any of those central valley towns is just ideal. The cost was reasonable for most people. Transportation was reasonable for most people. There must have been 40 or 50 cars that showed up at our facility. And it was neat to see the enthusiasm of all the participants there. There was genuine and sincere interest. I thought it was an excellent, excellent event. CC: What is in the future for the vermicomposting industry in California and the U.S.? MT: Well, I think that it’s like anything else; it’s up to us, really, it’s up to the worm farmers to decide where to go. I think that the opportunities are wide open. You can take any small plant that’s producing some kind of a waste stream and, if it’s organic, there’s no reason why you can’t become the manager of that supply of organics on a recycling basis. As an example, there are these little microbreweries; they’re producing a waste stream and they’re paying to get rid of it, most likely. Why couldn’t you propose to them, “Here, I’ll immediately save you $10 per ton to take your waste. So you’re already going to start winning. But the good news is that you’re going to continue to win because it’s a recycling-based deal. You get included on the plaque that says—so-and-so recycles here—there’s a corporate image—little things like that.” But if you can focus in, right off the bat on saving them some money, money talks. You don’t need a lot of equipment to manage a nice little consistent waste stream. You just have to get creative—they’re out there—these little produce shops, all kinds of little organic, consistent waste streams, juicers, little canners, processing plants. I would feel totally comfortable going out to secure accounts in this
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manner, even without a large facility. Because then you are getting a little bit of a tip fee. And that helps pay for the equipment and the labor—you need that. I see a bright future for those who are willing to work at it. If you think that you’re going to put your name and number in the phone book and expect your phone to ring—I know the industry is not in that stage and never will be in that stage, unless we drive it forward. So really it’s, “How bad do you want it?” I personally, think that the opportunity is out there. I really do. CC: What plans and goals do you have for ARR and its efforts in vermicomposting? MT: Well the plans are to attempt to bring in more organic residues of any kind. We’d like to start working with some more waste streams. We’d like to improve our worm-harvesting program and be a little more efficient. The worms and castings are our sellable items. We’d like to start experimenting with different farming techniques. So, really, it comes down to different farming techniques, different harvesting methods, and different feedstocks. The good news is that we’ve got our workers. Now it’s a matter of finding the most efficient way of utilizing those workers. We’ve created a small business as processors. It’s a matter of going out there and finding better ways, cheaper ways, higher margins on various products, and things like that. We’re really trying to get the worm castings into the hands of the potential end-users—nurseries, even high-end landscape jobs—where people aren’t afraid of spending $30 a yard for a nice blend that’s got some redwood, some composted greens, and some worm castings. We’d like to incorporate that in the potting soil market and the wholesale nursery market. We’re going to continue to give some product away to see what happens. We won’t know until we get out there and do it. But we’re committed to doing it and having the professional
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growers say, “You know what, this stuff works!” And I think once that happens, it’s going to be wide open!
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Dr. Clive Edwards Ohio State University
Dr. Clive Edwards is the world’s leading authority on vermicomposting and the use of earthworms in organic waste management. Born Clive Arthur Edwards, he attended Bristol University in the U.K. where he
earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Zoology. In 1957 Wisconsin University conferred upon Edwards the PhD in Entomology. Throughout most of the 1950s, Edwards served as a Government Entomologist. From 1960-66 he was Principal Scientific Officer at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in the U.K., later to return as Senior Principal Scientific Officer from 1982-85. There, under his leadership, nearly 50 scientists, including biologists, agricultural engineers, economists, and representatives of a range of commercial enterprises created field-scale practical methods for disposing of poultry, pig and cattle wastes in an interdisciplinary research program. “These studies,” writes Dr. Edwards, “have demonstrated the very considerable economic potential of using earthworms to convert a wide range of organic wastes into valuable and efficient plant growth media.”
In 1985, Dr. Edwards was invited to The Ohio State University where he has since served as Professor of Entomology.
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Dr. Edwards’ principal areas of research include the following: Soil ecology and environmental research; functioning of agroecosystems, effects of agricultural practices (pesticides, fertilizers, cultivations, rotations) on soil biota; breakdown of organic matter in soil; earthworm biology and ecology; and vermiculture.
Awards conferred upon Dr. Edwards since the 1970s are almost too numerous to mention. Universities and scientific societies in Europe and the U.S. have awarded Dr. Edwards various medals, Presidential Citations, and awards for distinguished accomplishment. Since 1985, Dr. Edwards’ projects have received more than $5,270,000 in grant funding. His international consultancies include the countries of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Colombia, Mexico, and most English-speaking South Pacific island groups, including the Philippines. He has been an organizer or co-organizer of eleven international conferences and a highly sought-after speaker, having been invited to symposia around the world. Dr. Edwards is author of more than 302 scientific papers, including 21 books. In his 3rd ed. of Biology and Ecology of Earthworms (1996), the seventy-page bibliography listing nearly 1500 scientific references cites 58 of his papers, dozens more than any other researcher. It has been only in the last third of the twentieth century that interest and research in earthworm ecology has peaked. Much of this research has been conducted and summarized by Edwards and brought together in various compilations he has edited. One such volume, Earthworms in Waste and Environmental Management (1988), offers 35 papers on such subjects as processing of animal and human wastes by earthworms, engineering waste management by earthworms, earthworms
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as animal feed, earthworms in production of plant growth media, earthworms in soil improvement, and earthworms as indicators of environmental contamination.
In July 1994, Dr. Edwards helped organize the Fifth International Symposium on Earthworm Ecology, held in Columbus, Ohio. More than 220 scientists from 38 countries attended this symposium and heard 165 research presentations. Edwards oversaw the publication of these presentations in a special volume of the journal Soil Biology and Biochemistry. The sixteen leading papers by distinguished scientists were separately edited by Edwards and published as Earthworm Ecology (1998). His paper, “The Use of Earthworms in the Breakdown and Management of Organic Wastes,” provides a comprehensive summary of the state of our knowledge about vermicomposting. Here he acknowledges the pioneering work of Roy Hartenstein who, at SUNY in Syracuse in the late 1970s, conducted research in the use of earthworms to manage sewage sludge. The earthworm Eisenia fetida, in Hartenstein’s research, and that of Dr. Edwards, seems to be one of the best-suited species for processing organic wastes due to its resilience, among other characteristics. Yet Dr. Edwards would be quick to point out that there are at least a half dozen or so earthworm species that also have been found suitable for this task.
The scope of the subject “earthworms in waste management,” is best divided into smaller categories. Our interview with Dr. Edwards sought to cover many of the principal issues in this area. The topics we covered included the following: Commercial aspects of vermicomposting; the current status of vermicomposting in organic waste management; the “Continuous Flow Reactor;” the effects of vermicompost upon soil fertility; international efforts in vermicomposting; and future projects planned. This interview was first
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published in two parts, appearing in the June 1999 and August 1999 issues of Casting Call. Some of Dr. Edwards’ publications include: Edwards, C.A. and Burrows, I. 1988. The potential of
earthworm composts as plant growth media. In: Earthworms in Waste and Environmental Management S.P.B. Academic Publ. Co., The Hague, Netherlands, 211-220.
Edwards, C.A. and Neuhauser, E.H. 1989. Earth- worms in Waste and Environmental Man- agement. S.P.B. Academic Publ. Co., The Hague, Netherlands, 391 pp. Edwards, C.A., Bohlen, P.J., Linden, D. and Subler, S. 1995.
Earthworms in agroecosystems. In: Earthworm Ecology and Biogeography in North America. Ed. P. Hendrix. Lewis & Co., Michigan, 185-213
Edwards, C.A. and Bohlen, P.J. 1996. Biology and Ecology of Earthworms. (3rd Edition), Chapman & Hall, London, 426 pp.
Edwards, C.A., ed. 1998. Earthworm Ecology. St. Lucie Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 389 pp.
Casting Call: Perhaps you might provide some insight into your early interest in earthworms. In the early 1970s Encyclopedia Britannica changed and expanded its format, publishing your article, “Soil Organism,” which surveyed the rich biological diversity found in living soil. Yet in the same 30-volume set, only a very brief description of earthworms was published, suggesting that popular (if not scientific) interest in earthworms was not then what it is today. At that time you were cited in EB as author of Principles of Agricultural Entomology while holding the position of Principal Scientific Officer at Rothamsted Experimental
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Station. Your earliest published papers on earthworms (in the 1960s) concerned effects of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides on these and other soil fauna. Around this time (1972) your text Biology of Earthworms, co-authored with J.R. Lofty, was published. Now, more than a quarter century later, many would consider you the world’s leading authority on earthworm biology and ecology. What factors led you to begin concentrating upon earthworms? Why, as a soil ecologist, and considering the tens of thousands of soil organisms that are on this planet, have you chosen to focus so much of your attention upon the role of earthworms? Dr. Clive A. Edwards: There are a number of reasons. Most of my work when I was in the U.K. involved what agricultural practice did to soil ecosystems and the animals that live in them and what the animals that live in soil ecosystems do for agriculture. Those were the main themes. But in all that period when I was working at Rothamsted, it became very obvious that earthworms played a key role in agroecosystems. In fact, I’d only been there a month when I had a request, Could I supply a million earthworms a month? This was from North America, so there was interest way back then; that was in the ‘sixties. I wrote the first version of the book [Biology of Earthworms, 1972] mainly because I was pressured to do it by various people, not because earthworms were my main enthusiasm at the time. In other words, there was such a demand, and there hadn’t been a book on earthworms since Charles Darwin, so in the end, I agreed to do it. And we wrote it in fairly short order. Writing the book was meeting the pressure, rather than it being my main personal focus. My personal focus was much more on microarthropods than on earthworms, originally, but this changed. In the U.S., it’s been moved over because earthworm research has been where the funding opportunities
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have been and we’ve had some very significant funding related to earthworms. CC: So none of this relates to any interest as a child, perhaps in playing with earthworms or something like that? You don’t find them particularly more fascinating than other creatures in the soil? CAE: No [special childhood interest], none at all. No, I find some of the other soil creatures equally, if not more fascinating. It’s just that, over the years, I’ve become convinced that earthworms play a much more important role than all the other of the organisms together, apart from microbes. Basically, my education and training came through soil ecology. But my doctorate work was on pesticides and soil and not on organisms at all. It was on the persistence of pesticides. From there we moved to what pesticides did to soil systems, and then on to the soil fauna in general. So I came from the toxicology route rather than the pure scientist, initially. CC: Your many years of research at Rothamsted Experimental Station in the U.K. seemed to have helped solidify your belief that there is commercial potential in utilizing earthworms in organic waste management. In spite of the fact that you are a prolific research scientist and author/editor of so many significant publications, it seems that you have a desire to see earthworm technology actually implemented to the point where it becomes indisputably proven (not just scientifically ‘proven’ in research journals, but in profit-making commercial ventures) that vermicomposting is economically viable as well as environmentally useful. Doesn’t this interest in the commercial aspects of earthworm research set you apart from
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some of your more “pure research-minded” colleagues who may recoil from such mundane contact? CAE: Not really. It just happened when the vermicomposting project came up, it was funded by the British Ministry of Agriculture. It was a time when they were interested in getting their research into commercial projects. For quite a long time, actually about three or four years, we were pressured to interact strongly with a commercial organization. That was before I came here. I guess that left its impact. But nevertheless, I’m still basically focused in the pure science. It’s nice if you do something which you can see actually successful commercially. CC: But you do respond to, more or less, the “pull” of those commercial aspects when people ask you these questions, or when you consult on commercial projects, isn’t that true? CAE: Well, you don’t have a choice really. What do you say when somebody rings you up? I’m employed to be in education and research but also the service industry. My official appointment says I can spend 20% of my time consulting, if I wish to. But I’m employed by the state and the federal government to respond to questions from the public. CC: As you mentioned when you spoke at the New Horizons in Vermicomposting Workshop in Stockton, CA on March 6, 1999, the presence of economists and accountants at Rothamsted pushed the scientists and engineers to pay strict attention to details perhaps otherwise overlooked. But the eventual commercialization of this vermicomposting technology was later followed by the demise of one of its leading ventures, British Earthworm Technology (BET). From your experience, what have been the factors involved in
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the failure of vermicomposting ventures, when “on paper” everything should “pencil out” just fine? CAE: I think there are two factors to that. One is, and it goes right across the board from all the enterprises I’ve seen, lack of capital. Most people go into projects with a few thousand dollars and think they’re going to change the world. And that’s not feasible. That’s exactly what happened to British Earthworm Technology who employed fourteen employees on limited capital, so they soon ran out of money. So there was lack of capital and that was linked with poor management. They never seemed to get their act together in terms of getting the product at the same time they created a market. They created a market at a time when they didn’t have much product, and when they had a lot of product the market had lost interest. So it was bad management, basically. But I don’t know what happened, because the last time I had any contact with them [BET] was in 1987 or 1988. At that time they were still functioning and were supposedly making a reasonable profit. But I don’t know what happened to them after that point. Everybody seems to be asking me for the same thing. There have been a considerable number of people who have phoned me asking me about vermiculture. They want to know all the answers, and they want everything. [But] at the end of the day, they don’t want to spend any money. I tend to advise them and finally get tired in the end. You know they’re not going to do anything. They can see a great big fortune out there, but don’t have any money and don’t seem to be able to convince any investors, either. That is a major reason I agreed to edit a Manual on Vermicomposting for BioCycle. CC: The vermicomposting technology developed at Rothamsted, often called “The Continuous Flow Reactor,” has been in use on both coasts of the U.S., and some “mini
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reactors” have been built at Ohio State University. In your paper, “The Use of Earthworms in the Breakdown and Management of Organic Wastes” (Earthworm Ecology, 1998), you commented that “Such automated continuous-processing reactors have been operated successfully for as long as two years, with no problems and excellent efficiency.” Yet, other than three U.S. locations (Oregon, Ohio, North Carolina) the technology hasn’t seemed to spread very quickly in the past two decades. The research, the technology and the experience all seem to add up to more than ample proof that this system works. How do you account for the fact that as a waste management tool, vermicomposting organic residuals appears to lag far behind thermophilic composting and that “the continuous flow” system has not yet been hailed as the answer to organic waste management? CAE: Well, the answer is pretty simple, really. People think that if they can look at Dan Holcombe’s reactor and make a few notes and take a picture, they can go home and build one and it’ll work. It won’t. Basically, the whole system is predicated on knowledge and excellent management. I’ve not met anybody who really manages it as it should be. The data that we have were from twelve reactors that were perfectly managed. And so that’s why I don’t think people have been able to achieve what is achievable with good management. We have an enormous amount of data on worm populations, how many should be in there, and how much they consume, and all the rest of it. By the way, that comment about they’ll consume one-half their weight per day. That keeps persisting in the literature. I’ve no idea where it came from. I know of no scientific validation of that figure. It’s not even a good thing to make such statements because they consume every different type of waste at different rates. And there’s no scientific basis for it anyway.
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CC: Many people wonder about the production capabilities of vermicomposting, such as loading rates. How much waste can earthworms process? Can you clarify some figures? Using Eisenia fetida, for example, you have previously suggested they should occupy about 10% of the volume of material. Does this amount to 2 pounds earthworm biomass or more per square foot of material on a Continuous Flow Reactor (and at what depth)? Is it safe to estimate they’ll consume one-half their weight per day? (And will they consume different feedstocks at different rates—food residuals, biosolids, manures, yard debris compost?) With a square-foot surface area of approximately 1,000 square feet (8’x128’), it’s been reported that a Continuous Flow Reactor might process 100 tons per year. That works out to 547 lbs./day for 365 days. Are these reasonably accurate figures for waste managers to use for projecting processing rates that are reliable year round? CAE: It depends here on the feedstock and the management because earthworms may process different wastes at different rates. The recommended rate of addition of waste to a reactor is about 1” per day. That is equivalent to 1024 sq. ft. or 116 sq. yds. (one inch deep) or 3.2 cu. yds. per day. The figures that have been quoted are for a well-managed system. Incidentally, we’re planning to bring the man who managed the original systems [Keith Fletcher] over to the U.S. for a year to manage [some new systems]. And he’s got “worm fingers,” just as some gardeners have green fingers. You’ve mentioned 100 tons in your [question above], but a well-run reactor can process a thousand tons per year, if managed properly. And that’s quite a lot, because we’re talking not 500 pounds per day, we’re talking two or three tons per day. CC: With what earthworm biomass?
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CAE: Well, basically, somewhere between two and four pounds of worms per square foot to a depth of about 6-8 inches. I’ve never achieved a population better than four pounds of worms per square foot. And I’m also talking just about a perfectly managed reactor. Not one that people throw stuff on by chance every week, or whatever. It has to be kept at the right temperature, it has to be kept at the right moisture, and it has to be managed properly. You cannot afford to let the moisture vary more than about five or ten percent either side of the optimum [because if you do] efficiency drops by approximately two-thirds, immediately. And the same with temperature, if it gets too hot or too cold, the rate of processing goes down. I’m talking about a properly run environmentally-managed reactor. CC: I think there’s some science as well as art in this. You spoke about the individual having “worm fingers,” and Dan Holcombe seems to do his operation more efficiently than others. But for a waste manager, who’s saying, “I’ve got this input of material that needs to be taken care of, every day, day in and day out,” to build one of these systems and to make it reliable, if you’ve got the magician present there who can control everything optimally, can you still process that rate with 4,000 lbs. of worms in a single reactor? CAE: We had one man manage twelve reactors. It’s not such a great amount of work to load and unload them and to make sure of the rate of loading, particularly if you get electronically controlled temperature. Really, it may sound like a lot of work but it isn’t. CC: No. What sounds like a lot of work is the worm consumption of that material. I’m coming back to that point because that seems to be a sticking point with a lot of people who don’t see that the earthworms have this capacity…
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CAE: I have all the data from reactors that Keith Fletcher managed including the population of worms. The best waste processing we’ve achieved was a thousand tons of vermicompost per year. Basically, the figure which, I think, you’ve quoted somewhere else is about a ten percent ratio of worms to waste. In other words, the worms and the waste are at about the same percentage moisture content, and really the optimum worm population we ever had in the laboratory is about one in eight, but if you’re achieving one in ten [ratio of worm weight to the weight of the material] you’re doing pretty well. Worms also convert waste into tissue very rapidly. We’ve obtained a whole range of conversion ratios from organic matter to worms. The best reactor figures we’ve had is to turn ten percent of the waste into worm tissue for pig waste and bio-solids. That’s a lot of weight of worms and a large amount of waste. CC: Let’s shift from the process to the result. One of the most exciting areas of research being conducted now, and undoubtedly will continue to be well into the future, concerns the effects of vermicompost upon plant growth and vitality. Research you are spearheading at Ohio State University in plant growth trials has confirmed that as little as 5% and a recommended 10-20% vermicompost (by volume) in soil potting media produces “unique and remarkable plant growth responses,” as you, Dr. Subler and Dr. Metzger reported in “Comparing Vermicomposts and Composts,” (BioCycle, June 1998, 63-66). You have been saying for several years that you suspect the effects upon plant growth are related to the increased microbial activity in worm-worked material. At the Stockton workshop, for example, you stated, “what comes out the back end of an earthworm is a thousand times more microbially active than what goes in the front end.” How
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much further along are we in our understanding of this microbial activity because of your research? CAE: We only started the vermicomposting plant research seriously about a year or two ago. Prior to that, we’ve been working on earthworms in soil systems here since ’88, with NSF funding. With that funding we’ve done an enormous amount of work on the interactions between earthworms and microbes. We have published a lot of papers on it too. In fact, it’s a dynamic process. We’ve also looked at how long in the cast material the microbes’ activity increases and what happens to them at the end. It’s quite a complicated process. So, the statement [“what comes out the back end of an earthworm is a thousand times more microbially active…”] is not an accurate figure any more than the figure [that earthworms consume] “half their weight per day.” And what I’ve said is, “It may be as much as a thousand times.” People always pick on these figures and say, “Yes, that’s what happens.” Of course, it doesn’t always happen and doesn’t persist. Gradually the microbes in the casts will fall off in numbers. Certainly vermicompost remains very microbially active for a long time. One of the keys, of course, is that these are microbes which are much better at transforming nutrients into forms readily taken up by plants than you find in compost—because we’re talking about thermophilic microbes in compost—so that the microbial spectrum is quite different and also much more beneficial in a vermicompost. I mean, I will stick by what I have said a number of times that a vermicompost is much, much preferable to a compost if you’re going in for a plant growth medium—if you’re looking for something to market. But you know, most composters don’t market it; they pick up the tip fees and that’s the end of the day.
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CC: That’s why I see that the people who are really interested in soil fertility, if they’re doing any sort of thermophilic composting, would love to get into this, at least as an adjunct, as part of their operation, to produce a higher quality soil amendment. CAE: And they can be combined. You can do a short period of composting followed by a period of vermicomposting. And that is beneficial all around because it helps in killing the pathogens and it helps in speeding up the worm process. The worms will consume the slightly composted material much faster. You do away with the likelihood of overheating by pre-composting. So there’s lots of plusses to doing one after the other, actually. CC: Would you say Ohio State University is probably the leading institution in conducting plant growth trials with vermicompost? CAE: Apart from some work in Australia, I think we’re the only one. I did hear it mentioned that someone was doing something over at Rutgers. But, there are virtually no people doing this. That’s been the problem. Nobody’s proved that vermicompost performs so very well. Unless that data is in the literature, nobody’s going to believe it. Basically, what we’ve been doing, over the last two years with some small funding from various sources, has been work that’s done in the greenhouse. Not very much [has been done with] on-the-field applications. It’s only right at this moment [that] we’re doing the field applications. We started an experiment about a week ago. We’re growing tomatoes, peppers, raspberries and strawberries on a large field scale. We’re looking at different doses, different placements—most of the variables—and also comparing with one or two composts, and inorganic fertilizers, I might add. We’re doing all these experiments as
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we have in the greenhouse experiments, when all the nutrients the plants need are there. In other words, whatever the vermicompost does, it’s over and above nutrient supply. CC: We asked Dr. Bill Roley of the Southern California Permaculture Institute to pose a question. He asks, “The worm seems to manage an ecology of microorganisms that are contained in its castings. What are the types of byproducts created in this microbe-rich environment that affect plant germination and seedling root-elongation, allowing more minerals (are there other byproducts?) to be absorbed by the plant? What contributes to the tremendous growth and stem/flower production when using worm castings? And, what is the latest on your biological assessment of worm tea and how do you see its expansion in the future?” CAE: [Laughter] That’s the $64,000 question! At the moment I’ve got a $350,000 NSF grant aimed at answering that question. We only just started this research. We don’t really know the mechanism. We suspect it may be plant growth regulators, because it is well known that microbes produce plant growth regulators. But whether they’re producing quantities that can affect plant growth…I don’t know. I personally am against what they call “Earthworm Tea.” I’m personally not in favor of it because most people who do it want to have their cake and eat it. They want to sell the vermicompost and the liquid. You can’t have your nutrients and other good things in two places at once. So if you leach something out, one may benefit and the other is going to suffer. Personally I don’t think it’s a very good way to go. [One might] believe the reports on what “earthworm tea” does to plant growth, [but] I’ve not seen any good scientific substantiation of it. In fact, [if there was evidence] that would support plant growth regulators, because they are water-soluble and they might come out in solution. One of
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my colleagues in Australia, John Buckerfield, did pretty extensive trials and in fact, it didn’t work at all. So I don’t know. I still have an open mind about that. CC: Do you have any feelings about the use of compost tea as a foliar? CAE: Well, there’s no scientific support for it whatsoever. CC: It’s all anecdotal? CAE: Yes, it’s all anecdotal. I’ve never seen any scientific support for the use of liquids. However, we are making water extracts and looking at what they do as part of the NSF grant, but that’s only a minor part of it. It’s bad enough trying to prove the effects in the parent solid materials without sort of diverting into something entirely different. That may be a little niche market or something for earthworm tea, but I don’t honestly believe it’s much of a market because, in fact it’s the other things that vermicompost has which creates the benefits, not just the liquid. It’s the soil structure, the water holding capacity, the retention, drainage, pathogen control and many other things. We’ve even got one student who’s found effects on mycorrhizal activity. So it’s not the liquid that comes out which has all the good effects. I think this a diversion which I don’t want to follow myself. If people want to do it, they can go and do the research themselves. The other thing is, we’re wrestling enough with what are the quality factors of compost and vermicompost. Where do you go if you’ve got a liquid? You can claim anything and say anything. How do prove it or disprove it? That’s what seems to be the problem to me. Those who want to do it can do it, but I’m personally not going to get involved.
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CC: One of your colleagues, Dr. James Metzger of the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science at the Ohio State University, spoke at a conference last year on “Utilization of Vermicomposts as Ornamental and Vegetable Growth Media.” He found that a greenhouse grower could produce four crop cycles of marigolds with 10% vermicompost in the same time as it would take to grow 3 crop cycles of marigolds without vermicompost. In other words, a grower who could reduce his time and labor costs would be saving substantially by using vermicompost. Additionally, he reported that with the use of vermicompost, the “elements of healthy root and leaf systems, [as well as] faster growth rates are all of economic value to the greenhouse grower.” And Dr. Scott Subler, another of your colleagues, is pursuing a commercial interest in producing and marketing vermicompost in the Pacific Northwest. Clearly, your own enthusiasm for the use of vermicompost is being matched, if not exceeded, by your associates, and the commercial potential for this material is raising eyebrows. Do you think the discoveries being made of the benefits of vermicompost may revolutionize horticultural or agricultural practices? Are we standing at the edge of a new era in agricultural science? CAE: I can’t speak for my colleagues, but all I can point out is that Dr. Metzger has a distinguished chair in horticulture. What it was formed for was to look at new media for plant growth. We got him involved about two years or so ago. He came and listened to us and said, “That sounds interesting.” And so, all we did was give him a couple of sources of vermicompost and suggested that he conduct some trials. He had a graduate student who did them. Later, both of them came back with great enthusiasm. They said, “We can’t believe the results we’re getting.” It was from there we linked up with them. The amazing thing is with a broad range of
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crops how similar the results are. You’d think there’d be much more variation. That’s one of the things we just don’t know the answer to. With the three or four vermicomposts we’ve tested here we get the same effect with a range of crops. You get maximum growth improvement somewhere in the lower levels of substitution of vermicompost, not with 100%. Maybe it involves some adverse factors—it could be ammonia, salts, or whatever, or other adverse materials in the 100% which get diluted down—but we don’t know if it’s a positive or negative effect, why the 100% doesn’t do as well. There are many possible explanations. But I can’t speak for them [associates at OSU]. In terms of Scott Subler, his actions speak for themselves. He’s been with me seven years. He’s been working on vermicompost for two years. Suddenly, last autumn, he came and said, “I’m starting a commercial operation.” He must have convinced himself that it would be a worthwhile effort. He’s still functioning in two capacities. He still participates partly on our research. His own business he does by himself. I don’t have any input into it. CC: If the truth of what vermicompost does as a horticultural medium gets out, do you think we’ll be standing at the point in time in the future where, perhaps, the demand exceeds the supply? CAE: It’s always feasible. It must be validated thoroughly, scientifically. The production has got to be managed well; it goes back to your earlier question. It’s got to be produced cheaply enough. For whatever reason, people seem to be paying a lot of money for it. We’ve had offers from Japanese people through diverse routes—they’re willing to pick it up and transport to Japan for about $300 a ton. You have to take off those [prices] the costs of producing the fancy bags and the marketing and all the rest of it. That’s the top potential.
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My own guess is that there should be a pretty [good] niche market out there for people at somewhere between $100 and $300 a ton. But think how that compares with the product of [American Resource Recovery’s] Mario Travalini—he has a beautiful vermicompost—in fact, he shipped us 1200 lbs. this week that we’re doing trials on. And he’s only getting about $40 a ton or something on this order. [Ed. note: This information has been confirmed and approved by Mario Travalini.] We have done some analyses on it. It’s a little low on nutrients, but that’s not the issue, unless you’re going for the organic market, you can always top the nutrients up; it’s really the other properties which are important. CC: Well, the fact that his [Mario Travalini’s] vermicompost is processed outdoors in windrows, you suspect some leaching may be involved there too? CAE: CSIRO conducted a survey of vermicompost in Australia sometime during the last ten years. They looked at about nine or ten commercial vermicomposts produced in windrows. And no matter what the parent material, they found they were all deficient in nutrients. Now that goes diametrically against our reactor experience. We’ve found that all the materials that were produced in reactors have had a surplus of nutrients. So it’s just a question of time. Windrows seem to take anywhere from six to eighteen months, whereas we can usually get waste through a reactor in hopefully thirty and up to a maximum of sixty days. And there’s no leaching either, because you don’t get any water passing through. That’s the problem. But I don’t think that’s critical, necessarily, because again you can always top up the nutrients, if that’s the issue, unless you’re going for an organic market.
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CC: Interest in vermiculture is worldwide. You have spoken extensively throughout Australia, for example, addressing earthworm growers there during a time when its popularity seemed to be at its peak. Your many international consultancies have taken you all over the world. Can you comment upon some of the more significant, interesting or unusual work being done in places like Australia, India, Europe or other places? Are they any reasons why vermiculture makes better sense in regions of the world other than our own, due to economic factors, climate, earthworm availability, technology, or differing cultural factors? CAE: There are one or two [reasons]. First of all, because of mostly tropical climates, you can use the more tropical species of earthworms. There are two or three of those out there, which are just as good if not better [than earthworms used in non-tropical climates]. So they have a greater choice of species. And, secondly, labor is much cheaper. They could go to relatively labor-intensive systems and make them work. A system in India seems to be working extremely well. Australia is another question. That’s a story all by itself. When I was there a year or two ago, they had a thousand members in the Australian Worm Growers Association. I never spoke to less than 150 people. It was very, very popular. But there was a reported scam operation that did a lot of harm to that. They gave the whole thing a bad name. They probably have over about 200 or 250 members now. But that’s one of your later questions. India is going very well. It seems to be expanding. The one I haven’t visited, to which Mary Appelhof has been and other people seem to think where there is an awful lot going on, is Cuba. And I’m supposed to go to China this week, but I’ve postponed it for a month. I’ve had two Chinese professors. And they both say there’s an enormous amount of vermiculture that goes on in China. But in China and to some extent a bit in Cuba, they
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also have other outlets. Some of them are actually using the worms as protein for animals, which is where we started from. So it’s not just the vermicompost with them. And of course they also have pharmaceutical outlets for them. I don’t know whether they work or not, but there were two people in Vigo [Spain, site of ISEE 6 in September 1998] who gave papers on the pharmaceutical use of earthworms. CC: Is there anyone doing work with earthworms and cosmetics? Is that the French? CAE: Yes, I’ve heard some rumor of that. But I don’t know any chapter and verse. But that seems to be happening to some extent. There was a big vermiculture industry in Italy. It wasn’t precisely a scam, but it was tending that way. They were getting people to process it, boxing it in pretty boxes and selling it at a high price. These little boxes that you can sprinkle on your domestic household plants—they’re fine—and I think they may even work. But there’s a limited market there. You can’t go on to a large-scale development of an industry with little boxes you sprinkle on your household plants. It has to be a much bigger context than that. CC: In a previous conversation we had, you mentioned that there were 600 farmers in attendance when you spoke on the role of earthworms in soil fertility just a couple years ago in North Carolina. Judging from the sheer numbers of individuals representing interest groups you have addressed, it seems that two principal groups are demonstrating the greatest interest in earthworms: farmers/agricultural interests and entrepreneurs interested in vermiculture (such as the large groups of worm farmers you addressed throughout Australia two years ago). A third interest group, those looking at vermicomposting as a waste management option, seem to occupy a distant third position, even though you have
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delivered many presentations at composting conferences such as BioCycle over the past decade. Would you agree that, at least presently, there is greater interest in soil fertility and the commercial aspects of raising earthworms than there is in the use of earthworms in organic waste management? In the future, will interest in vermicomposting be stimulated more from the need to produce a valuable soil amendment, rather than from interest to stabilize organic residues? CAE: Well, I think it’s possible, maybe even probable, but they’re quite different. Concerning soil fertility, I’d say that every farmer I’ve talked to seems to feel that earthworms are a sign of good soil. They may well be scientifically right, because it shows plenty of organic matter and good microbial activity, etc., so it’s a good index. Strangely enough, there’s an enormous interest in soil quality at the moment [by] even hard line chemists and physicists [who] include earthworms as one of the criteria for soil quality. That’s been pretty well proven and established. [As for] commercial aspects of raising earthworms—it’s been going on forever—it just moves on in much the same way, it doesn’t change. Fishbait is fishbait, you know, and that’s what it comes down to in the end of it. Most of these people who raise earthworms for fishbait, particularly during the scams, have found they couldn’t sell their worms so they went off into the vermicompost and casting business and made some money that way. CC: The forthcoming Manual of Vermicomposting that you are now editing will feature nearly two dozen chapters on various aspects of the practice of vermicomposting. Authors from Spain, the U.K., France, Australia, China, India, and the U.S. have submitted chapters on a variety of aspects of vermicomposting, ranging from various technologies in use to studies on vermicompost quality. This Manual appears to be
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a fairly comprehensive sourcebook that will summarize the state of our knowledge about vermicomposting at the end of the millennium. Can you share a few details about how this project originated and what kinds of information we might expect? It seems that the targeted audience will be broader than, say, those who might read the proceedings from ISEE 6 held last year in Spain. CAE: The reason it originated is very, very simple. It was that my telephone never stopped ringing by people who said, “I understand you’re an expert on vermiculture and vermicomposting, can you tell me how to do it?” [Laughter] So, I was spending about half my time (well, I still am) on the telephone talking to people and not getting much done. The book we did from the conference [Earthworms in Waste and Environmental Management, held in Cambridge, England 1988] answered quite a few of the questions, but that’s ten years out of date now. And so it seemed a good time to do this. Then I talked to Jerry Goldstein at BioCycle, and he said what a good idea it was. It will be a companion volume to the composting books they sell. So we set up an arrangement to do it. Like all these edited volumes, it’s taking longer than you expect, because some people come up with their contributions very quickly and some people take a long time. The situation we’re in now [is that] we’ve got it all here. If everything goes well in the next two or three weeks, I hope to get it off to Jerry by the middle of June. The information is broad. It covers every aspect I can think of, that needs addressing. It covers what’s happening in a lot of countries. We’ve got chapters on Japan, China, Mexico, India, England, Spain—it’s got quite a range of different countries. That may be a help too. One I haven’t done, and I guess that’s my personal problem in not having made the effort, is Cuba. I think we should have a chapter on Cuba and I haven’t got one yet. But that’s too late, really, now to bother about that. But
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it will reach a broad audience and be very useful, I think. It’ll take a big weight off the problems I face. CC: Is there anything coming in from South America? CAE: Yes, I keep getting these queries that come in from people. There’s one man in Brazil who’s producing enormous amounts of worms. He seems to be selling worms in the United States successfully too. He can sell them for about $2 a pound, including transport, which certainly undercuts most of the people who are selling them in the U.S. Yes, there are activities there. They come and they go. But no chapter [in the Manual of Vermicomposting] because I haven’t identified the right person. Mexico was the nearest to South America. CC: You continue to carry on a vigorous schedule of speaking and consulting all over the world. One event in the U.S. to which we might look forward is one you are planning along with Mary Appelhof, the Vermillennium, tentatively scheduled for September 2000 in Michigan, a 20th anniversary commemoration of the Workshop she organized in 1980. What is being planned for this occasion and are there other things on the horizon we might anticipate? CAE: What my idea is, and I think Mary is going along with it, is to have this conference in two phases. First, we’d have a two or three-day practical session when people who want to learn all the practical details of vermicomposting would attend—the worm growers, in other words. And hopefully, they would stay on for the second part which would be more scientific. After two or three days training they might be in a stronger position to appreciate what the scientists are going to say. Now what’s going to be in the scientific content, I don’t know. But one of the thoughts I had was that maybe some of those people writing chapters for the Manual might be able to
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give talks in the scientific session, plus maybe a few others. [Ed. note: The attendance at the Stockton CA workshop in March, 1999 led Dr. Edwards and Mary Appelhof to consider the great attendance they might have at the upcoming Vermillennium.] At the original meeting she had in Kalamazoo, I think we had about 50 people there, or something, at most. [These were] the early days—when most of the attendees were scientists. You know what you got at your own meeting in Stockton—140 people. And she was planning for [just] 150 at this enormous great meeting! So we have had to do some re-thinking. Mary still wants to do it in Kalamazoo, but she may even have to re-think that. When we had the conference in Cambridge, England, we had nearly 400 people then, and that was in 1984. Something like this, you could easily expect four or five hundred, I would think. That would be my guess, if it were well organized. That’s still a bit in the air. The aim of it is to do two complementary things which may bring the worm growers into the scientific stream a bit more. That’s my aim anyway. CC: Is there going to be an ISEE 7? CAE: Yes, it’s going to be in Wales. They’re held every three years, so it’ll be in 2001. It looks like they’ve got pretty good facilities there. CC: In some interviews you’ve had with the media you’ve lamented that unscrupulous worm scams have undermined the legitimacy of a nascent earthworm industry, both here and abroad. Who is affected most as a result of these charlatans’ activities: individuals who were bilked of their investment dollars or the active worm workers who are seeking to increase the prestige and legitimacy of vermicomposting?
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CAE: Well, we’re all affected, is the answer to that. My sorrow is the people who ring me up. And they’re usually old retired people who have a little bit of capital—5, 10 15 thousand—and think, “What a wonderful way to have a hobby which will make some money.” So they fall for all the ads these people put out—they’re going to get all these sums of money suggested. And so they get badly hurt. Most of them get little recompense. But it’s also that every time we talk about it, people say, “Oh, we’ve heard about these scams.” And so the scientific legitimacy goes down the tube as well. I don’t think it’s one or the other. We’ve got a legitimate scientific aim, trying to prove a system. If it gets a bad name through these people, you’re never going to prove it. It’s wide open to claims which are not true. I know some who claim, “You just put a little bed in your backyard and you can produce 20 pounds of worms a day.” It’s incredible what they claim. CC: Thank you for taking the time to share this information. In closing, what, in your opinion, will be the principal areas of research and development in the future that will enlarge the status of vermicomposting to the point where, we hope, it will someday become a household word? CAE: I think the whole thing is validation of the system. It’s validation of the various systems including the reactor and wedge systems, and things like this, to show that they work. Ninety-five percent of vermiculturalists still use windrows, no matter what you do. Personally, I’m very prejudiced against windrows because of the loss [of nutrients] and time, and everything else. That’s developed over the years. And I think there are many other ways to go—there’s the reactor, there’s wedges, there’s various other things which keep cropping up. I hope that systems will be developed and improved—commercial systems. The things we are trying to do now,
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which is growth trials, are really the second thing. You’ve got to validate the product before anyone’s going to buy it. Hopefully, by another year, we should have enough published data to make that reasonable. That includes a human pathogen study, which is still not published. In fact, I’ve got a pile of data from a group down in Florida we’re waiting to analyze with some very good pathogen data. The other is the economic and marketing end. You’ve got to get the message across—the better quality the product, the better price you can get for it. And standardizing the product. That’s the one we keep fighting, you know, we fought at your meeting. In all, the systems have to be managed. You’ve got to get people who are really experienced and can manage. Those people are not too common. What is really needed is a combination of a scientist such as Scott [Subler] and somebody who is a good business manager who can work side by side. I think that’s what’s going to make it fly. Then there’s the need for enough capital, because you can’t do these things cheaply. That’s what it comes down to, if you’re going to go for scale. Somebody’s got to be convinced that vermicomposting has enormous economic potential and who is willing to risk two or three million dollars. Then it’ll go, if it’s well managed. But starting when you’re always looking over your shoulder, “Am I going to go broke tomorrow?” is not a good way to go. And that’s been the problem.
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Dr. Scott Subler Pacific Garden Company
Dr. Subler is President of The Pacific Garden Company in Ferndale, WA, and Millheim, PA. He also maintains an appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. He spent the
past 7 years working at the OSU Soil Ecology Laboratory. Dr. Subler earned his Ph.D degree in Agricultural Ecology from Penn State University in 1993. At Ohio State, he directed a number of federally funded research projects concerned with agricultural nutrient management, earthworm ecology, and vermicomposting. He has published widely on these topics in scientific journals, books, and magazines, and has shared his knowledge through numerous formal presentations for a variety of national and international audiences including academics, government regulators, industry leaders, farmers, horticulturists, and gardeners. As President of Pacific Garden Co., Dr. Subler spends much of his time educating the public about the extraordinary value of earthworm castings for growing healthy plants, and about the importance of the sustainable use of organic resources. This interview appeared in two editions of Casting Call, in October 1999 and December 1999. Casting Call: I guess the most intriguing question concerns your departure from Ohio State University for a new career in marketing earthworm castings. But before we get into that,
Chapter Eleven
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perhaps you can set the stage a bit. What kind of vermicomposting research were you involved with at OSU? (Length of time there, what brought you there, dollar funding, types of research projects, etc.)? Dr. Scott Subler: After finishing my PhD at Penn State in 1992 in ecology (I studied nutrient cycling in agro-forestry systems in the Brazilian Amazon), one of the things I focused on was how to keep intensive horticultural agro-forestry systems going in extremely impoverished soil. I got a real appreciation for the importance of organic matter and soil ecology—all the biological things that were happening in the soil—for maintaining nutrients and making them available to plants. That really was the key for the whole system down there. [So, very] early on my dissertation was on an emphasis of soil organic matter and its importance in growing plants and its function within an agro-ecosystem, or even a natural eco-system. That was the background. I came to Ohio State as a Post-Doc to work on a project that was looking at nutrient cycling in conventional Midwestern Ag systems. So basically [I was] going from really interesting tropical agro-forestry systems to…[laughter] corn-soybean-corn-soybean—a real change in environment—but it was looking at a lot of the same things: What influenced the way that nutrients moved through the system. The real emphasis of this project—this was a big project funded by the USDA involving five states and lots of people—was looking on groundwater contamination with nutrients and with agricultural chemicals. What I focused on was how soil biology and in particular how earthworms influence the movement of nutrients into the subsurface and groundwater. That was working with [Dr] Clive [Edwards] along with some agricultural engineers, mostly with soil worms. The vermicomposting research came much later. We had funding from the National Science Foundation. I worked with Clive and we got some continued
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funding from USDA to support that research. And again, one of things that continued to come up was that worms played a central role in regulating the flow of nutrients to the soil. Also, how they affected the organic matter in the soil seemed to be a key part of that. And then while this was happening there was always this background noise about vermicomposting and Clive talking about things that he did back in England. Our focus was really soil worms and agricultural systems. But I think he was trying to motivate some work in the area [of earthworms.] Slowly we started to get some funding for vermicomposting research. And then Clive and I got a USDA grant to do vermicomposting research. We’ve been funded by USDA [as well as] a number of people within the industry, to varying degrees. It’s kind of hard to say that $2,000 here [from industry is equivalent to] the $140 or $220 [thousand] that you get from the government, but that coming from industry is just as significant in a lot of ways. So industry support has been there from various sources, Oregon Soil Corporation, Vermicycle Organics, and ARR has kicked in a little bit. I don’t know that we need to list names, I don’t want to forget anyone and have people mad at me, but that’s been important early on. At Ohio, the University itself and the Agricultural Research and Development Center have also contributed all sorts of resources to our research as well. Most recently we’ve gotten a National Science Foundation grant. Again, Clive is the P.I. [principal investigator] on this one, that looks both at soil worms but also at vermicomposting to some extent, looking at plant growth regulators in castings and in soils as influenced by earthworm activity. The government funding has been pretty good and we get a lot of support and direction from industry people. My own funding is around a million dollars, if you take all the grants I’m a P.I. or co-P.I. on. I’ve been at OSU about 8 years and involved in earthworm-related research almost from the very beginning.
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Specifically, in vermicomposting, [I have been involved] for maybe the last three or four years. CC: So really, there was no interest in vermicomposting that you found on your own, prior to meeting Dr Edwards. SS: No, no. I was a soil person. Worms had always been interesting to me. I was what you call a Nutrient Cycler, you know, I was an ecologist. Agro-ecosystems was my thing from the very beginning. That’s why I went to graduate school. But worms—they were always there—but it wasn’t something I focused on specifically until working in Clive’s lab. My mandate there wasn’t really to come in and work with worms. It became pretty apparent that that was a real important factor in understanding how nutrients moved in soils in these big ag-systems, just like it is in a lot of places. I guess the government agreed with us that that was important and they funded that quite well. Let me add something to that. I thought vermicomposting was silly when I started. I’m a real skeptic about things and particularly those things that sound a little but funny. You know, [I thought] composting is great. Vermicomposting…it might be okay. I didn’t know much about it. It just seemed like—maybe I was influenced by the general impression of worm farms and the sort of scammy stuff associated with it. I didn’t really think there was all that much of a difference between what was produced in vermicomposting versus what was produced in composting—because a lot of the research had showed that if you did the nutrient content analysis and some of these other analyses—they don’t look all that different. I just thought it was just another way of breaking down… you know, decomposition is decomposition is another way of going about it. And it wasn’t until we actually started working with the material—until I had firsthand experience with castings in the lab—that I turned around on that. I had to convince myself, to overcome
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my skepticism. I had to work hard at looking at all the work that we did, but it didn’t take too long. I think this happens with a lot of people. You see what the effects of worm castings are. You start to recognize that there are some pretty impressive, unique characteristics associated with them. Plants do really well with castings. And that’s kind of where I got really excited. CC: And so excited that now here’s a relatively young professor working in a prestigious position with ample funding and possibly on the threshold of some major scientific breakthroughs in research. Why would someone leave that (not all of it, but a good deal of it) to pursue an area with so many unknowns? Are you a risk-taker? SS: That’s a good point. I really haven’t left anything. I see this as just sort of a logical progression in my career reaching a state where I do have a pretty good understanding of castings—I’m kind of at the cutting edge of figuring out how they work and what they’re good for and all that good kind of scientific stuff, and [I] love doing the science… But it got really frustrating because seeing in experiment after experiment the real value that castings could have for people who grow plants [and] that gaps between exciting research results and people actually being able to use them was just frustrating because these great results weren’t going anywhere. [I began] wanting to work along with people in the industry and, you know, I think you’ve been there a while too, you see the industry, there’s lots of people sort of interested, but everyone’s standing around sort of dipping their toe in the water waiting for the other guy to jump in. After a while, frustration combined with recognizing that there may be a pretty good opportunity there, I said, “what the heck, let’s go jump in.” Yeah, I guess that makes me a risk-taker. And, in fact, after jumping in I realized that I’m certainly not the first.
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I look around now and I see that a number of other people have made a pretty serious commitment to making vermicomposting work as a waste management alternative or for production of castings or for a number of different uses. I felt [at first] like I was alone, and that may have added to the motivation, but in fact, a number of people were out there trying to swim around too. CC: But you’re the first from academia. SS: I’m the first from academia, but it’s not like there’s a whole lot of academics out there studying this stuff. It’s no huge bragging point to say that I’m one of the world’s experts on earthworm castings. There are not a whole lot of people who are weird enough to study something like that. It certainly wasn’t an overnight thing. I’m maybe what you’d call a “cautious risk-taker.” I saw the opportunity early on, going to BioCycle conferences, and talking to people, and visiting with different people growing worms and selling castings. I thought about it and thought about it, and considered it from a number of different angles and probably would still be a budding young scientist if I hadn’t started talking to people in marketing and finance about these ideas. And once I got them to work on some ideas and crunch some numbers—and when they came back grinning—that’s when I felt a lot more comfortable making the leap in trying to go into business with these concepts and opportunities. So it wasn’t just one day I got fed up and ran out, it was fairly cautious risk-taking. But for various reasons [since] I have to focus on business, I’m down to an Adjunct [Professor]. In a sense I’m contributing my services to Ohio State as a contribution to the research there, [but] I’m not getting compensated for that any more. But I still maintain an appointment there, if that’s what you mean.
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CC: Tell us about your project in Ferndale, Washington. You’ve built a Rothamsted-style continuous flow reactor of about the same dimensions as the Oregon Soil Corporation reactor in Portland, Oregon. What is the general plan for this system, and how did you get started? SS: The plans for this type of reactor come from England. Clive sort of carried them over with him. We had a proposal to USDA to set up a pilot project where we were going to build a reactor system and do some work with it. That’s actually happening right now at Ohio State. This goes back to the first question too. Things happen kind of slowly in the research world. Not just the translation of the research results to the practical application, but sometimes things like just doing research on a decent scale in a pilot reactor can be excruciatingly slow because you’ve got to deal with all the bureaucracy. So there was a point at which we got set up and got the funding to build a reactor at Ohio State and it was kind of lagging along and I started joking with graduate students, “I’d have my own up and running if I quit now long before we get this thing going.” And one thing led to another, and the timing was right. I was out of there. We went to Ferndale and pretty quickly set up a [reactor]. It’s similar in fundamental design, somewhat modified. I think the basic technology is real straightforward. There’s no real “secret” to building something like this. This is an aside: I sometimes get a little disappointed when it’s presented as if there’s some kind of magic bullet technology that’s going to revolutionize the vermiculture industry when there are lots of ways to grow worms perfectly well and it kind of depends on the style and the experience of the person who’s going to do it. For indoor systems I think the elevated bed has a lot of potential, and that’s what we went with first, just because that’s the one that I was most familiar with. So we put it together. The philosophy was that rather than trying to custom design
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everything, we tried to find “off the shelf” parts. So it was just a matter of ordering and bolting together rather than re-designing the wheel. We put that up and we’ve been running it through the learning curve for the past four or five months now. We’re producing castings from separated solids from a dairy farm in Whatcom County and we’ll be marketing the castings.
CC: Mechanized systems are undoubtedly costly. SS: It’s like any industry. You’re not going to get in and make a living if you’re putting in five or ten thousand
dollars. If you want to make some money and you’ve got $60,000, go get an auto-lube franchise--because you’re sure to make some money that way. It won’t be a tremendous amount, but at least you’re assured of making money. And it’s the same thing with this. These indoor systems and their management are not cheap. You’ve got to make a substantial investment in the equipment. And then our attitude is, if you’re making X amount of investment in the equipment you have to make nearly ten times that in the marketing effort if you’re going to sell anything and make a profit at it. I think that people, very often, get all turned on by the technology and they say, “Hey, I can do that.” They come up with enough money to build this stuff. Kind of like the Field of Dreams, you know, “if you build it they will come.” The trick is to sell it, not to make it. CC: About how long did the construction take?
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SS: It took us a few months to put together. Next time around we could probably do it, ordering parts and having it all done in about a month. The only custom built part was the feeder that runs on top of the system. That ends up being designed a lot like the guts of a manure spreader. I’ve seen a number of people who have all built these kinds of things independently and they all look pretty much the same. It’s not like someone has some experience putting equipment together and understanding how to move these types of materials. Basically the dairy industry or any industry that moves manure, all the gizmos and gadgets are pretty well there. CC: Even with the understanding that one size doesn’t fit all, some people get the idea that they could pay a visit to look at a Continuous Flow Reactor, take a few pictures, perhaps make a few drawings, and go home and build a working model. Can you comment on the role that experience has to play in all this? SS: There’s definitely more to it than that. The most important thing is to understand the fundamental principles. Once you’ve done that, someone who’s good with equipment could figure it all out, but no one wants to re-invent the wheel. Like with most things, if someone’s already done it, go find out what they’ve done and get their help to do it and you’re usually way ahead. It took us three or four months to get something together because we were kind of flying blind. We weren’t really following any plans. So you sit and think and you talk to people. We considered umpteen different designs for the clean out and the breaker bar. We ended up going to the dairy store and saying, “Here, let’s do this.” They came in and in two days put the equipment in. The next time around, it won’t be a problem. Now I know what to do. What we have in Ferndale is really more of a pilot project. We have a
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single lane about 120 feet by 8 feet. But the equipment that we’re using is suitable for two lanes, 250 feet long. It’s simply a matter of expanding the size and the rest of the equipment we’re using is adequate for that kind of thing. I think that if we were going to do a better job of integrating with a dairy farm, you would need a minimum of two lanes, 200-250 feet long to even put a dent in the kind of manure they produce. We were purposely building so that next time around if we scale up we don’t have to go through another round of figuring out what materials to use. That’s why we consider what we have just a pilot project. CC: How are things different now? What kinds of things are you learning? SS: When you’re an academic you get up in front of people and you can go up and down on what an authority and expert you are on this and this and how many different systems you’ve seen. But having never really done it yourself, there’s always the feeling that you’re kind of getting away with something. [Now] I’m doing it myself. I’ve committed my own resources to it. It’s a real different thing when your butt’s on the line. And when you’ve got to worry about it day in and day out. There’s a learning curve there, but fortunately right now, I’m working with some real good people. We’ve been able to go through problems and overcome them. The other thing that sort of gets to me is this whole sort of “engineering model” for vermiculture. Maybe for composting it works, but even for composting people recognize that there’s a lot of little factors you have to weigh and balance and some people are just better at composting than others. With vermiculture it’s like farming. It’s like having a dairy farm. You know, you’re caring for animals and it’s complicated. You can’t just plug in a formula and measure a temperature and say, “Okay, all done. I’m going home now.”
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Somebody has to be thinking about these worms all the time. Somebody has to be caring for the worms. You can have the greatest technology in the world, but unless you’ve got a manager who has some talent at it, it’s a bust. And I think that’s what happens with a lot of people too. The idea that you can buy a system and you can give it to them and there will be no problems is also ridiculous. Go talk to a dairy person. [If you asked them,] “Do they ever have any problems with their operation?” They’ll laugh at you. Every day is a new problem and every day involves working on a solution to get over it. Cows get sick, you’ve got too many of this and too much of that, you’ve got a barn to build… I think it’s the same way with culturing worms. It’s livestock. To finish the first thought, there’s no technological magic bullet. The most important part of any vermicomposting system is the manager, by far. Find someone who knows worms and then work around that. CC: At a Vermicomposting Workshop held in Portland in February 1999, you discussed some research being done at Ohio State University using “mini reactors.” You stated, “I can heat up any worm bin.” It seems that overloading a system is common as well as troublesome. But that leads one to wonder if larger systems have fewer problems than small-scale worm bins. Does having a larger surface area reduce the tendency to overheat a vermicomposting system, or will strict adherence to the rule of applying only one inch of fresh feedstock per day work well for a system of any size? SS: The first thing about that is, as you go to larger systems you’re actually getting a lower surface-to-volume ratio. You’re reducing your capacity to have surfaces to dissipate heat. When you’ve got a small box you’ve got an awful lot of “side” relative to the volume inside. When you’ve got a real big box there’s a lot of area there, but there’s a lot less “side”
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going on. One of the advantages of the elevated bed is that you’ve got a top and a bottom that’s exposed. There’s a much greater opportunity for dissipation of heat than if the bed was just sitting on the ground. So that’s one thing. I’ve managed to heat up big beds too, I’m happy to say. [Laughter] So, I’m batting a thousand on overheating systems. Fortunately, we found a way to cool it down before we lost all our worms. Again, it was because someone had common sense and the [right] equipment lying around. [My manager] sort of saved the day. I had to manage this long distance. Part of the problem is that you watch the food disappear on the top and you think that the worms are all done eating it. And they may be all done eating it, but just because they’ve eaten it and passed it through their bodies, doesn’t mean that material still doesn’t have some energy and heat left in it. So, in fact, they eat it, they mix it up and then the microorganisms can really go to town. So just because they’ve passed the food or eaten all the food, doesn’t mean that food doesn’t have a lot of heat left in it. And what we’ve seen in the lab and I think that this is what happened to us in the big bed as well, is that you start to accumulate layer upon layer of this material that’s not fully stabilized, yet the temperature never really goes too high. [Then] just one day, for whatever reason, you’ve got enough stuff there, and it just starts to get hot. Once you pass some threshold, then the heat-producing organisms all of a sudden like it and start making more heat and it starts to snowball. All of a sudden your temperature wants to climb real fast. So what I’m saying is that earthworm castings, if they’re fresh, can be unstable. It takes time. If you harvested worm castings one week after they’ve been eaten, my guess is that there’s still a fair amount of heat that can come out. There’s no law that says that simply because a worm has eaten something that it is going to be completely stabilized. We know that microbial activity increases at the tail end. And if you think about what that means, that means that if they’re
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more active, they’re metabolizing more labile carbon and likely producing a lot of heat. But it’s not intuitive. You see them eat it, and say, “oh they’re done, I’m going to feed them more.” It is partially stabilized. A lot of the heat does disappear as they metabolize what they can in the gut. You can build up layers of castings that still have a little bit of heat and then once you get to a certain temperature, you kind of click into those organisms that like it warm, and that help to produce more heat. You get right to the edge of thermophilic. And the nice thing about a large bed is that it does have a pretty good heat capacity. So if it’s got a lot of moisture and heat capacity it can take a lot of heat off the surface layer before the temperature of the whole thing goes up. But once you saturate that heat capacity, it’ll all start to heat. You can get a bed pretty hot. The rule of thumb [an inch of feedstock per day] may work for most materials. We kind of work from that too, most of the time. It depends on whether you’re giving material that’s already been pre-heated or whether you’re getting fresh stuff that is super high in readily available carbon. Those will respond very differently. The first material has already gone through a heating so a lot of that carbon is already gone and turned into microorganisms. Worms like that better probably anyway. And it’s got less energy that will heat in the bed. But if you’re putting in fresh stuff and it’s got a lot of available carbon, it will heat up. You develop your own rules of thumb for whatever material you’re using. You ought to have a thermometer somewhere because that ends up being pretty critical. We go through and poke the beds. We have thermocouples sometimes. We had ‘em all over the place in the lab. You get to the point where you can sort of stick your finger in and feel where you are. There’s nothing like having a thermometer there so you can walk by and see where the temperatures are. It doesn’t have to be some kind of NASA control system. You just got to have a way of reading that temperature and watching it. You can
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reach a point where if it starts to get hot, you need to do something about it. That can be a real problem if you build a system that’s supposed to take a certain amount of waste and there’s no alternative place for that waste to flow. I think people run into this problem a lot. Because, if you get to the point where you’re overfeeding the worms and you start to build heat, the easiest thing to do, if you recognize that happening is that you just don’t feed them for a little while. They go back and re-eat it, or they just stop eating and the heat dissipates. Everything’s cool again. But if you’ve got this waste stream coming at you and you don’t have some other things to do with it, and in the meanwhile you keep throwing it on hoping that it won’t hurt it when, you’re out of luck. CC: So how did you cool down the worm bed? SS: We were able to cool the bed down just with some fairly straightforward ventilation. Putting fans in the right place and running them the right way is a good way of cooling those beds down. Having two surfaces, a top and a bottom, makes it a lot easier to cool that kind of a bed down than something that is sitting on a floor or in a bin. There’s a guy at Ohio State, Dave McCartney, who’s messed with pushing and pulling [airflows] and all sorts of different systems. I think that, at least as an insurance policy, having a fan nearby or some ability to control the airflow is a good idea. It saved our beds. You get a big bed, you make a big investment in worms. Just saving the worms is a pretty critical thing. If you lose the worms you’re back to the beginning. You’ve got to get more worms and it takes two or three months to get the populations up to where they’re cranking. We’ve also tried just dousing the beds with water. We didn’t do this on our big bed. This was research that we did [at Ohio State]. We tried one thing and then another thing. You get it wet and the
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temperature goes down but all that extra moisture causes a lot of reaction. It either starts to go anaerobic or as soon as the moisture level goes down, it starts to heat up again. It’s a temporary fix. It causes more problems than it solves. CC: While we’re on the subject, tell us your beliefs about loading rates. You read the interview with Dr. Edwards in the last two issues of Casting Call. At what rates do earthworms consume feedstocks? SS: I’m going to fall back to the site specific, feedstock specific. Even if you’ve got a farm that produces separated solids, a really consistent product, if those solids are fresh, or if those solids sit in a pile for a week, or sit in a pile for two weeks, it makes a huge difference on how quickly the worms eat it and how quickly you can pass the material through. Like we were talking about before, I don’t think it’s how much they can eat, I think the heat capacity and the energetics of the system are more of a limiting factor than what the worms will eat. CC: So, people are always bringing up this question, “How much do earthworms consume daily?” What’s the range that you give—I know there are lab studies on this, but in the field—is it half their weight, is it their body weight, is it one-and-a-half times their weight? SS: I think those rules of thumb are okay in general, but then you just have to try it on your own material. CC: We’re going back to the idea of the Solid Waste Manager who’s got this constant flow. What do we tell him? He says, “I’ve got X tons coming in every day.” And he gives you the job of constructing a system that will handle that capacity.
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SS: You have to go based on the experience of what has been done with a similar type of material. I don’t think a general rule of thumb works. Like I said, it’s more a matter of energetics. You could have really good, almost completely stabilized compost, as good as compost gets, and feed that to worms. Having nothing else to eat, they may go through and eat it. They may not grow very well on it. But heck, you can pass an awful lot of that stuff through a system, right? Because it’s already done. But if you have fresh material, you’re going to have to slow down. They may eat it better and they may grow. You know, heat capacity and the latent heat in the material going through—these are sort of energetic principles that haven’t really been well worked out for vermicomposting systems. The engineers for composting have gone up and down and there’s a million different models to describe this, yet for vermicomposting nobody’s really gotten to the point where we’ve looked at energetics very closely. I think that it’s become not just a worm consumption issue but an overall energetic issue. I’m hedging on the answer there. My experience is that I’m optimistic that some of the figures that have been quoted as general rules of thumb might not be that far off. I was somewhat pessimistic to start, but I’m very pleased with what’s happening in our reactor. So I’m cautiously optimistic. If you have 2 lbs. of worms per square foot in a 1,000 square foot reactor, applying one ton per day would be 365 tons per year. It looks to me as we’ll be able to achieve that. We could get about half that in castings. What’s happening now is that the worms are getting ahead of us. I can see doing better than that, maybe considerably better. We might be able to get up to [processing] a thousand tons a year if we use pre-composted material in our bed. The degree of pre-composting is going to be the biggest factor in how fast we can put that through the bed. Nothing else. How much of that energy you get out before putting it into the bed
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is as big a factor as almost anything else, assuming that your worm populations are roughly equal. So I don’t want to say that you can’t do a thousand tons—I haven’t seen it yet—but I think the qualification there is that [in referring to the interview with Dr. Edwards in June ’99 and Aug. ’99 Casting Call] that’s an optimum—I think the term perfectly managed system. Boy, I can’t do that [laughter]. I don’t know anyone who can do that. Perfectly managed is a tough thing to do. Figure you’ve got to cut that in half, right off the bat. Start up time, there are problems, you’ve got to slow down for this, you’ve got summer, you’ve got winter, you’ve got heating, you’ve got sour beds…Those kinds of things will happen. So you have to cut it in half, at least. But I’ve got my fingers crossed. I’m pretty pleased with the rates now. CC: Are you making charts of the inflows and keeping records of what you’re doing at Ferndale? SS: Well, we’re documenting it. I’d hate to go so far as to say I’ve had time to make any charts yet. Yes, I’m a scientist. I can’t help myself. And I’m not there all the time so I keep doubly sure that we keep track of what we’re adding and we keep track of what we pull out. We measure by volume because of the bins we use. It’s about time to measure the worm population again. We’re way, way over what we had going in. You’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it in little systems, once you get over the hump with these guys, they just grow so darn fast you don’t know what to do with them. Frankly, our problem is too many worms. They’re falling out and we’re not putting them back in. We’re starting other beds with the worms we screen out. CC: So are you getting juvenile worms from the bottom? Do you have a 2-1/2 ft. depth and the worms are going all the way to the bottom?
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SS: We’re getting a mix of worms—we get adults from the bottom. What happened was that I was impatient about seeing how the breaker bar works. I did that two times more than I should have. The worm population got ahead of our ability to feed and also our material handling wasn’t completely worked out so we could have the material ready fast enough. It just took us by surprise how quickly these guys grew. So we ended up having not a very deep layer—we were barely two feet. I’m guessing we had two or three pounds of worms per square foot easily. And not being able to feed them every day or every other day, they go up eat the
food, there’s no more food left. They go down and look around, wiggle around, and we didn’t need a breaker bar at that point. There were so many worms they were causing the stuff to fall through
on its own. Recently we kind of got ahead of it now where we can keep them up better. It’s funny, because there are things that have to do with temperature and moisture preferences of worms that are different for the babies and the adults. And if you read the literature, it’s all right there, but you never really think about that little detail as mattering, but you definitely can get stratification of different demographics of the populations in your beds. The adults aren’t in the rapid growth phase like the little guys are. The little guys seem to prefer it a little bit warmer. You can find tons of those up, even if it’s kind of warm, they’ll be up near the surface, munching all the fresh material. The bigger guys, I think, are
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more interested in reproducing. They tend to be down in the slightly cooler areas. We see them go toward the sides, if it’s a little bit warm in the middle of the bed. Our sides are fiberglass and it’s pretty thin walled. So there’s heat dissipation out the side. I think the reason they congregate at the side at times is because it’s cooler there. And they go down to the bottom unless there’s a compelling reason for them to be up top. We’ve been doing things with controlling both temperature and moisture where, we’re pretty good at keeping everybody up on top. But we were struggling to get enough material in the bed because they were just eating things up. There were just too many worms. CC: What about dead earthworms in castings? Let’s say you harvested castings from the bottom of your reactor and put them aside. And within your castings there were a considerable number of earthworms, and you put that material aside to cure, and those worms continued to process that material until there was nothing left, and then they died, contributing their bodies to the end product. Would that end product containing a high number of deceased earthworms be of any more or less value than your harvested fresh product? SS: It depends on what you are going to use it for. I don’t really know if it’ll have more or less value, but I think it will be different. I think they’ll continue to work that stuff. And very often with a lot of these manure-based materials, there are a lot of little bitty plant fibers that the worms will either eat around, or even if they eat it and excrete it, they’re still there. Those things are lignified, it takes a little bit longer for it to breakdown. If you let the worms work on that stuff for six months in the pile and if you’ve got a lot of worms there and they’re all starving, they’ll eat that stuff over and over again if they have to. There’s this stuff about worms never going back and eating their castings again. I’ve seen it too
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many times on a lab bench, that they’ll eat what they have to eat until there’s nothing left and they’ll still try to get something out of it. I think it’ll be quite different. In some cases it may be better for some things. But the presence of dead worms isn’t going to hurt anything. If they decompose and stabilize as well, that’s just a little bit more nitrogen. Upping the nutrient content on this stuff, I don’t know whether that is a huge factor in what I perceive as being the real value of castings. Having a little bit of nutrients, which they do have, is a good thing. And some of them are quite available and the others become available at a decent rate. But I think it’s what they do for the microbiology in the soil itself once they’re added that’s even more important in what they introduce to the soil as beneficial microorganisms or as other substances that have plant growth regulating effects. CC: I thought it interesting what you said about earthworms re-ingesting their castings. Mary Appelhof, in the glossary of the second edition of Worms Eat My Garbage has a definition of vermicast taken from John Buckerfield of Australia that defines it as material ingested and reingested by earthworms. Yet, there was a journal article some time ago saying that earthworms were not copraphagic, i.e., they don’t consume their own castings. But it’s been your experience that they do. SS: Well it’s not an absolute, let’s put it that way. [Just because] you wrap it in a big scientific word, it doesn’t mean it always happens. It may be that they’re eating biosolids and what they eat has a lot of microbial activity [that] leads to some biochemical changes [and if] they don’t like what they have in their poop anymore, they may not eat it. But in the lab I’ve seen them eat it again and again and again until there’s nothing left and then they die. They pass it quickly. They get what they can out of it the first time and then they go for some more fresh stuff because they’re able to assimilate
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more per gulp or per mouthful on the fresh material. But if there’s no more fresh material around, they’ve got to go back to wherever they can get food or nutrition, and so they go back to the stuff they’ve ingested before. And, in fact, by ingesting it and mixing it and allowing microbial activity, the second time around they can get stuff out of it they couldn’t get out of it the first time around. In the field we think that they do this quite a bit. Soil dwelling worms will eat soil and eat soil and mix it around and that mixes more and more stuff in and liberates more and more carbon… It’s almost as if they sort of cause it to compost for themselves so that they can get nutrition out of it over time of materials that they can hardly get anything out of the first time around. So, no, I think it’s quite common that they’ll re-ingest material if that’s all they’ve got available to them. CC: The long-awaited Manual of Vermicomposting to be edited by Dr. Edwards and it published by BioCycle will contain a number of chapters you have contributed. Can you tell us about those you have written? SS: Maybe we want to downplay this one. I don’t even know what chapters I’m going to be on or not. It has been long awaited. I’m not sure which ones of those that I’ve worked on are going to be included, and which are going to published separately. There’s a couple we were planning on doing that we have decided not to do. The one that I know will be in there, or that I know has been written and submitted and discussed is the one relating to pathogens. CC: And that chapter concerns whether vermicomposting reduces pathogen levels in the final product. Is there sufficient evidence of this to satisfy labeling requirements?
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SS: I’d have to say No. There’s not really that much evidence at all. All the evidence that’s available, and this chapter kind of reviews that, both sort of scientific as well as field studies, as well as laboratory analyses coming from people who have done it (sort of in the ‘real world’), the results are fairly consistent. It seems that vermicomposting can reduce pathogens quite significantly and quite rapidly. But that’s a long cry away from being able to satisfy a regulator or someone else that it’s going to be suitable as a Process to Further Reduce Pathogens. Part of the problem is, is that all of the process standards for composting and pathogen reduction are based on risk analysis and risk analysis requires a lot of studies and a lot of information in order to say, okay, at this level it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be a risk of pathogen contamination that’s harmful. We’ve got maybe a dozen or less, well, it’s less, studies concerning pathogens and vermicomposting. Not even vermicomposting, but just reduction of pathogens in a laboratory container, as worms eat it, compared to stuff where worms don’t eat. Because of that we’re not able to define the process well enough to say, If vermicomposting occurs like this, then it’ll be good enough to reduce pathogens. All we can say is it can, it seems like there’s great potential, but we can’t define the process parameters that are necessary to ensure pathogen reduction. And that’s a problem. The fallback ends up being, if you’re using clean materials then the risk of pathogen contamination is pretty low anyhow. If you’re using materials that have already been pre-composted, that already have [undergone] the Process to Further Reduce Pathogens, then again your risk of contamination is real low and there’s probably nothing to worry about. At the very worst, if you’re using raw manures, then the guidelines you would follow, the worst you would be, is the guidelines people use for handling manure. You can buy manure at the store and take it home and throw it on your garden. Basically,
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you don’t put it on your fresh vegetables and you wash your hands after using it, and that’s kind of as far as people worry about it. So I don’t think that there’s any evidence to suggest that vermicomposting is going to make your material worse than it was going in, and the evidence suggests pretty strongly that it at least has the potential for making it a lot better and a lot safer and a lot cleaner. But there’s not enough to satisfy a regulator. If I were a regulator I don’t think I’d be satisfied with the evidence there is. Because you can’t just say, “vermicomposting.” What does that mean? Does that mean one worm in a ton of material or does it mean two pounds of worms per square foot? …consuming X amount of throughput of organic material per day. Until you can define the process like that, those vague statements like, “vermicomposting produces safe castings,” are pretty meaningless. CC: Dr. Roy Hartenstein began working on pathogen reduction in biosolids through vermicomposting at SUNY in Syracuse in the 1970s. But it seems that not much has been done in this area since then. SS: It was biosolids and the process. As a part of that project there was some pathogen work that was done, but that wasn’t his entire focus. It was just vermistabilization. That was National Science Foundation funding. That was some of the real early work that was taken seriously and well funded by the government. But it hasn’t gotten all that much further. It got to the point where we said, We ought to do something in the lab. Because people kept asking us. So we went back and did a study with a couple different types of manure. We spiked it with some E. coli and some Salmonella. (I’m supposed to be writing that up right now.) I’ve got that nearly written up and ready for publication in a scientific journal. At the same time, we hope to communicate some of that information to people in the industry by putting out a
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BioCycle article, or something like that. It’s all pretty good news. It appears that when worms are doing their thing properly, pathogens go down significantly. The problem in a regulatory framework is defining the process and defining when worms are doing their job properly and when they’re not. CC: So really, the long and short of it is, the process has not been defined to satisfy regulators. The only way you could satisfy requirements for safe material is to have the material analyzed in order to pass the test. SS: Either start with safe materials so you’re starting with a low risk from the very beginning or you do enough testing to satisfy someone. Either of those options are not necessarily prohibitive. The composting world is lucky because they’ve got temperature. You just stick a thermometer in it and you measure it. Temperature can’t go too far up or down with the worms. CC: Continuing with the subject of vermicompost and quality, what can be said about earthworms and heavy metal uptake in feedstocks such as biosolids? In a humorous way, Dr. Edwards repeated a story that perhaps earthworms might be responsible for taking up enough metals to the point that if you rolled them around together you might hear them clink. SS: They can bio-accumulate certain metals, but imagining them being used as some kind of metal-extracting technology, I haven’t considered that well enough to have any opinion on it. It seems like it’s a long shot. Clearly they’re not going to clink. Yes, they can absorb quite a bit, but some of these metals are pretty toxic to the worms anyway. Again, it’s a site-specific thing. They may help to bind some metals into organic material so that they become less bio-available. And
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in that sense they could be real useful in heavy metal bioremediation. On the other hand they may do some things that could release those metals and make them even more bio-available. So it just depends on the soil and the situation and the metals and that kind of stuff. CC: Your article in the July ‘98 BioCycle, ”Comparing Vermicomposts and Composts,” reported on plant growth trials comparing 13 soil treatments, including various combinations of compost, vermicompost and controls. Your final sentence evokes great hope: “We are still attempting to identify the biological mechanisms responsible for the consistent performance of this material, as well as for the unique and remarkable plant growth responses that continue to be widely observed and reported for other vermicomposts and earthworm castings.” Is the kind of evidence now available in print enough for vermicompost marketers to convince potential users of vermicompost’s benefits? What is still needed in order to stimulate greater demand for earthworm castings? SS: It’s sort of a two-part question there. The first part is, we continue to get closer to understanding how castings might be working and why they might be beneficial and why they have unique properties. It’s really a suite of mechanisms; it’s not just one thing or another. Rola [Atiyeh of Ohio State Univ.] has done some research very recently that seems to indicate that humic extracts of worm castings carry along a lot of the plant growth enhancing properties that you see when you use the raw castings, sort of the whole castings themselves. So it indicates that there do appear to be chemical substances in the worm castings that have some plant growth regulator effect. That was what the grant was designed to explore. There’s some evidence that that may be important, because some of the plant growth responses that
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are seen when you use increasing concentrations of that extract look kind of like the plant growth responses that you might see when you use sort of increased concentrations of castings into a plant growth medium. Very often there’s a modal response where you have an increase in height, or an increase in plant growth or flowering up to a point, and then that starts to reverse as it gets more and more concentrated. And that’s the kind of plant growth response you might see when you’re using a plant growth hormone or some other kind of bioactive material. That was the early evidence that led us to believe that plant growth regulators may be at least a part of the story. And the work that Rola has done recently indicates that it does seem to be part of the story. There are still the beneficial microorganisms, the nutrient availability effects… Soil ecology is wonderfully complex. There’s not one thing going on, there are hundreds of things going on. The trick ends up being trying to find the half dozen or three or two most important factors in any particular situation. CC: We invited Ron Alexander, a well-informed compost marketer who attended the Vermicomposting Workshop held in Portland in February 1999, to share his observations about where he thought vermicompost marketing needed to go. He said that vermicompost research and marketing is today, where compost marketing was about 15 years ago. He said that what is needed is more research data that can be shown to customers. Do we have enough research papers to show to potential users of castings, or are more needed? SS: I guess that’s one of the things that I’m starting to find out. From my perspective there’s plenty of scientific evidence that there’s something going on that may be of value. And that even extends to work that [Dr.] Jim Metzger [Horticulture Dept. at OSU] has done with graduate students that indicates that the economics of using worm castings in a commercial
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production setting can be favorable for a number of reasons. And this is at a pretty good price for castings. I think there’s enough evidence like that to get people’s attention. But, you know, growers are pretty conservative people. It takes an awful lot for them, if they’re even in a marginally successful production system, to get them to change that. I think the best way to get people to start to accept the value of castings is simply to convince them to try it. It’s something you can’t quantify. But it’s been my experience that 75% or 80% of the time, when you give somebody some of these materials to work with, castings of one sort or another, people come back believers. And that’s what motivates me and reconfirms that we’re on the right track here. Because the value is really there. Even if they’re skeptical, if they’ll give it a try, they won’t come back and say, “My plants are doing a little bit better,” or “it was like the MiracleGro,” they usually come back pretty excited about it. And I think that’s what carries it. So if there’s enough scientific evidence to get to people who are willing to take the risk to try it…that’s kind of where I got antsy or frustrated. What I’m trying to do now is to talk to people who actually have to grow things. I say, “Hey look, we did this and this study. This points to a real positive effect. We think it works like this. But you know your production systems better than we do. You know what’s going to be of value to you better than we do. So you try it and see whether or not you think it has some value for you.” My role is to provide some guidance as to how they might best use it. Generally it’s not a whole lot of guidance. People who know how to grow stuff know how to do that a lot better than I do. So it’s just getting in there and letting them use it. I think, fairly quickly, you get a lot of believers. The problem then is being able to come up with the goods when they ask for it again. We’ve been using some material with some of the biggest berry producers in the country in Whatcom County. They’re trying it, potato growers are trying it, and
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we’ve got it into commercial greenhouses that are excited about it. Some of these things move kind of slowly. You get a professional agronomist used to N-P-K as the paradigm, if he sees something, even if it’s positive, they don’t understand it, it still makes them a little hesitant. So having some science behind it really helps. But I think that’s the way to do it. Just give it away. Let people see for themselves. Let them decide if there’s value there or not. CC: You have first-hand experience with vermicomposts created from various parent feedstocks: pig-waste vermicompost, food waste vermicompost, and vermicomposts from cattle, cardboard, and other sources (biosolids?). From a marketing as well as scientific point of view, are you yet at the point where you can recommend a “best source” vermicompost for all treatments? Are there some species of plants that do better on vermicompost while other species are less affected? SS: The simple answer is I don’t think there’s any such thing. There are all sorts of different uses and I don’t think there’s any “one size fits all.” And I don’t think you can rank different castings from best to worst, necessarily, because that all depends on your use. Some materials are great for mulches or great for spreading on vineyards, and other materials might be better for using in seed propagation, germination, and cuttings, in a real intensive greenhouse environment. From work that we’ve done at Ohio State with Jim Metzger, even what mix you put it in, if you put it in a peat-perlite mix versus a coir-perlite mix, it might respond differently and it depends on what species you’re using. It ends up being one of these things scientists love to qualify. But it really depends on how you need to use it. I’ve seen all sorts of materials do extremely well under certain situations, and other materials do well only in other specific situations.
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Not to say that some perform, on average, better than others. The material from separated pig solids, at the time we worked with that at Ohio State, it really was a good performer. It consistently did better than other materials, indicating that there are some qualities you want to have that tend to be good in a lot of different circumstances. It’s tough to look at some castings and make any kind of real judgment, unless you’re a genius or a sorcerer or something. You can’t just look at this material and say, “Yeah, it’s good,” or “It’s not good.” And even if you look at the nutrient analysis, I think I made this point in the article, nutrient analyses don’t really give you much predictive information. If you want to look at the biological stuff, sort of the soil foodweb stuff, well, I don’t think that has anything but really vague predictive value anyway. So we can’t really test the material in any way for a specific application other than using it in that application. So the best test for whether this stuff is going to be good for something or not, is to simply to try it in that application and stop guessing. And so I don’t think that one material is going to be good for every application. Something that’s real detrimental to the compost industry is that it’s all compost. When there are really good composts and there are really crappy composts, but the impression of value comes from the lowest common denominator. I think that a lot of good composts are way under-valued simply because there are so many more crummy composts that people just have to unload. That gives the market the impression that it doesn’t have much value. But in commercial environments the economics of using compost is favorable, and even more so with worm castings. So I think what we’re gong to find is that there’s going to be all kinds of “flavors” or “varieties” of castings, each good for a particular set of applications. There may be one or two that are superior overall, but I’m not convinced that that’s going to be the case.
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CC: Let’s say that you become wildly successful in stimulating demand for vermicompost, so much so that demand exceeds supply. First, is this even a realistic projection, and second, if it is, then what might happen to fill the demand? SS: I think it would be a strategic mistake to try to get demand too far ahead of supply in a new product category like this. A lot of people don’t know much about worm castings or they may know about them but they’re not that familiar with them. If there was a lot of hype and everybody wanted them and there was no supply, I think people would then not think about them so much any more. You can develop too much without being able to deliver the goods, I think then the demand will come back down again. But, assuming that there’s enough to go out there, and people really love it and they want more and more, I think there are no real obstacles out there to lots of people getting into the business or to people who are in the business right now expanding to meet that demand. If the demand for worm castings at $1.00 a ton, it makes no sense for anybody to get into the business. If the demand is for good quality worm castings at a much better value, that would indicate that people could make a reasonable return on any kind of capital investment they wanted to put in. CC: You’re in a unique position to be marketing products, bridging the gap between university research and field application. Do your future plans include marketing the product you produce, marketing products produced by others, consulting, or some combination of these? SS: Some combination of these is already happening. The objective is to try to get the value of castings to people who can use it and who can appreciate. And to stimulate demand
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in that way. In order to accomplish that objective, I think all three of those, initially, might be necessary. Just in terms of the people that I’m working with, I think our talents might lie in the marketing, rather in the production end of things. Because I’m fortunate to be working with people who have a lot of experience in marketing to consumers as well as business-to-business marketing. And because of what I do as an educator and as a guy who gets up and talks to people over and over again, it’s really bringing information to people and educating them about how castings have been used and how they might be useful. I see that as my role, and really, if you look at that, that’s a marketing function. And that’s where the fun is for me. I can sit and talk about scientific details in a room full of scientists. And they’ll be bored and I’ll be bored. I’d rather talk to the people who are much interested in using what I have to say. So why don’t I spend my time getting in front of them and sharing what I know rather than waiting for someone else to do that. CC: There are a number of individuals who are fascinated by the reports of vermicomposting’s potential and are looking for a way to become involved. Given that such an individual possesses a certain minimum level of commitment and a desire to work with soils and plants, what course of action would you recommend? SS: Do your homework. Evaluate your commitment to what you’re about to do. Find people who are already doing it and don’t try to re-invent the wheel. I see a lot of people being real secretive about what they’re doing as if there is some astounding technological magic bullet. I think that people will be a lot better off if they talk to others who already in it. What I’ve been doing, and what I realize is that a lot of people have been around for a long time whom I can learn a lot from. That would be a part of it. The other would be to realize that
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just like any other business, it takes a serious capital investment, it takes a serious personal investment, and takes an awful lot of hard work. It goes back to the little glib statement, that if they just want to make some money on a sure thing, go buy an auto-lube franchise, and they’re bound to make a little bit of money. This is not a get-rich-quick business. There are some opportunities here, but those opportunities come with huge risks, and the only way to realize those opportunities is through extra effort. It’s not an easy way to make money--it’s a hard way to make money.
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Bruce R. Eastman Orange County, Florida Environmental Protection
Bruce R. Eastman is Assistant Manager of the Orange County Environmental Protection Division in Orlando, Florida. He is also the principal investigator in a USEPA-funded pilot project that was recently conducted to determine whether vermicomposting biosolids would achieve
pathogen destruction to meet Class ‘A’ stabilization requirements. In our interview, Mr. Eastman answered questions about biosolids processing, how he became aware of the possibilities of vermicomposting this material, and the technology used in his research. Mr. Eastman also commented about earthworms and heavy metal uptake, the use of continuous flow reactor technology, the necessity for pre-composting, viability of weed seeds, the coming “revolution” in biosolids processing, the potential dangers involved in killing earthworms, and marketing the process and product. This interview appeared in the February 2000 and April 2000 issues of Casting Call. Casting Call: In your research paper soon to be published, “The Effectiveness of Vermiculture in Human Pathogen Reduction for USEPA Class A Stabilization,” you drew attention to the seriousness of the issue of biosolids disposal. There are “inherent environmental and health hazards of unstabilized human waste [that] can be seen in the third world nations. Rampant diseases that have debilitating
Chapter Twelve
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consequences are common for people living in these countries.” Additionally, you stated that “Disposal of biosolids has become a national concern,” for Americans. Can you offer any particular instances that illustrate the harm that’s been done or the cause for alarm by regulators? Bruce R. Eastman: I think the overall attitude of the agencies and the passage of the more stringent rules and regulations, such as 503, and here in the state of Florida the rewriting of 62-640, and local governments writing even more stringent local codes, is definitely an example of the national concern. I think it’s pretty obvious that we have medical concerns for untreated wastes that are pretty common, like I said [in the paper], in third world countries. But also I went on to say that’s not necessarily the case here in the United States. Obviously, I think, our system of treatment for wastewater residuals is far superior to most. But the public still perceives the land application of domestic wastewater residuals as a negative. I’ve run up against this for the past ten years dealing with the public in my job. It’s been a very difficult job to try to educate the public that the re-use of biosolids is really a very environmentally sound practice. There are some problems that still need to be addressed though. But I think those are mostly regional situations and problems, part of that being the use of food service sludges or grease-trap pumpings for land application. We recently prohibited the land application of grease unless they go to a Class A stabilization methodology. One of the reasons is that surface application of food service sludges, even when they’re blended with domestic wastewater residuals, has a tendency to destroy the crop that’s being putting on them, i.e., mostly pasture grasses and sods. There have been some studies done. One of the more outstanding ones that I recall was done in Maryland, I think by their department of Environmental Protection, where they were using greases for soil
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augmentation. But they were doing injection. They were letting the greases break down through microbial action after it was injected into the soils. That’s not the practice here in Florida. We found that it’s really not a sound method. CC: Just to recap then, on this issue of human health concerns about treated wastewater residuals, have there been any reports of individuals coming in contact with this material where they have been compromised in their health in any way? BRE: No, there have not [been any incidents] of the general public. I think that is due to the rules and regulations that have been passed to restrict public access to these areas. However, I can tell you that we actually had one of our employees come down with shigellosis [a form of dysentery] twice, who has worked in the sludge fields. A number of years back, the rules weren’t as explicit about pathogen stabilization. At one time all they had to do to meet the regs was just to throw some lime in the pump truck. And that was considered sufficient. Of course we realize now that that’s not necessarily the case. CC: How did you first become aware of the possibility that earthworms might reduce pathogen levels of biosolids? BRE: It was purely by accident. I met a gentleman by the name of Mr. Barnell Logue who is the President of the American Earthworm Company. He was, unbeknownst to me, using wastewater residuals to raise earthworms. I found out about it from my regulatory angle and I had to inform him that he could not do that. It started out that we were actually going to take enforcement action. And he advised me of what he knew, from his years of experience. And from that, it sparked my interest. So that’s when I started looking into it
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and doing more research and pulling up as many papers as I could on the subject. And I believe that it was [Dr. Roy] Hartenstein’s [studies] I originally found that suggested that it might be useful. From that point that’s how our project actually came about. CC: There’s some irony here in that you were about to proceed against someone in a regulatory fashion and wound up learning something instead. BRE: Absolutely. And I think [there should be] the old ‘pat on the back’ to our agency. I think that it’s a credit to us that we were able to take that route, instead of being so stiff-necked about the whole thing.
CC: Your field test was conducted in an enclosed structure with
biosolids spread out in
windrows. Eisenia fetida
earthworms were supplied by Mr. Barnell Logue of the American Earthworm Company who kept them in Florida peat prior to their inoculation in the windrows. (As an aside, your paper mentions, “Slower reductions may have occurred because the earthworms already had a food source in the peat.”) Would you recommend staying with the same technology (windrows) for wastewater treatment facilities? BRE: No, I do not advise it. For very small operations, that’s probably a perfectly acceptable method. But for larger
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facilities, and I think we should kind of draw a line here somewhere, you know, what size facility are we talking about? The City of Ocoee that we’re dealing with right now is a three million gallon-a-day facility. They’re currently only operating at about a million [gallons] a day. And they produce somewhere in the area of 42-45 wet tons of solids a week. With that in mind, we have approximately a tenth of an acre that we have in windrows. It’s difficult, at best, to control the quality of the end product, the castings. I think a more feasible method is to use some type of reactor. And then, there’s the question after, of having to go into some sort of a curing process. In windrows, the worms tend to leave some food behind; some of the residuals [are left] unstabilized in the lower portions of the windrow, as you’re adding food to the top of them. It’s a timing matter. Now, the wastewater plant, when they have the waste, they’ve got a waste [product] then and there—they can’t wait forever. So a vermiculturist has to be able to take that material immediately. If the worms have not worked the windrows properly, because of fluctuating populations or whatever, it doesn’t make any sense to go ahead and feed them, because they’ll leave the food source that they’re in at that point and lump in the top of the windrow in the new food source. So we don’t get good standardization throughout the whole mass of biosolids. Whereas with a system like Dr. Edwards’s wedge system, or with different reactors [that have] a continuous feeding process, worm populations tend to be more stable. That’s, I think, the real key to being able to produce a stabilized product and a consistent quality product. That’s certainly my recommendation. CC: Have you been able to see any of Dr. Edwards’ continuous flow reactors in use?
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BRE: No, I haven’t, other than seen diagrams. But I have seen some others. There’s a gentleman here in Gainesville Florida, by the name of Harry Windle. He has one called the Worm Gin. It’s a very ingenious machine. And it seems to work quite well. He has a couple of them throughout the country. One of them is up in Maine. He’s got another one somewhere in Montana that I know of, and several around the state. And they seem to be working quite well so far. CC: If you went to that technology, with biosolids, would you need to use some sort of bulking agent? BRE: No. We have not found that you need to add any kind of bulking agent at all to the biosolids. The worms seem to get along in it quite well. CC: In Fallbrook California, where they were vermicomposting biosolids in the late 1980s, they were mixing biosolids with straw. They seemed to be concerned with keeping the material properly aerated for the earthworms. In your experience, if you build up the pile height, wouldn’t it increase the likelihood of going anaerobic or getting too compacted? BRE: The rows never get very high. They only get about eighteen to twenty inches high. So you never really have that much material on top of it to compress it down. The worms are keeping that top six or better inches aerated. We haven’t had too much problem with that process. I can certainly see that if they start getting into larger piles, that would be really kind of counterproductive. CC: The biosolids were taken off a belt press and applied with manure spreaders over the windrows at 85% moisture
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content (15% solids). How was this ratio determined? Did the high moisture content pose any leachate problems? BRE: That has to do strictly with the operations of the wastewater treatment facility. [That this ratio seemed optimum for earthworms] was pure coincidence. We never did that on purpose. Actually, EPA required us to have 15-20% solids material to work with. The belt press at the City of Ocoee was brand new and works very well. They’re able to get a very good product out of it. That’s what the engineers told us we were averaging—was 15%. Of course the process goes on—we do have a lot of volatilization of water off from the rows. We have to continue to water the rows, even after they’ve been laid down. CC: When would you do your first watering after the material was first applied off the belt press? BRE: Usually within a week. I think Mr. Logue waters the rows every week. A lot of his work is done just by years of knowledge. He doesn’t go out and measure moisture content. We were doing some of that—we have some of that information in house. CC: So, did the initial high moisture content of the biosolids pose any leachate problems? BRE: No. As a matter of fact, in the initial pilot project we put down a clay liner with a sand filter on top of it. We had it slope down to a corner of the pad, and plumbed it in so that it would go into a recapture bucket. We never had any leachate recovery at all.
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CC: The frequency for adding water to the windrows would depend upon the climate of a particular region. It looks like, in your case, it was necessary to add water regularly. BRE: It gets pretty hot, especially during the summer. It’s also very humid. Of course we have rainstorms every afternoon, in general, during the rainy season. So it can get very wet at times. But the residuals, they hold water very well. They just don’t seem to leach out [liquid] very much. I might be more concerned if we were using ground-up green waste like garbage and such. It probably would not retain the water as well. We might very well have a leachate problem with that type of material. CC: In a report from the pilot phase of this project, (“Worm Treatment Produces ‘Class A’ Biosolids,” BioCycle, October 1996), earthworms had been expected to consume the equivalent of their body weight in biosolids per day. Surprisingly, earthworms consumed an even greater amount of feedstock, for it was said “the worms actually ate upwards of two times their body weight each day which required that the project be stopped at 68 days, rather than the full 90 days initially proposed.” Now, in the final report of your two-year test project, the “official” calculated consumption rate for earthworms is stated as “1.5 times their biomass every 24 hours.” A 1:7 ratio of earthworm biomass to biosolids was suggested for a weekly rate. Are you convinced that an earthworm consumption rate for biosolids of one to 1.5 times their body weight per day can be sustained indefinitely? BRE: No, it can’t be. These numbers that we put together were strictly artificial. In order to have a balanced ratio of worms, as Dr. Edwards and I discussed a number of times, we believe that an ideal ratio is probably somewhere around two pounds of worms to one cubic foot of material. Somewhere in
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the area of 1:10 or 1:12 ratio [biomass of worms to biosolids]. And that simply has to do with reproductive rates in worms. CC: At what rate would you add feedstocks? Once you had a system inoculated with two pounds of earthworms per square foot of area, what amounts and how frequently would you add to that area? BRE: You could probably go ahead and start feeding every two weeks and wind up with good stabilization. We were trying to push this at an accelerated rate. Number One, we wanted to get the experiment done as quickly as we could. The longer it took, the more money we had to spend. So finances were part of the problem. And, at that time, we weren’t necessarily convinced, when we first started out, that you couldn’t sustain that type of ratio. But we found, as we were going along, that especially with the windrow method, that that’s probably unrealistic. You wind up with ‘dead spots’ in the windrows. The worms, for whatever reason, don’t want to be there—migrated to other areas, and such. The other thing, that kind of skewed some of our ideas was, that Mr. Logue was also trying to harvest worms for sale during the process—and you cannot do that. You’ve got to leave the worms alone. It was really rather difficult. We put these numbers in here because we showed artificially, that if we inoculate our rows with those amounts of worms, this is what we get in this period of time. But naturally and realistically, that’s probably not what is going to work for people. Again, we go back to that ‘two pounds of worms per square foot.’ Probably every couple of weeks—feeding time. CC: And how would you calculate how much you would feed? BRE: Again, you would have to apply very thin layers.
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CC: But do you weigh it? Is it a volume measurement? BRE: Well, not by weight, simply by having people put the residuals on top of the bed. And the best thing is, in the area of two to three inches at a time—you could probably go up to five to six inches feeding per time. But ideally, it’s only two to three inches at a time. It is going to be a much slower process than what we originally hoped for. CC: Well, based on that, if we don’t know the weight of worms there, or if we don’t measure the weight that you’re applying, we really can’t know for certain, at this stage, what rate per day the worm consumes. BRE: I have to go back to references in other papers that I’ve read. It was stated there that they believed that worms could consume up to two times their weight in a 24-hour period. And, of course, our pilot indicated that that might be so. Now, do they always consume that amount or not? I don’t know. Honestly, I really and truly don’t know. CC: What was the greatest length of time that you sustained the additions of fresh material? BRE: In the project itself, we never fed the spiked project. It was a one-time turnaround. We gave them a definite amount of food and simply put them into it. That’s why the numbers were artificial. CC: So it really hasn’t been demonstrated on a field scale. Going back to the papers you might have read, please correct me if I’m wrong here, but that might have been done in a laboratory situation, where they might have consumed two times their weight in a petri dish.
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BRE: And they may not do that in the field—that’s very true. The other thing is, what is their food source? If they have a food source like biosolids, they have a large amount of bacteria, which is actually what they’re eating, are they going to consume more than what they would if they were in a food source that was not as nutrient-rich in bacteria? CC: Aren’t there different stages in wastewater treatment in which the biosolids are sometimes better suited for vermicomposting and, also, stages where they are not well-suited? BRE: Anaerobic biosolids would not be suitable. What we’d like to do is to try using some solids from the bottom of the clarifier. I don’t know that they’d have enough oxygen in them to sustain the worms, or if the worms would even go into it. We haven’t tried that yet. The biosolids we used were aerobically digested. Prior to that the biosolids were in an anaerobic situation at the bottom of the clarifier. We’d like to try to see if there’s enough oxygen in that material to sustain the worms. It may be and it may not. It may require some aeration. I believe, personally, that the worms would probably do quite well in it. But we have not actually tried it. CC: In conducting your field test, you began by spiking both the test and control windrows with pathogens and helminth ova eggs to establish a baseline. Can you explain why this was done? Was it necessary to increase the amount of pathogens from those already present? BRE: Normally speaking, our wastewater treatment facilities, especially our publicly owned wastewater treatment facilities, do a very good job at stabilization. They’re very effective—but at a great cost. Of course that’s where we
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believe vermicomposting can help—by reducing that cost. When we received the residuals, that’s why we had to spike them, for two reasons. Number One, EPA wanted us to show a three- to fourfold reduction. That was very difficult to do—we already had “B” Class residuals. So we had to spike them extremely high, in order to be able to show that reduction rate. And again, by doing that, we also proved that we probably could stabilize residuals directly from the bottom of a clarifier that had not had any type of aerobic digestive process performed on them. Dr. Edwards and I discussed this as well—EPA was extremely concerned about pathogen content and pathogen indicators in aerobically digested residuals that we think are probably something they just shouldn’t be concerned about. CC: Yes, I heard from Dr. Edwards that you had spent quite a few dollars to obtain helminth ova to spike the windrows. BRE: We spent $5,000—it was the biggest expense of the project other than the actual analysis. And it took us forever to get them. If it’s that rare and that difficult, why do you use them as an indicator? It would seem to me that EPA would want to use something else that’s a little more common as an indicator. CC: Let’s talk about heavy metal uptake by earthworms, something your study did not examine. Biosolids are known to contain fairly high levels of heavy metals in some instances. USEPA has federal regulations specifically limiting land application of biosolids with annual pollutant loading rate guidelines. Do you plan to research heavy metal uptake by earthworms in future investigations? If it were found that earthworm activity in biosolids not only sanitized this material but also reduced heavy metal concentrations, is it
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possible new guidelines (for pollutant loading rates) could be written for vermi-processed biosolids? BRE: I’m not really sure. I think it’s a little early to call that. However, we actually did do, as a sidebar, some work on metals, in the original pilot project. There was another partner who was working with American Earthworm Company. Out of curiosity, they did an initial metals analysis on the residuals, and found that there was up to a forty to fifty percent reduction in the metals content. They tried to do an extraction on worm flesh and they were never able to determine where the metals went. I think that probably has something to do with lab failure, using improper or incorrect methodology for extraction. Based on that, we started doing some work with the EPA on the reduction or fate of lead in lead-contaminated soils. And we actually wound up going out and picking up some soils from a Superfund site. We did some bench tests. We also did some bench tests on some soils that came from Puerto Rico that had high lead contamination. And again, in those tests we demonstrated between a 30% to a 50% reduction in overall lead content. We were able to determine a percentage of that metal in the worm flesh as well—this time we did a slightly different extraction method. However, we were still not finding all of the lead. There was somewhere around 15% that we did not account for. We have no idea exactly as to where it was going. There have been some suggestions that we should do some enzyme studies and several other different approaches. I just recently sent back a letter to EPA in Washington and suggested that we try another method to determine the overall metal content in the worm flesh, and not try to do any extractions, but simply sample the entire worm flesh. Now, what is actually happening to the metals? I believe that when we’re finished with all this, we’re going to find that the worms are not really using this metal—they may be bio-accumulating certain amounts of it, but I
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think it’s going to be very small amounts. What we are going to find is that the worms are actually harvesting the metal. And once they reach a point where the metal content becomes to a certain point inside them it’s going to do one of two things. They’re either going to start extracting it in their castings, or they may wind up reaching lethal doses. Now the way I see this possibly working is, the metals are extracted, and when we find out what that level is that the worms are able to tolerate, when they reach that point, you harvest the worms out. Then you put them in a clean substrate, with no food source or a very small food source, and then force them to go into a fasting period. At that point, we found that they’ll give off a considerable amount of the metals that they ingested. For this particular process, I would say that what we take is a ton of contaminated soil, we vermicompost it and harvest the worms out of it, cause them to fast and cast off the metal, and we reduce that down to 100 pounds of waste, as opposed to one ton of waste. Basically, what we’re doing is we’re using the worms to “mine” the metals for us. But would that work in a continual feed reactor process for metal contents in biosolids? I think it’s too early to know. My gut tells me if worms in continuous feed reactors do reduce metals, it’s not going to be a significant amount. This is perhaps where windrows or Dr. Edwards’ wedge method may be more appropriate. CC: This research into heavy metals reduction sounds like it might be the New Frontier for earthworm studies, once the pathogen reduction issue has been resolved. But there’s always the question of whether you can take these findings to a regulatory agency and satisfy them such that they’ll approve this as a viable method. BRE: Precisely. There are going to have to be standards. We were hoping that that was going to be part of this project
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as well, but it was a little bit more for us to handle than we were able to. I think that’s going to be another step in this whole thing. We are working on this right now. We finished the initial bench tests and have reported that information to EPA. What we’re doing right now is waiting for more money to continue on with the project. We’re going to expand out and do a larger number of samples so we can get a better statistical analysis and determine what those levels of metals are that earthworms are able to obtain. We’re pretty sure we have the money, we just haven’t heard back from them. I have been in contact with them via telephone, and I’m assured they’re very interested in the project and they want to assist us. CC: Would you go back to the windrow system or would you look for doing this in a reactor? BRE: Actually, for this portion of the test, it would be mostly in the lab. It wouldn’t be in the field very much. If we can demonstrate that we can recapture metals, there has been talk that they’d like to enter into a pilot project in the field with us at the Superfund site. They actually wanted us to do a pilot project. But we were not prepared at that point. We simply did not have enough data to support the expenditure of monies for a pilot that size. I was uneasy about it. I said, “We’ve got to go back to the lab and do some more tests.” And I think, based on this next round of tests, it will give us the information we need, to determine whether we are ready to go ahead with a pilot project or not. CC: Can you see yourself working in a project down the line, using reactor technology? BRE: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, if I were to do a pilot in the field of metals recapture, it would be with a reactor. It
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would not be with windrows. I’m not sure exactly which reactor I’d use. Another possibility would be Dr. Edwards’ wedge system which works very well. CC: A much-debated topic in vermicomposting is the necessity of pre-composting feedstocks (manure, biosolids) to achieve pathogen kill before feeding the material to earthworms. You seem confident that your study finally settles this issue. You wrote, “A difference from other low-technology vermicomposting projects is the elimination of pre-composting. Until recently, this step was thought to be necessary to eliminate pathogens before adding earthworms. However, this project confirms that the earthworms remove the pathogens from the biosolids during vermicomposting making the pre-composting unnecessary. The use of earthworms to vermicompost biosolids exceeded even the initial experimental expectations for pathogen reduction.” Are you saying that vermicomposting should be classed as a PFRP (Process to Further Reduce Pathogens), a federal regulation that now mandates only a time and temperature requirement? BRE: Yes, I am. I believe it will. I believe it can. The pre-composting question is not going to go away, whether vermicomposting is classed as a PFRP process or not. One of the reasons for that is going to be quality of material. I think the big problem of the vermicomposted materials today is the weed seed problem. If we’re ever going to be able to market vermicomposted materials, especially manures and biosolids, the weed seed problem is going to have to be addressed. And that’s where pre-composting may have to be used for it. But it does not have to be used for pathogen destruction. CC: Do you see weed seeds in biosolids?
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BRE: Yes. Mostly tomato and melon seeds. You cannot destroy tomato seeds—they’re unbelievable. Which may preclude pre-composting in biosolids, specifically because we may be able to stockpile and cure the castings to a time beyond the viability of the seeds. I’ve talked to Dr. Subler also, as far as manures go, that’s probably not going to be a viable case. Because some weed seeds are viable up to two, three, four, five, ten years. So you wouldn’t be able to stockpile long enough. There’s a much bigger problem with animal manures in that regard. But we’re going to have to do some more work in that field, specifically with biosolids. CC: In the final paragraph of your paper, you enthuse, “Vermicomposting will revolutionize biosolids processing.” At this, everyone who has a stake in the world of vermiculture/vermicomposting will surely stand up and shout, “Amen!” Yet, Ed Green in Lufkin Texas had difficulty in gathering support for his operation in 1980 and the Fallbrook, California project conducted a successful pilot study of vermicomposting biosolids, but did not endure, largely due to the impinging local residential development in the late 1980s. In the twenty years since Hartenstein’s research at SUNY, biosolids vermicomposting in the U.S. has not attracted much attention, but for a few “pilot projects.” Are you so confident that, once this news hits municipal wastewater managers throughout the country, that a genuine revolution in biosolids processing will take place? Should we begin taking worms down to our local water treatment facilities to help get them started? BRE: I wouldn’t be heading down there right now, but I believe that it [the ‘revolution’] is going to come. Number One, there’s been a number of steps taken by groups in this country to try to increase recycling efforts of all types of waste streams. And I think it’s only natural that biosolids and
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greenwaste especially be part of that overall process. I think eventually people will understand and realize the benefits of vermicomposted materials. With the burgeoning and growing organic agriculture industry, there will be more of a call for the materials. It’s going to be some time before we can convince Professional Engineers in the wastewater industry that they need to tear down their digesters and start building vermicomposting reactors. But it is a process that is going to happen. How soon? I think that’s going to depend on who actually spearheads this. Is it going to be government? Is it going to be private industry? We’ve got to find a Bill Gates of vermicomposting. Somebody who can go out there and market it. If we find that person who can sell the product, after that it’s all incidental. And I think that it is going to happen. I wouldn’t mind being a part of that—I don’t know if I’m that person…[laughter]…but I certainly would like to be a part of it. CC: It’s interesting that you said a “person who can sell the product,” but from your work, it’s selling the process, because what you’ve demonstrated is that it’s cost effective, compared to the cost of building a wastewater treatment plant that complies with more stringent regulations. So it’s a cost savings benefit, even if the castings had no value. BRE: Well, that’s true. However, you still wind up with the age-old problem of recyclables, or recycled materials. When we first began recycling our plastics and glass and papers, we had mountains and mountains and mountains of used product, all over the nation, but there were no markets for them. It wasn’t until those markets started opening up that we started to move the materials. I know for a fact here in Florida that we’re in the same situation with compost—especially from wastewater treatment facilities. That I can go in and save on the process end a certain amount of money to stabilize their
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residuals by vermicomposting as opposed to digestion—the question still remains, “What do I do with the product?” When you can sell that product, that’s where the real money is. That’s what’s going to make people millionaires, and that’s what’s going to motivate them to push it. Just to save the municipality operating costs is never going to create the dynasty for something huge. It will not happen that way. CC: But sometimes, waste managers consider only the composting process. Some couldn’t care less about what compost does in the soil, because they don’t have an interest in soil fertility. Their principal concern is, “We’ve got to stabilize this volatile material.” And so, while the composting process makes sense for some waste managers, they’ll just take the product and use it as Alternate Daily Cover or give it away for free. It’s only after addressing the initial problem of stabilization that some consider its usefulness. So I could see a sort of two-step process happening with biosolids and vermicomposting, where you first sell the process concept to wastewater managers as a cost savings method. Then you tack on the added bonus that this material has value in and of itself as well. BRE: Yes. And I don’t advocate that that should not be done. This may very well have to go that way again. But hopefully, somewhere along the line, someone is going to stand up and be able to market the product for what it really is. CC: Okay. We know that we’ve got “safe” biosolids from your wastewater treatment facility thanks to Eisenia fetida earthworms. What is the next step to be taken? Will it be important to establish the value of your biosolids earthworm castings as a growth medium? Your paper mentioned, “Earthworm casts can be marketed with little additional
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processing.” Do you think there’s going to be a future in marketing castings from biosolids? BRE: Yes. I think that biosolids and green waste [castings] are going to be the two most marketable products. I think that a lot of it is going to wind up being able to go to the organic agricultural growers. CC: Are any of the people who grow organic foods going to object that this parent material is biosolids? BRE: I wouldn’t think that they would. I would certainly hope that they would see the product for what it is—a very useful, organic material. The Chinese have been using it for centuries—obviously, not the way we would like to use it. But I think the product itself has certainly proven its value in other countries. So I think we have to get over the stigmatism that it is human waste, and see it for it really is—a very useful product—especially after being vermicomposted. A number of organic growers already know the value of vermicomposted materials—not just the organic growers either. I spoke with some individuals here recently who are involved in the nursery business. They’re very enthused about it. They’re excited. They like the idea. They realize the benefits. But of course they are very careful individuals. They want to kind of take a “step back and wait and see” attitude. CC: What does an Environmental Protection Division Assistant Manager tell a group of people who grow plants? BRE: I gave them a presentation that I presented down in New Orleans at the Waste Environment Federation Conference in October. I basically went over our project, both pilot project and full-scale operation. And then, of
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course, I told them what I felt were the benefits of using earthworm castings—because of plant growth studies that have taken place, mostly by Dr. Edwards, but also some here in the state of Florida that are currently being done on pasture grasses by the University of Florida. As a matter of fact they’re using my castings in their Agricultural Extension Center. We’ve proven that earthworm castings can grow plants larger, quicker, have higher yield of product—fruit, mass, fiber—from using the castings. The castings have a number of binding sites which help to retain moisture therefore helping to reduce the possibilities of nitrogen leaching that you get with chemical fertilizers, as well as creating actinomycete bacteria in castings which continue to produce slow-release nitrogen so they get more “bang for their buck” over a period of time, as well as apparent plant pest antagonist properties that castings appear to have. Hopefully that would help these individuals to use fewer pesticides on their crops and wind up actually getting higher yields. There have been a number of studies done in that regard. For example, in Bangalore, India, grapes were fertilized with two tons of vermicompost, per acre each year, for five years. This increased yields up to 15 tons per acre, which were higher than yields using top quality conventional fertilizer. So it’s there, the evidence is there, it’s indisputable. We simply have to educate them. CC: So how did the Florida Nurserymen receive this message? BRE: They were thrilled! They were very excited about it. I had a number of them come up to me and talk to me saying they wanted to get back to me again. There have been some discussions about possibly doing some pilot studies with some nursery plants and using some of our castings. So it was a very positive reception. I was very pleased.
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CC: Presently there are just a few individuals in this country who are aggressively marketing castings and stimulating demand. Could it happen that as more people begin to talk about castings that there may not be enough processors to meet future demand? Do you see this as a potential problem? BRE: I think because the technology is so simple, it probably would not be difficult to gear up, to be able to take care of that demand. We certainly have the domestic wastewater residuals available. People’s septic tanks and such—we want to do some work on septage materials also, not just processed wastewater residuals. I know those products are there—it’s pretty astronomical—230,000 metric tons of biosolids were generated in 1995 alone here in the state of Florida. Most of that material is simply being land-applied out on pasture grasses right now. There is a benefit in that. However, if it were vermicomposted, it would be a greater benefit. But I think because of the ease of the technology that it probably wouldn’t take long to gear up. Probably a lot quicker than a lot of other industries would be able to. CC: From your perspective, what are the opportunities that exist today in vermiculture and vermicomposting? BRE: Currently there’s not the tremendous demand that I would like to see. But as we spoke of previously, I think the demand is going to be there. And I think that it’s going to be incumbent upon educating the industry and someone getting out there and letting people know that we’ve got this and let’s do something with it. I’m concerned a little with the misuse of the whole marketing process and pyramid schemes of the past. But I do believe that within the next five years or so—I would like to see it quicker than that—but being realistic, I think that we’re probably going to see a lot more interest in
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vermicomposting and I think we’re going to see a lot more projects. And especially if EPA will accept this methodology for Class A stabilization, I think that that would have tremendous impact on the industry as a whole—opening up doors and creating markets. CC: Not long ago, when asked why vermicomposting of biosolids had not caught on in this country, Dr. Clive Edwards suggested that the reason for this might be due to the risk that someone might dump a large quantity of insecticide or other toxic element down the drain. Thus, the danger posed to earthworms would be great, because a municipal system was open and would have few safeguards. Is his concern a real one? BRE: I think it’s very legitimate. You talked about the Lufkin, Texas project. It’s my understanding that there was talk that this actually may have happened there as well—that [this was] one of the reasons why they had a tremendous die-off of worms. It was presented as a possibility. But I look at it like this: If that stuff is going down the drain somewhere in a municipal system, then I would just as soon have the worm indicator telling me that those residuals are that toxic—as opposed to having them spread out on a field somewhere without knowing. Typically we do not do pesticide scans on domestic wastewater residuals. We only do what 503 requires which is just metals and nutrients—that tells us what kind of heavy industries we have on the collection system of that structure. But it doesn’t tell us about other types of contaminants such as pesticides. And those residuals still have to meet those basic standards. So I believe I would really rather have vermicomposting as the process than not. I think that as an indicator, it gives us that type of information that we need. Then it’s incumbent upon the agencies and the owners of those facilities, if they find there’s a problem, to
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trace that back. There are ways of doing that, absolutely. Much of our NPDES [National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System] permitting throughout the country today requires us, as municipalities, to put into place that kind of investigative work. It is incumbent upon us to trace and eliminate illicit discharges into our stormwater systems as well as our wastewater treatment facilities. So the technology is there to do it. I’m not saying it’s easy, but the technology is there, and we can do it. It’s like anything in the enforcement agencies, to find a culprit who is doing something, once you turn around and you get one or two of them and administer penalties, as a general rule, the industry overall tends to come into compliance. I think that’s been proven a number of times. And it also propagates additional legislation to close the loopholes where they sometimes fall through. And, overall, it just makes our systems that much safer. Again, I think Dr. Edwards has a very legitimate observation, but I still think that we should go forward. I think that one of the biggest hurdles to this is that by doing vermicomposting, it could be perceived as taking business away from the traditional engineering consultant groups. I could certainly see where that would be something that they wouldn’t like. If we can get it accepted by EPA, then it’s going to be, basically, “We’re in the Market!” And you’re going to have to go out there and you’re going to have to sell the process. It’s going to come down to marketing.
About the Author
Peter Bogdanov is Director of VermiCo in Merlin Oregon. As publisher and editor of the bi-monthly subscription newsletter Casting Call, he has interviewed many of the foremost leaders in the vermiculture industry. Some of these interviews have been reprinted in the book In Their Own Words: Interviews with Vermiculture Experts. In 1996 Bogdanov published his first book Commercial Vermiculture and began the newsletter that now reaches an international subscriber base. Since 1998 VermiCo has conducted a series of educational workshops and conferences attracting attendees from across the United States and around the world. Some of these workshops have included tours of commercial vermicomposting operations, while other 2-day seminars have focused on Best Management Practices in Vermicomposting and include a 400-page manual of instruction.
In the year 2000 VermiCo began producing a series of videos that introduce viewers to a variety of vermiculture operations, from the world’s largest outdoor operation, to indoor, mechanized systems that process tons of organic residuals with earthworms.
VermiCo’s popular website www.vermico.com, features an assortment of informative subjects and products for visitors of all interests.
Not a scientist by training, Bogdanov believes that his graduate degree in history may have helped equip him in reporting and writing. If history is somehow telling a story, then telling the story of progress in the use of earthworms in waste and environmental management calls for a storyteller. This may explain why interviews, books, newsletters, conferences and videos have been his chosen media to tell the story.
Modern Alchemy: Turning Garbage Into Gold
Do you wonder why there is so much talk about earthworms? Did you know earthworms have value far beyond fish bait? Earthworm castings can have a radical effect on what we grow and the foods we eat. Do you wonder how long we can continue to be a throw-away society? Earthworms are effective in transforming our garbage into their “gold,” (castings). Here at last a dozen experts tell you, In Their Own Words, why earthworms are our best choice for both managing waste and growing more healthy plants. From scientists to “worm farmers,” you’ll meet a diverse but informed group of worm workers who believe they are ready to usher in a new age of exciting opportunities for thousands of people. Explore the new frontier of vermicomposting that offers a dual income from accepting raw materials (organic residues) and production of a high-grade soil amendment (earthworm castings). Whether you are interested in gardening, recycling, soil ecology, or considering a new business in an environmentally friendly but relatively unknown industry, this book will give you dozens of new ideas for discovering the enormous potential of the amazing earthworm.
ISBN 0-9657039-1-6 $15.00
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