DAVID MONTGOMERY - The Coming Worm Apocalypse
A worm
apocalypse has been transforming
farmland around the world. Why
should you care? If you dreamed up plots to quietly undermine
civilization, few could be more diabolical than destroying its foundation—the
soil life that builds the fertility of the farmland we depend on to grow our
food.
Still, it’s safe to
say that most of us missed the recent study in the journal Soil
Systems that lays out the case for the worldwide decimation of
earthworms. Yet this new report offers a stark assessment of the health of
Earth’s agricultural soils. And that should concern us all. The study reviewed
global evidence for loss of earthworms under
modern conventional farming. Long-term farming trials—some that have run for
over 170 years—consistently found losses of 50 percent to 100 percent of worm
biomass, with an average loss of more than 80 percent.
In other words, modern
farming practices have killed off four out of five worms that once lived on
farms. Farmers around the world have been turning verdant fields into
subterranean deserts. This matters because
recent scientific advances have shown how soil life partners with plants
through the original underground economy. For example, plants, we now know,
push sugary exudates out of their roots for microbes to lap up like dogs at
breakfast. They don’t do this for free. The plants get something in return.
Soil microbes consume and convert the exudates into metabolites that benefit the
growth and health of their botanical hosts.
And no less than
Charles Darwin recognized the importance of worms mixing organic matter into
fertile soil. He called worms “God’s ploughmen” and spent his whole career
studying them. Both his first scientific paper and his last, lifetime
best-selling book addressed the importance of lowly worms in keeping soils
fertile... read more:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-coming-worm-apocalypse-should-terrify-you?ref=home