The New Black Gold

Suddenly there is a huge demand for earthworms, and people who are producing them are getting rich.

Suddenly there is a huge demand for earthworms, and people who are producing them are getting rich.

In a corner of Beed, one of the worst drought-affected areas of Maharashtra, seven women have found a traditional answer for the farmers’ bugbear of debt: earthworms. Lots of earthworms.

When she grew weary of her job as a cashier at a Bank of Baroda branch in 2001, Asha Shivajirao Bhise studied various projects offered by the Ministry of Agriculture and settled on cultivating worms. The incentives of the ministry were good and the project was not too popular. She studied the vermicompost pilot project set up on the premises of the local agricultural office and decided that it was her calling.

In 2003, armed with her VRS money and a loan from her bank (a total of Rs 15 lakh), Bhise started her facility in Renapur, Latur, becoming the first woman to start a commercial vermicompost farm. Along the way, Bhise was joined by six other women—all wives of farmers who wanted to supplement their family’s meagre income.

Earthworms break down organic matter and enrich the soil. Also, they improve the chances of water retention. More importantly, when earthworms do what chemicals do, it is called organic—a lucrative adjective today. So there are huge commercial rewards for mass producing earthworms efficiently.

At her model farm, fences (essential to keep away mongoose, rats, frogs and snakes) surround earthworm beds that are 2 ft wide mud racks layered with a 3 ft high bed of soyabean waste and cow dung (the soyabean is replaceable with tur, urad, groundnut or moong waste). While the waste is fodder for the worms, cow dung nurtures the soil and helps keep it cool when water is sprinkled.

The earthworm beds are located in a corner of her farm and are manned round the clock to ensure that worms do not escape from beds. A plastic sheet is laid at the bottom of the bed and is covered with a pile of soil. The sheet prevents the creatures from digging too deep into the soil. The top layer of the bed is covered with earthworm fodder (which includes just about everything in the vegetable market).

Bhise learnt that the beds needed constant sprinkling with water to keep them cool; slight temperature changes can be fatal to worms. She quickly figured that their prolific breeding rendered replenishing worm stock unnecessary. She learnt the quiet messages they sent: the quantity of compost they produced indicated when breeding had started.

“I bought about 110 kg of earthworms at Rs 800 per kg and set up the business. Within 40 days of laying earthworm beds, I harvested 20 tonnes of compost. All of it was picked up by farmers within days,” says Bhise.

As a commodity, worms are recession-proof. Sold at Rs 800 about four years ago, worms, depending on their quality and size, now fetch a market price of anything between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 a kg. Yet, earthworm suppliers can barely keep up with demand.

When Bhise started out, she was laughed at. No one believed that earthworms could generate money. But now, “Farmers are calling in from all corners of Maharashtra. A majority of them want the ready compost but we encourage them to buy the earthworms too and teach them how to make the beds,” says Bhise. She receives at least 100 queries a month.

With multinationals offering more incentives and higher prices for organic produce, an increasing number of Maharashtra’s farmers have turned to earthworms to net profits. Since cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies began offering good money for organically grown aloe vera, there has been renewed interest in the project. Using earthworms, an aloe vera grower can earn a substantial profit of up to Rs 25,000 per hectare on medium fertile soils per month. Even on sub-marginal and marginal land unsuitable for most other commercial crops, profits from sale of aloe vera leaves can be as much as Rs 12,000 per hectare per month.

What makes them even more attractive is that earthworms are a one-time investment—they multiply freely. A kilogram of worms (anywhere from 600 to 800 worms) produce up to 5,000 eggs a week. Within six weeks of their birth, they are ready for reproduction. Every seven to 10 days, an earthworm lays one egg capsule containing seven embryos. At least three to seven worms emerge from one egg capsule. The life span of an earthworm is two years. Breeding has been so prolific that Bhise has not replenished her stock of worms since she began in 2003. She has also set up an earthworm wash unit to prepare organic pesticide from their excreta. It acts as a natural pest repellant. This too has high demand.

The state’s agriculture department has offered incentives such as providing help in setting up the beds, guaranteeing earthworms at concessional rates and buying the vermicompost until they find buyers. Also, the government is aware that the key to earthworm cultivation lies with women. Backed by self-help groups, cultivation has become popular in rural areas. Men might see its benefits, but are hamstrung by their standing in society. (Since cow dung is the main ingredient used in the earthworm pits, upper-caste farmers are unwilling to touch it. Traditionally, cow dung is handled by lower castes in many rural areas.) There are no such reservations among women. “Women have no problems touching cow dung as they plaster their houses and courtyards with it. Hence more women are cultivating earthworms,” Bhise says.

According to experts, the erosion of soil nutrients and general land degeneration are also responsible for farmers’ newfound love for earthworms. Nareshbhai Bhaskar Save of Save Farms in Umergaon, a Mumbai suburb, is a major earthworm cultivator. “Earthworm cultivation is helping in soil regeneration. The size and quality of the produce is much better than the ones grown with chemicals,” Save says. He adds that his consultancy is also popularising the concept of earthworm cultivation.

While private promotion of earthworm cultivation has an effect, there’s nothing like a good governmental diktat. When the Pune municipality made it compulsory for all housing societies, hotels and restaurants to develop vermicompost pits, demand for earthworms exploded. The civic body reasoned that scarcity of land for garbage disposal had made it expensive to transport garbage to the city’s outskirts. It believed that earthworms would ease the burden by feeding on wet garbage, and turning it into compost.

“I help them set up the pits,” says Vishnu Najan, a Pune-based earthworm cultivator. “I sell them for Rs 500 to Rs 800 per kg, as the market is just picking up in Pune.” The price of earthworms is lower in urban areas as city people are reluctant to pay higher prices. “A farmer knows the importance of the earthworm, whereas many people in cities have never seen them. There is a need for sustained campaigns on vermiculture and its importance in urban areas.” Najan sees the business of earthworm cultivation getting bigger as people become more organically conscious.

Today, Bhise and her team are on a mission to help women in Maharashtra’s interiors understand earthworm economics and set up their own cultivation pits. Backed by the agriculture department, their project has found numerous takers among farmers in the states of Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

They all feel that this isn’t a passing phase. A growing awareness and sensitivity towards lifestyles, quality of life, and sources of food have made earthworms more important than ever before. And as the old makes way for the new, the growing tribe that believes in this revolution says that it’s here to stay.

agricultureBeedMaharashtraorganic foodvermiculture