Six Suggestions for Worm Farming
The six suggestions for worm farming are provided by Jindi Agricultural Earthworm Farming Base.
Many countries around the world, such as the United States, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, place great importance on the application, research, and breeding of earthworms. Earthworms are gradually becoming high-protein feed, human food, and medicine. They also play a significant role in improving soil, eliminating public nuisances, protecting the ecological environment, promoting material recycling and comprehensive utilization, maintaining ecological balance in nature, and preserving biodiversity. Animals like earthworms, which have advantages such as wide distribution, simple feeding, low cost, and significant impact, indeed deserve extensive research and development. Many biological science workers in our country have conducted considerable work in earthworm biology, resource surveys, earthworm farming, and applications, laying a certain foundation for further development of the earthworm farming industry. However, just like any other industry, earthworm farming should develop according to local conditions and proceed steadily. For this reason, I would like to offer some preliminary suggestions:
1. Worm farming based on local conditions
Our country has vast territory, diverse climate and soil conditions, complex ecological environments, numerous types of earthworms, and abundant quantities. Each region should strengthen the census of earthworm resources to provide scientific basis for their development and utilization, lay the foundation for introducing species, selecting and breeding, and hybrid breeding, and do well in the protection and sustainable use of earthworm resources, protecting the diversity of earthworms. It is necessary to make full use of local earthworm resources and avoid blind introduction.
2. Comprehensive utilization of worms
In foreign countries, worm farming often considers comprehensive utilization. Worms are often a byproduct in the process of dealing with public nuisances and used as feed, so the cost is relatively low. In Japan, for example, most worm farms are attached to paper mills, allowing worms to digest the waste sludge and residues discharged during the papermaking process. This not only eliminates public nuisances but also saves manpower and material resources. The resulting worms and worm castings can be used as feed and fertilizer, achieving two goals at once. A 16,500 square meter worm farm can handle nearly 3,600 tons of waste sludge annually while producing about 200 tons of high-protein feed and approximately 220 tons of high-quality worm castings. Therefore, I suggest that we should vigorously promote comprehensive utilization in the future, using worms to handle urban household waste, industrial sludge, wastewater, leaves, fallen fruits in gardens, straw, manure, biogas pool residues, and other organic materials in rural areas. For acidic soils in southern China and saline-alkali and sandy lands in the north, comprehensive management through worm farming can reduce the cost of worm farming. Worm farming can also be combined with mushroom cultivation, snail farming, cattle farming, etc., forming a virtuous cycle of materials.
3. Scientific worm farming
Within a certain period, the yield per unit area of worms mainly depends on the multiplication factor of worms, i.e., the proliferation rate. The proliferation rate of worms is primarily determined by the following factors: the number of cocoons produced per worm per year; the average hatching rate of cocoons, i.e., the average number of young worms hatched from each cocoon; the survival rate of young worms; and the generation interval days of worms. Therefore, it is essential first to select worm breeds with high proliferation rates for farming. At the same time, scientific feeding management should be strengthened to fully utilize their production potential. To increase the proliferation rate of worms, basic theoretical research on worms should be strengthened, and various advanced technical means (including biohormones, cytological technology, etc.) should be used to promote early maturation, shorten growth cycles and sexual cycles, aiming for more egg-laying and higher yields.
4. Developing the worm farming industry
Worm farming, as a promising emerging farming industry, has been developed and established in many countries with enterprises of initial scale and relevant associations. For instance, in the United States, there are over 50 worm farming enterprises producing 2 billion worms annually. In Japan, by 1972, over 200 worm farms had been established, and the annual global transaction volume of worms reached nearly hundreds of millions of dollars. In 1977, worm farming in our country was once "hot," but then it became silent. I believe that worm farming, like other farming activities, should develop scientifically and steadily according to local conditions without being blindly followed. More importantly, it should be done legally based on market demand.
5. Establishing worm breeding farms and reproduction systems
Earthworms are lower animals with significant genetic variability and are prone to degeneration. To maintain the high-yield, stable, and quality characteristics of excellent worm breeds, it is necessary to scientifically breed high-quality worm breeds in a planned and step-by-step manner, establishing a three-level breeding system: elite worm farms, worm propagation farms, and worm production farms.
The main task of elite farms is to domesticate, introduce, select, or crossbreed worms according to predetermined breeding objectives. Various techniques, including gene engineering, genetic engineering, physical, and chemical methods, can be employed to induce variation in worms, conduct selection, comparative identification, and cultivate superior varieties. The goal is to achieve early maturity, high yield, fast reproduction, rapid growth, quality (high protein content, good adaptability), stability (strong resistance, including cold tolerance, heat resistance, drought resistance, salt-alkali resistance, acid resistance, strong feed adaptability, etc.), and low consumption (high feed utilization, low production cost). Meanwhile, continuous purification and strengthening of breeds should be carried out. The main task of elite farms is to breed high-quality strains. Therefore, elite farms must have strong technical forces and good equipment conditions. The primary task of production farms is to produce large quantities of worms and worm castings. Feed can be sourced locally, paying attention to product development and comprehensive utilization to reduce costs. The scale of farming can be large or small, and efforts should be made to increase output per unit area. The main task of propagation farms is to massively propagate high-quality strains to provide sufficient seed worms to production farms.
6. Development and utilization of worms
Although worms can be used as high-quality feed, premium food, and medicinal herbs, they must be carefully analyzed and inspected before use to see if they have been infected with parasites (since worms are intermediate hosts for some parasitic nematodes and tapeworms, often causing infection when consumed by chickens and pigs). It is known that worms can cause nine types of parasitic diseases in chickens and six types in pigs. Additionally, one must check if there is any accumulation of heavy metals or phosphorus, organochlorine pesticides in worms. Worms can absorb tin, lead, mercury, arsenic, and other heavy metal elements from soil and feed, accumulating them tenfold in their tissues. Therefore, during worm farming, it is strictly prohibited to feed worms with feed contaminated by heavy metals, organophosphates, organochlorines, or parasites to ensure the safety of farmed worms.
In summary, worm farming is still an emerging industry in our country. All regions should develop scientifically and steadily based on local conditions and market demands, avoiding rash actions or speculative mentalities.
Jindi Agriculture offers wholesale worm seeds and commercial worms. Free worm farming techniques are provided with the purchase of worm seeds. For more details, please visit the Jindi Agricultural Company website: www.jindinongye.com