Slimeless Spring or...Can global worming save the Earth?
By Robert J. Blakemore PhD, VermEcology Yokohama.
November, 2015
Is there a direct link between worms and weather? With a little help from Rachel
Carson, Lady Eve Balfour and especially my fellow Salopian Charles Darwin, I hope to
explain in this article why I, for one, think so.
But first, who amongst us knows that 2015 is the UN’s designated “International Year
of Soil”? It also marks exactly one hundred years since Nobel laureate Dr Fritz Haber
developed poison gas (killing my great-grandfather in the trenches of WW1) and
synthetic nitrogen for munitions that can both be used as simple agricultural pesticides
and soil fertilizers. As Robin McKie summarized in The Observer newspaper (Nov.,
2013): “It's 100 years since Fritz Haber found a way to synthesise ammonia – helping
to feed billions but also to kill millions, and contributing to the pollution of the planet”.
Yet one gruesomely practical outcome in response to industrial scale slaughter of the
Great War of 1914-1918 was development of TRIAGE which is rational prioritizing of
casualties in order to treat the most urgent first.
Figure 1 (courtesy Wikipedia). Triage as implemented in WW1 often uses a four-level
scale: Can wait, Has to wait, Cannot wait an Lost or No longer matters (i.e., extinct).
Time is now opportune for a Global Triage to help sift through the complexities of
conflicting environmental issues vying for our attention and action. As a starting point
I consider economic issues subordinate to ecological issues since without Ecology there
is no Economy and I provide the sterile Moon or lifeless Mars as examples of this.
Fortunately, Earth’s environmental issues have been evaluated by a consortium in a
recent report by Rockström et al. (2009) with nine planetary boundaries already
critically exceeded for “Biodiversity loss”. Unfortunately these researchers do not
suggest remedies, but they do indicate that “Nitrogen cycle” and “Climate Change”
are lesser concerns than the biodiversity issue, and I agree. So too does Harvard’s Dr
E.O. Wilson who has famously provided the acronym HIPPO to highlight the actual
threats to biodiversity which, in their correct order of magnitude, are: Habital loss,
Invasive alien species, Pollution, Population explosion and Overharvesting.
Human-mediated species extinction loss is thus the most urgent, irreversible and
destructive event; it is clearly “Code Red” urgent.
Figure 2. Nine planetary boundaries that are already exceeded by “Biodiversity loss”
and by “Nitrogen cycle”; modified from Rockström et al. 2009; Nature 461: 472–475.
All three major environmental issues (Fig. 2) as well as most of Wilson’s threats may
yet be resolved by the simple expedient of natural ORGANIC FARMING or the
modern, post-industrial, application of what is increasingly called AGROECOLOGY.
This single solution will help fix species biodiversity loss and, coincidentally, resolve
most other lesser, interlinked issues. My view is even more simple, just aiming to
“Save the Worm” is the most expeditious way to achieve the same goal. The
foundational reasoning to support this claim is that organic agriculture preserves topsoil
and the best way to do this is to encourage earthworms. As Lady Eve Balfour stated in
her Introduction to Dr Tomas J. Barrett’s (1947) book “Harnessing the Earthworm”:
“When the question is asked, ‘Can I build top-soil?’ the answer is ‘Yes’, and when
the first question is followed by a second question, ‘How?’ the answer is ‘Feed
earthworms’”. She also posits that a properly managed task-force of earthworms can
restore as much as an inch (2.5 cm) of nutrient rich topsoil in as little as 5 years.
My other contribution to the triage debate is to dispute the hugely overfunded
distractions of Marine Science and Astronomical research. If our house is on fire – we
need to fix this problem first; it simply makes no sense to save just the goldfish bowl
nor to aimlessly stargaze. Don’t worry about the oceans or the stars that will still be
there tomorrow (maybe even a few more of them), rather realize that daily we are
sacrificing our precious topsoil upon which all human civilization (including livelihoods
of all marine biologists and astronomers) relies. Let’s hope that funding agency
assessors soon find a rationale to apply their own version of triage when determining
most urgent priorities that need not, as the expression goes, “cost the Earth”.
Despite massive propaganda hype, the argument for marine influence flounders on
environmental grounds and is easy to dismiss. The UN’s FAO (Food and Agriculture
Organization) data shows just 0.03% of human food comes from the oceans and
aquaculture combined; in fact, seafood’s contribution is paltry. It is literally about the
same as the global supply of poultry that Wikipedia gives as 148 Gt per year compared
to “World fisheries production” of just 142 Gt per year. (Please check these basic
data for yourself for confirmation).
So 99.7% food plus all our fibers and building materials come from Soil and, regardless
of whether you are a beer, whisky, wine or sake drinker, you will realize that all grapes
and grain are also soil-based and without which we have no celebrations for marine nor
astronomical indulgences. Neither is the Ocean particularly biodiverse – a 10 year, $1
billion “Census of Marine Life” (http://www.coml.org/) came up with an abysmal
250,000 species of animals, plants and microbes which, since described species now
total over 2 million, represents just about 12%. Thus the remaining biodiversity
(>88%) is terrestrial and it is the land that faces the largest actual threats. Marine
species drift around with the currents and nobody knows for sure how many risk local
extinction, but undoubtedly it is the soil species that require the most urgent attention.
Surely common sense dictates that risks to the waterways and seas (such as chemical or
nutrient pollution) come from terrestrial issue due mainly to soil mismanagement.
Fresh water quality depends entirely upon filtering through soil channels constructed by
earthworms. Assessing river purity is like taking blood samples to test health –
whatever the result, treatment is required for the body’s tissue fabric which on this
planet is the living mantle of soil and its subterranean inhabitants not the water medium.
Also questionable is whether oceans truly make up 70% of the Earth’s surface. Unlike
the ocean, the Earth’s surface is not flat; rather obviously it is hilly, thus the
topographical terrain exposed to sunlight is at least doubled, and at smaller scale
intervals (of say height of earthworm castings mounds of 10 cm3) probably doubled
again, to give at least 50 : 50 surface ratio of soil : sea. And whilst the sea-floor is
exquisitely mapped, extensive enquiries by this author has surprisingly failed to yet
extricate such basic information on global land topological surface area AMSL (above
mean sea level) from the NASA-USGS Landsat program in operation since 1972.
This despite deserted deep undersea topography being irrelevant to photosynthesis and
thus to any meaningful ecological argument. Moreover, the often quoted fact about
global oxygen recycling that every second breath is supplied by the ocean’s
phytoplankton (~135 Gt O2 per yr) also implies that every first breath is produced by
land plants (~165 Gt O2 per yr) yet again proving that we should care for soil just as
much, if not more so, than we do for the sea.
Nevertheless, our precious and vital soil biodiversity is particularly poorly known: not
one dedicated SOIL ECOLOGY INSTITUTE exists anywhere on Earth compared to
myriad MARINE or ASTRONOMICAL INSTITUTES. Nor are there any peak bodies
promoting interest such as the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) in USA, Australian CSIRO’s Oceans & Atmosphere flagship, Japan’s
Atmosphere & Ocean Research Institute (AORI) or New Zealand’s NIWA - National
Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, all who seem to advocate everything but
soil.
This is especially perplexing since much of the world’s topsoil is critically degraded.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in
the last 150 years and some observers estimate that only another 50-60 harvests are
possible under the current farming regimes. What agricultural research is conducted
mainly supports these failing intensive agrichemical or industrial agriculture models.
IFOAM President Andre Leu (quoted from Lappé, 2014) points out that “Fifty-two
billion dollars is spent annually on agriculture research worldwide, but less than 0.4
percent [i.e., ca. $200 million] is spent on organic farming systems”. An OECD report
(https://www.rt.com/usa/199480-space-budget-nasa-report/) estimates the annual space
research budget of the US and China is nearly the same amount at ca. US$51 billion;
and just one of the many marine institutes, JAMSTEC in Yokohama, receives about
twice as much as global organic research at ca. $400 million. Such disparity partly
explains why such basic information on the capabilities and properties of organic soils
are still relatively obscure and unappreciated, hence this review. What is indisputable
is that from the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic 10,000 years ago up to the last
50-60 years farming was mostly natural or traditional without the adverse health effects
associated with synthetic chemicals, hence we survived thus far mainly due to Nature’s
organic resources. Fig 3 show these resources face severe constraints in most areas,
the most extreme being desertification, itself often exacerbated by human activities.
Figure 3. Climate and soil/terrain constraints from Fischer et al. (2008: fig. 4),
corresponding to global triage (with grey areas lost to desertification or permafrost).
What soil ecology research there is as currently practiced usually concerns microbes or
ineffectual invertebrates, such as springtail collembola or mites, or the relatively slight
losses to natural capital from a few ‘pest’ species. However, neither the immobile
microbes nor tiny mites move soil. They are dependent on transforming organisms
best represented by field earthworms that form extensive networks of burrows
throughout the soil matrix acting as super-highways and avenues for passage of air,
water, plant roots and all other soil organisms and, at the same time, raising primary
productivity (compare Fig. 4). Given the importance of earthworms, I am also totally
baffled as to why there is not one full-time earthworm taxonomic specialist remaining at
any institution anywhere in the world compared, for example, to the legion of marine
worm specialists who seem to somehow justify their grant applications. Somewhere
along the line priorities have been seriously skewed with an obvious need for a ‘sea
change’ to ground us in the proper direction – study of the vital soil fabric beneath our
feet.
Figure 4. Left-hand side control – no worms; right-hand side – four worms added.
Graphically demonstrated in Fig. 4 are the kind of effects earthworms freely and
naturally provide on soil structure, drainage and plant growth (in just two weeks) – if
such growth responses were achieved by synthetic chemicals or mechanical devices
rather than by a mere earthworm this too would likely merit the Nobel Prize!
Some pessimists extend the debate ridiculously to say that since chemists and physicists
have destroyed this planet irretrievably we must now go colonize Mars. Good luck
with that. It would make more sense to try to recolonize the deserts, which,
incidentally, is entirely possibly through application of Permaculture principals as
capably demonstrated in Jordan by Geoff Lawton’s “Greening the Desert” project that
also uses earthworms most effectively (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Lawton).
Meanwhile grounding ourselves back to solid reality and regarding the immediate
carbon sequestration problem, the soil sink (2,300 Gt) is a much greater global preserve
than both oceans (1,000 Gt) and vegetation such as forests or mangroves (550 Gt)
combined. This summary based ironically on data from NASA/NOAA (Fig. 5).
Figure
5.
Global
carbon
cycle
from
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/).
NASA
(2011
From Fig. 5 we may note that excessive claims and huge funding for marine research
are misplaced since ocean carbon exchanges (90 Gt) are substantially less important
than annual terrestrial soil exchanges (120 Gt) as are manageable fluxes (shown in red).
Regarding carbon, and rather obviously despite many pie-in-the-sky geo-engineering
delusions, the only practical and proven way to remove excess of 800 Gt atmospheric
carbon is conversion of CO2 via plant photosynthesis. From the data in Fig. 5 it is
patently clear that of the 123 Gt of atmospheric carbon taken up by plants each year,
half (60 Gt) is recycled through respiration and the other half (60 Gt) is microbially
respired after processing by earthworms when they consume leaf-litter to build topsoil
humus. We may also calculate that an average carbon atom currently recycles through
the intestines of earthworms, and is potentially buried at depth in the soil for longer
periods, at intervals of about a dozen years (800 Gt / 60Gt yr-1 = 13.3 yr).
Soil organic matter (SOM = humus) contains substantial natural nitrogen in the root
zone relating to soil organic carbon (SOC) by conversion formula SOM = 1.72 x SOC.
Thus, from Fig. 5, we may estimate global SOM as 1.72 x 2,300 = 3,956 Gt. (Note 1
Gt = 1 x 109 tonnes = 1 km3 water). This then would be the approximate amount of
topsoil humus remaining (~4,000 Gt) which is around the same mass as the total annual
human
appropriation
of
freshwater
(~4,430
km3
according
to
www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/freshwater_supply/freshw
ater.html). From these data it may easily be argued that topsoil is a more valuable
renewable resource even than water which is replenished annually by rainfall.
Furthermore, worm-worked soils absorb much greater moisture, increasing water
storage capacity by as much as 90%. What oceans actually store is erosion run-off of
the land’s precious carbon and nitrogen-rich topsoil due to poor management of soil
biota.
Ecological problems interlink and are wholly biological thus only natural remedies are
appropriate. As with climate change that mechanical geo-engineering will fail to fix,
should earthworms be lost then there is no technical alternative able to drill innumerable
small drainage channels to depth (ca. 400–500 m of galleries per m2 in grasslands), to
thoroughly mix subsoils with surface litter, nor to operate mini piston pumps
continuously circulating air and water throughout the soil profile. These services are
freely provided by the underappreciated and overlooked earthworms, that are also the
basis of most food-webs, not just for the early bird and as bait for fishes but also the
ultimate detritivore recycling all decaying matter, including all of our ancestors.
Surely earthworms are the most versatile and important amongst all organisms and
entirely worthy of contemplative study. As Rachel Carson said “..probably none is
more important than the earthworm”.
Figure 6. Charles Darwin considering the worm from satiric Punch magazine in 1881.
Charles Darwin, the evolutionary biologist and ecological naturalist, also my fellow
Shropshire countryman (we both grew up appreciating Nature of rural Grinshill village),
realized the earthworm’s contributions to beneficial soil processes and thus to
civilization. In 1881, Darwin (who spent 40 years of his professional life considering
the humble earthworm) published his “Worms and Vegetable Mould” book in which he
conservatively estimated about 17-40 t ha-1 yr-1 of earthworm casts. If average
wormcast SOM is ca. 12% then x 0.58 carbon conversion factor = 1.2-2.8 t ha-1 yr-1 C
that for 3.6 Gha pastures globally would be ≈10 Gt C yr-1 or ca. 100 Gt yr-1 every 10 yrs
for organically converted grasslands. It seems the great scientist had already
unintentionally provided us with a simple solution to unanticipated CO2 carbon
sequestration, food security and unforeseen excesses of fossil fuels, biocides and the
Haber-Bosch synthetic fertilizer problems too.
My own studies (Blakemore 2000, 2015 and currently unpublished data) have found
proliferations or rather the preservation of +57-122% earthworm abundance and greater
species diversity under organic versus adjacent conventional fields co-relating to
beneficial soil characteristics and to enhanced crop yields of +12-80% in each of winter
wheat (at the pioneering Haughley organic farm in UK established by Lady Eve Balfour
in 1930’s, see Fig. 7), tropical paddy rice and broadacre sugarcane (in Philippine Ils.).
Total extra carbon equivalents sequestered (53.1 Gt CO2e) under the three crops if all
land given over to them were fully converted organic on a global scale, equals ca. 7.3
ppm atmospheric C reduction.
Figure 7. Haughley 1981 worm survey: highest in old pasture and organic arable (O),
lowest in agrichemical arable (M=mixed; S=stockless) from Blakemore (2000).
Moreover, when all organic ‘wastes’ are entirely recycled then environmental pollution
and contamination are removed as downstream externalities. Other social, economic
and ecological impacts are lower rural unemployment (thus reducing urbanization rates)
with no harm to farmworkers and their families nor to consumers and the environment
from poisonous biocides. Runoff pollutants and eutrophication of waterways are
reduced in coastal areas that are considered important in places like Australia’s Great
Barrier Reef (GBR) and dive sites in the Philippines. My surveys (Blakemore 1994)
of the agrichemical canefields in Queensland (Qld) found few if any worms, confirmed
in a story told me by veteran local grower Frank Tarditi of flocks of ibis he saw as a
child foraging behind the plow that no longer bother searching the sterile soil for locally
extinct earthworms – ‘Silent Spring’ indeed. These soils and worms are poisoned by
persistent biocides and volatile nitrogen fertilizers directly linked to coral reef decline
and indirectly contributing to global warming: It takes ten units of fossil fuel to produce
synthetic nitrogen for just one unit of food energy. My Filipino studies indicated that
broadacre organic sugarcane has more beneficial soil criteria with an abundance of
endemic earthworms plus higher yields. Ironically, huge funds to conserve Qld’s GBR
see it as only as an ocean problem and are blind to such a simple land-based solution.
The humble earthworm may thus be viewed as the most vital monitor and mediator of
healthy soil processes (and of all food-webs) with the challenge now to scientifically
reconfirm these higher organic yields, greater soil carbon storage capacities and
earthworm abundances on a broader scale and in greater depth in different regions.
As with Rachel Carson’s 1963 book “Silent Spring” that helped to highlight poisoning
of the Planet and initiate environmental movements, we need now to unite to redress the
extinction issue and carbon challenge. Geothermal energy (also overlooked because it
is underground) can help reduce carbon emissions, but for remediation it is timely to
reconsider organic farming and topsoil conservation to avoid, with my apologies to
Rachel Carson, a “Slimeless Spring” due to the demise of earthworms. People feel
helpless when confronted with massive global issues, yet the solution to species loss,
climate change and food safety is quite simple and entirely achievable: We must require
our basic staples – rice, maize and wheat – are produced chemical-free and organically.
We should recycle all our organic ‘wastes’ through composting earthworms too to
produce the best natural vermicompost fertilizers. Problem solved; now let’s have a
well deserved (cool and organic) beer and then get onto other, less crucial, matters.
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