Why Help Earthworms Proliferate?

Healthy soil is the foundation of life on land. And a major contributor to healthy soil is, of course, the earthworm. If a particular plot of ground has a healthy earthworm population, it is healthy soil with healthy plants growing in it. The land is probably not being poisoned by pesticides. And it's not barren or exhausted or being chemically fertilized. And obviously if the plot of land has been paved over, earthworms cannot live there at all.

In other words, the earthworm population is a good indicator of the health of the soil. More places on earth with earthworms thriving in the soil means a healthier planet.

When the soil is healthy, plants are thriving, and animals that eat the plants thrive too. Including human beings. There is good evidence that the collapse of every civilization in history can be traced back to unhealthy soil. Read more about that here.

Environmentalists and concerned citizens have lots of significant issues to deal with. The problems are complex enough to be overwhelming. So focusing on earthworms makes our task simpler. Earthworms are an easy way to measure success: If the earthworm population is thriving in more and more places on earth, we are succeeding. Where the earthworm population is decreasing, we are failing and need to remedy the situation.

Focusing on the earthworm population also means each of us can do something about it. You can eat organically grown food and grass-fed meat. The land that produced those foods has more earthworms in the soil than foods grown with chemical fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides. Organically grown foods and grass-fed meat are usually more expensive than mass-produced food, but better for the planet (and better for your own health).

Many of us can have a compost pile that feeds earthworms. This is another very easy thing to do that helps the earthworm population increase.

You can raise earthworms. You can find many videos on YouTube showing how to set up your own little earthworm farm at home. When you grow them in a box or bucket, the birds and other predators can't get to them, so it can help increase the total earthworm population (as well as getting rid of your food waste in an ecologically beautiful way). It creates rich, healthy soil you can put into your garden. And, of course, you can add extra earthworms to your garden as they proliferate in your compost heap or earthworm box.

You can also take advantage of your six degrees of separation and share what you're doing with others and influence them to help increase the earthworm population too. You never know who you might influence and how far that influence might go.

If you want to help the earth, help the earthworm.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.