WORM FERTILIZER FOR SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Posted by AGROTEC 2021

Vermicompost

The term vermicompost is used for humus-like materials obtained as a result of composting organic waste using earthworms. Various animal (cattle, sheep, horse, rabbit, etc.) excreta, forest product wastes, kitchen wastes, pruning and harvest wastes in grass-fruit-vegetable gardens, paper wastes and many other organic wastes can be fed as feed to worms to produce vermicompost. Organic wastes are digested by a large number of microorganisms in the digestive system of worms and transformed into odorless, organic-rich vermicompost. The aim is to process these waste materials as quickly and effectively as possible.

Our country is rich in organic wastes. With the utilization of wastes as vermicompost, dependence on chemical fertilizers in agricultural production will be reduced, and great economic and environmental benefits will be achieved.

In the face of the gradual decrease of organic matter in our agricultural lands (decreasing below 1%), soil improvement issues gain more importance. For this purpose, the use of vermicompost fertilizer, which contains approximately 40% total organic matter, is of great importance in preventing the declining fertility of soils and entrusting them to future generations. Unfortunately, "farm fertilizers", which are abundant in our country among the wastes, cannot be used as compost due to many wrong practices, and when used in this way, it brings many environmental problems. As a result of various laboratory and field-greenhouse experiments, these fertilizers are transformed into the second product vermicompost produced by feeding worms; The features that cause environmental problems in this fertilizer disappear and turn into organic fertilizer and are accepted as an important agricultural input for soils. The fact that vermicompost, which is obtained by feeding various wastes to earthworms (Eisenia foetida etc.), is a good organic fertilizer for agricultural soils is also important in terms of economy.

Vermicompost; It does not pose any health risk due to hygienic production techniques and some features of worms, does not contain heavy metals and harmful microorganisms, increases the production potential of soils and% N, P, K contents are respectively 1.5-2%, 2.5-4.1% and It is a valuable organic fertilizer with around 1.4-9.2%.

Source: Çukurova Journal of Agricultural and Food Sciences