Mark Hodson

And the soil that's there is markedly different as well.

The earthworm burrows create holes and pores in the soil.

And when the earthworms ingest and then ingest soil, so the soil that comes out the back end of an earthworm produces these sort of small, bobbly things called aggregates.

Yeah.

So as the earthworms are processing the soil, they do a lot of things.

Typically, plants grow about 25% better in the presence of earthworms.

And there was a recent modeling study that shows that earthworms are responsible for about 6.5% of global grain production and a bit more than 2% of global legume production as well.

So now there'll either be less food available or we'll probably be using more inorganic fertilizers to compensate for the absence of earthworms.

And that's bad news because there's a big carbon footprint involved in the production of inorganic fertilizers.

If we were going to replace the earthworm activity and the boost to plant growth through composting, we'd need to be better at chopping it up into small pieces because that's one thing that earthworms are really good at.

They speed up the composting process.

Mm-hmm.

It's more a case of what isn't underground now.

So their burrows, probably gone.

And the soil structure, these aggregates, those will have broken down as well.

So the soil will be more compact.

Soil's a bit like a sponge.

And earthworms help the soil stay spongy.

So in the absence of the earthworms, water, A, can't flow through it.

So it's going to start increasing flood risks.