Page 6 - İngilizce

2. BACKGROUND

The enormous increase in population, economic growth, urbanization, industrialization, and
agricultural production is coupled with the accumulated waste generation, creating a serious

problem in the environment. In order to dispose of this waste safely, it should be converted

effectively. This is achieved by bio-composting and vermicomposting of the farm, urban and
agro-industrial waste and remains. It is being increasingly realized that composting is an

environmentally friendly process, convert a wide variety of wastes into valuable agricultural

inputs.

Global exploitative industrial agriculture, reliant on the excessive use of agrichemicals is
attributed to be the key contributor to the widespread destruction of the soil and is accountable

for 50% of total GHG emissions (Koont, 2011). The rising economic and environmental cost
of agricultural chemicals, coupled with the ever-increasing cost of landfills, calls for a

reorientation of agricultural management. The process of utilizing surface-dwelling species of
earthworms to efficiently and ecologically break down organic waste, producing a superior

organic fertilizer as a byproduct, referred to as vermicomposting, is successfully providing

sustainable solutions in food production and organic waste management worldwide. The
integration of vermicomposting in agriculture and mainstream waste management presents

economic, environmental, and social benefits for Europe, building resilience in response to the
impacts of climate change, natural resource depletion, and desertification.

It is the belief that harnessing the power of the earthworm to provide the foundations to
transform our food system that underpins the purpose of the PowerWORM project proposal.

Worm composting, otherwise known as vermicomposting delivers the foundations for building
a local organic food movement that simultaneously provides sustainable solutions in organic

waste management. From a political and cultural perspective, Europe has to focus on the role
of vermicomposting as an integrated model within agriculture, looking at both urban and rural

farming within the private, cooperative, and state governed sector.

The value and importance of earthworms in agriculture was first recognized in writing by the

father of ecology Charles Darwin, who in 1881, declared “Worms are powerful than the African
Elephant and are more important to the economy than the cow”.

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