The North Carolina State University’s 9th annual Vermiculture conference was a huge success this year! The conference ran for 2 days on June 4 & 5 in Raleigh North Carolina. Close to one hundred participants and presenters attended this year’s conference. People traveled from 17 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, British Columbia and Ontario.
Discussion topics at this year’s event included everything from the
latest Vermiculture research and practices to worm husbandry and mid-scale
worm farming. We had the privilege of visiting an active worm farm.
Worm farmer John Blythe was very gracious and informative, explaining
the process and operation of a worm farm.
Rhonda Sherman, Extension Solid Waste Specialist - Biological and Agricultural
Engineering, organized and chaired this year’s conference with her usual
competence and energy. 
Rhonda
brought in speakers to talk about a variety of vermi-related topics.
Dr. Norman Arancon, probably the world’s foremost expert on Vermiculture (now that Clive Edwards has retired), started off the conference with a discussion on his research involving pest and disease suppression using vermicompost teas. He outlined some very impressive results with his compost tea made from worm castings. We all commiserated with Norman when he shared that he must pay $160 for a pound of Red Wigglers in Hawaii.
Tom Herlihy and Allison Jack tag-teamed for much of the conference. Tom lives in Rochester NY & has one of the largest worm operations in North America. Allison is a Ph.D. student at Cornell and teams up with Tom on occasion to run some research projects. Tom talked about Vermicompost marketing and large-scale commercial vermicomposting practices. Allison’s talks featured her research on the benefits and limitations of vermicompost and how much healthier plants are when vermicompost is used. It was a fascinating lecture that showed where the cutting-edge research is in this field.
Mark Purser who owns and operates a large-scale worm farm in Durham, California, led a very interesting talk about worm farming in California and also talked about the great increase in demand for worm cast as well as regular compost.
Jeff Budzich, a project manager with WeCare Organics, presented a talk
on large-scale biosolids vermicomposting. This is a very 
impressive
facility that his company built and operates for the municipality of
Granville, Pennsylvania.
The final speaker was Canada’s favourite worm-woman Cathy Nesbitt of
Cathy’s Crawly Composters. Cathy gave a spirited talk about marketing
a worm business and the state of worms in Canada. Her energetic style
and informative presentation was a wonderful way to close out the conference
Check out the Photo Gallery
