Earthy notes Winemakers urged to help save worms

Vineyards are generally the most inhospitable of landscapes for the humble earthworm; the soil beneath the vines is usually kept bare and compacted by machinery.

- Helena Horton

But now a team of scientists and winemakers have been exploring ways to turn vineyards into havens for our humble worms.

The bare soil is problematic because worms need vegetation on the soil. The pesticides regularly used in vineyards are also highly harmful to the invertebrate, as is the practice of compacting the earth: worms need the soil to be porous rather than compacted, so they can move through it.

Earthworms are important invertebrates, the engineers of an ecosystem that may be as diverse as the Amazon. Their diggings aerate soil and they pull leaves and other organic matter into the earth and recycle them. But their populations have declined by a third in the UK over the past 25 years due to pesticides and over-tilling of soil.