Worm wars are a slippery business
Toronto is the live bait ‘capital of the world,’ but capitalists face a struggle
Every night from spring until fall, a secret battle is waged in fields surrounding Toronto.
Hundreds strap on headlamps and march out into the darkness with one mission — to find and pick as many worms as possible.
“It’s like worm wars,” said Chris Pagonis, owner of Toronto-based Pagonis Live Bait.
“Toronto is the worm capital of the world, people just don’t know about it.
combination of weather patterns and soil types make the GTA an ideal earthworm habitat and the region’s creepy-crawly commodity is shipped by the thousands to bait shops across North America and as far as Europe.
More than a dozen live-bait purchasers and distributors exist in the area, meaning companies face cutthroat competition for fields and for finding enough harvesters to feed the need for nightcrawlers.
Mike Balac owns Canada Live Bait Supply, a simple brick building along the aptly named Mud St., about 20 kilometres southwest of Hamilton.
The 68-year-old has been picking worms since the 1980s when he lost his job as a machinist on Black Monday, the stock market crash of 1987.
For years, harvesting and selling worms provided enough for him to raise a family, but changes to foreign-worker laws and turf wars over fields have pushed him to the brink.
“It’s a tough business now,” he said, explaining that he’s nearly $300,000 in the hole after buying trucks to carry pickers and erecting an outbuilding to house them.
For the past few years, Balac has been unable to keep enough workers to meet the demands of his customers.
His new building is empty and the trucks he bought sit idle.
“I need 60-70 people to get me back on my feet,” he said. “I’ve already lost 40-45 per cent of my business because I can’t supply enough.”
According to Pagonis, rising prices for fields is a problem across the industry.
“Twenty years ago, you could lease a field with a case of beer for the farmer. Now the farmers are demanding $1,000 an acre,” he said.
Finding workers who are willing to go out after worms long before the early bird even has a chance at them is tough, too. If crew chiefs don’t bring harvesters to higher-yield fields, workers will just jump from one crew to another, said Pagonis.
It’s a “roller-coaster” business where the worms aren’t the only thing that’s dirty, he added.
“You’re always dealing at night, dealing with a dirty product and some crew chiefs pay cash.”
The 41-year-old said he has tried to have the industry regulated by the Ministry of Natural Resources, but worms fell outside of its jurisdiction so the movement never got any traction.
But between artificial baits and a generation of kids who are spending less and less time outdoors, the real battle may be whether or not the worm business survives at all.
Pagonis said he isn’t going down without a fight. He’s invested in new worm by-products with the hope that being creative will help him survive.
Balac, the worm-war veteran, has a much simpler dream. His 4-year-old grandson already loves picking worms.
“I’m in good health and I just want to hold onto this business until my grandson grows up,” he said.