We should all be worried the worm’s turned

HARD to imagine a more awesome sight than the so-called ‘super moon’ just before dawn on a crisp winter’s morning.

It’s one of the few rewards for dragging yourself out of bed in the dark and forcing your protesting limbs to plod around the park, which is what I do every morning in the vain hope that I’ll live for ever — or at least long enough to see out this virus crisis.

Monday’s moon was a superb sight. Superb and sobering. It was the last full moon of winter and it’s known as the worm moon.

That’s because it coincides with the emergence of earthworms from the thawing soil. Or at least it did. The origin of its name dates back to antiquity and in the centuries that have passed there have never been so few worms; they are disappearing from farmland at a terrifying rate.

The latest global studies suggest the world has only about a third of the worms it had when Darwin made his famous study of them in the late 19th century and showed why they are so vital to each and every one of us.

In many areas they have all but vanished. The reason is simple. Intensive agriculture. Worms cannot compete with the insecticides and herbicides and synthetic fertilisers that are spread and sprayed in pursuit of an extra few tons of cereal.

And the disappearance of worms is catastrophic for the planet. Massively more carbon is released into the atmosphere. Not just from soil that would have otherwise acted as a carbon sink, but also from the vast carbon emissions created by manufacturing agrochemicals. Plants become less robust and less nutritious. Songbirds starve. The soil dies.

That warning was delivered by Michael Gove when he was Environment Secretary. He said large areas of arable land in this country would be dead within 30 years if we carry on the way we’re going. He described it as the ‘fundamental eradication of soil fertility’.

Healthy, living soil with its trillions of worms and micro-organisms is ultimately all we’ve got. Once it’s gone, the world goes hungry.

The threat from coronavirus, hideous though it is, will pass. This won’t.