What is the difference between vermiculture and vermicomposting?
A. Vermiculture operations emphasize breeding earthworms for re-sale. A vermiculture business supplying worms as bait may concentrate upon raising large worms (with the idea that a larger worm catches a larger fish). Historically, many of these operations also sold worms based upon worm count, i.e., a number of worms was counted and sold for a given price. For some reason, this idea continues to persist in the present, in spite of the fact that no one is actually going to count 1,000 worms to sell for $5, $15, or $25. In fact, if there are about 1,000 adult redworms in a pound, these worms will be weighed (not counted), but unfortunately many still sell by the count. Referring to numbers of worms is confusing. With the new emphasis upon vermicomposting, worm biomass, i.e., the weight of a quantity of earthworms, is used to determine the quantity of feedstock that can be processed. Vermicomposting operations emphasize transforming organic waste into a marketable product, vermicompost, t