Earthworm breeding - a profitable business

A small farm located in Campani village, Bihor county, has been breeding earthworms since 1999. The business belongs to Dutchman Kees Hymans and local Rita Baicu. The Dutchman, who is a drama teacher, has been dealing with earthworm breeding for more than 10 years.

As he came in Romania, he turned his hobby into a business, finding an ideal partner in Rita Baicu, who had recently graduated the Farming High School. The two entrepreneurs moved Bioland farm, the sole farm dealing with this kind of activity in Romania, to atei outskirts.

Kees Hymans has an earthworm farm in the Netherlands, where he invested DM15,000 for buying the earthworms, as he already owned the building, the land and the other utilities.

He invested another DM25,000 in equipment and machines. The Dutch-based farm is currently producing 40 cubic metres of soil for two Dutch farms. Kees has expanded his business in Romania and now he spends six months a year at the earthworm farm from here.

“I began with a 4X4 bed. The earthworms are fed with vegetal residuals, manure, leaves, dried plants and sawdust. It is very important to give them what they want, and especially vegetal residuals,” Rita Baicu says.

The two entrepreneurs sell soil for flowers and the farm’s most important product-Vitavert, a fertiliser produced by earthworms. Vitavert is a natural product containing all the substances a plant needs to grow and has neutral pH.

One sample of Vitavert, containing 25 millilitres, costs 3,000 lei, without VAT.

Specialists say that a plant fertilised with Vitavert has all the substances it needs for two weeks. The entrepreneurs sell one 5-litre bag of flower soil for 25,000 lei, but it costs 50,000 lei in the Oradea-based flower shops.

The two entrepreneurs had intended to change the transparent bag with an opaque one, but the customers were accustomed to see the product through the bag, knowing it was produced by Bioland.

This is because the soil produced at the Dutchman’s farm has a distinct appearance; it looks like some small pearls. Rita and Kees mix the soil with perlite, a volcanic powder, which absorbs the water and gradually releases it, depending on the soil’s humidity degree.

The two partners are proud of their innovation, which is entirely produced with material from Romania and nothing imported. Rita and Kees have more than 20 clients – flower shops and gas stations selling soil or gardening tools.

As demand is increasing, the farm’s surface has expanded and several workers have been hired. Beside florists and gardeners, fishers buying earthworms for bait are also familiar with Bioland.

The two partners say one has to work a lot in order to make a profit from this business. But if you really get involved, you can get a lot of satisfaction.