I’m gonna talk about something that many might consider a bit gross. If you dislike thinking about bodily functions–this is your official warning. Look the other way, skip this post, on you go! 
Ok.
Is everybody buckled and ready to go?
As many of you know, I started a mulch pile recently. It’s something I’ve not done before, so although I have placed the magnificent dream of world wide well health and safety for women of color on my mulch pile, I am also fairly certain that at some point I will fuck the whole thing up. They say it’s virtually impossible to fuck up a mulch pile–but–well–I’m me. I find ways to fuck plenty of unfuckable things up quite marvelously, so I don’t doubt for a minute that I am sitting on a ticking time bomb of mulch right now, as we speak.
Anyway. So I’ve been looking around online, sorta desperately looking for ways to keep my mulch pile a hopping–and I came across this site that talks about how urine is one of the best liquid organic fertilizers.
Yes, you read that correctly. Your urine–your pee–can make some really great mulch.
1. Plants grew more rapidly, bigger and healthier than those grown with conventional agricultural techniques. Less water was needed.
2. In the case of plants that produce edible leaves — lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, chives, parsley, quintoniles (Amaranthus hybridus), quelites (Chenoponium album), verdolagas (Portulaca oleracea) and all types of herbs — the produce was outstanding. Leaves were big and bright dark green in color. Particularly remarkable was the nopal (Opuntia sp.), a cactus with big, green, prickly, pallet-like edible leaves, actually transformed stems, tender and fleshy (pencas in Spanish) very much appreciated in Mexico. It has excellent nutritious value: it has been called the Aztec beefsteak and serves as a natural medicine, for example, for diabetes.
3. Some fruit-bearing plants, specially hot peppers essential in the Mexican diet, grew well and produced abundantly; but were not as hot as those conventionally grown.
4. Other fruit-bearing plants did beautifully in their early stages, but rather poorly in terms of fruits. Such was the case of tomatoes, green tomatoes (Physalis pubescens), squash, beans, cauliflower, cucumber.
5. Some experimentation was made with root plants, but not much, since the containers being used had a relatively small diameter, and could accommodate too few plants. There were good results with radishes. However, people would certainly be interested in onion and garlic. Carrots are usually so inexpensive in the market, it is not cost effective to cultivate them.
When I first read this, I was kind of grossed out. Eeww, urine in your dirt, gross! But I sat with the idea for a while, considered why I found the idea gross, and really dug into the idea of mass waste systems.
In other words, urine and shit has been a natural by-product of humanity for so long–and yet the mass waste systems (toilets, sewage systems, etc) are fairly recent inventions. Inventions that many in the world don’t even have yet.
I started to consider, why did city wide sewage systems come into being? I admit, this is the one time where I refused to let my fingers talk to the google gods–I stuck with contemplation. I thought about how when I was in elementary school and doing a school wide research product on India, one of bits of research that was used to keep the kids interest in the project was how you shouldn’t shake the left hand of a person from India because (voice goes into a whisper) they use that hand to wipe their asses–without toilet paper! (cue screams of laughter from kids). What were we all laughing at?
I thought about how 30 years later, a white professor tried to share the same information with me and I cut him off before he could share. He stopped with an embarrassed laugh. What was he laughing at? Why was he embarrassed?
I thought of how when my kids were smaller, there was a quiet competition between parents to see who could get their kids potty trained first. I remember feeling sorta sick hearing stories of parents who spanked their 10-12 month old kids as a way to get them potty trained faster. I remember one mother who told me, “I don’t put up with that shit. She knows better” when talking to me about inevitable accidents that happen on the road to potty training.
I thought about how in my own home one of my massive pet peeves is when kids don’t flush the damn toilet. How many times had I screamed across the universe “Who didn’t flush the damn toilet??? FLUSH THE DAMN TOILET!!!” Why is it so offensive to parents to clean up their kids by-products? WHy is it so offensive to me to even view those by-products?
I thought about how it is considered a sign of “civility” for cultures to have ‘modern’ sewage systems that involve getting by-products as far away from the hands, noses, and homes of the people of the culture–As if nobody in the culture participates in uncouth activities like peeing sitting down instead of standing up, reading while shitting, having traintracks/chocolate stains/hershy kisses/etc in their shorts, peeing on the seat and not wiping it off, accidentally sitting on the pee of males in the house…
And I wondered, when did it become a sign of civility to hide natural human activities that ever single damn one of us participates in, usually multiple times a day?
Was it during active colonization? Was it during the segregation/Jim Crow era? Did former masters find themselves apprehensive about allowing newly freed slaves to piss alongside them instead of wipe their asses for them? Did peeing into a gold plated bowl make soldiers feel as if they were somehow better or more worthy of life and land than the indigenous people they killed?
Why is it that I am more than willing to question “civilized’ in other contexts (i.e. the role of women in society, how religion is understood, etc), but for so long, I’ve just accepted that the only ‘civilized’ use for my urine/shit is to supply toilet makers with jobs?
So, my dear friends–yes, I gathered up my cup and my milk jug, and proceeded to collect and dump my urine in my mulch pile. Oddly enough, it wasn’t that gross. No worse than collecting a urine sample for a doctor or whatever. And it really does work on your mulch. Within a day, my mulch was steaming and cooking in beautiful fashion, exactly the way a mulch pile is supposed to steam and cook to get the most effective compost.
But the part I really wanted to tell everybody about was the change that came over me since I began my mulch pile.
Do you know what it’s like to for literally the first time in your life, value every single cell of your body? To look upon every single thing your body does, every single function it performs, as valuable and important? To not have that irritating habit of dividing your body into ‘good’ sections and ‘bad’ sections (I love my eyes, but I would get a nose job in a minute!).
If even my piss is important to rebirth and maintaining life, how is it possible to hate something as necessary and and as functional as my skin or my hair or my ass?
Do you know what it feels like to have a part of your body achieve what you have always dreamed of–freedom to create for the love of oneself and ones family–NOT for a corporation, government, capitalism, or desperation?
That’s where I sit now, thinking about my amazing body, learning about shit and piss and how peoples across the world treat them. I value my body, I value what my body creates, I dream of every single cell, atom, molecule, and I imagine it interacting with a world in a way that awes me.
I am necessary for life.
And I know this now because of my garden, because of my mulch pile. Because of my urine.
Which is why I am now going to type the oddest sentences I have ever typed in my life; and do while laughing with pure joy. There are lessons to be learned in contemplating our urine, in contemplating our shit. There is liberation in what we find most contemptible about ourselves. If we allow ourselves to face the stink, to approach the disgust on our own terms in our own way, I’ve learned that up close, it’s not so bad. And in it’s own way, it’s sweet, life affirming, and transformative.
If we can find ways to embrace and honor the lowly pile of shit, the singular cup of urine–what other miracles of the world can we possible achieve?
- Share
December 4th, 2008 at 12:10 pm #
Err…
well the big problem I can see with urine as mulch is that whatever you put in your body that is water-soluble, it will come out in your pee and is not easy to treat, ie any medicines that you take. Most medications end up getting peed out, and since they are not currently being treated during waste water treatment, you’re getting other people’s ibuprofen, Welbutrin, birth control pills, etc.
:/ that does not appeal to me as being a good idea to have in my chard
December 4th, 2008 at 12:15 pm #
but aren’t you going to get meds whether you use your own urine or *water* that has somebody elses meds in it? I see your point, and that really…is not a good thought to me, to say the least.
but I think in this day and age, where we know for a fact that meds ARE in our water system, that pollution IS in our air, that ALL of our rain is contaminated, that there’s no such thing as water *anywhere* that does not contain some level of contaminate–is it really that bad?
December 4th, 2008 at 12:17 pm #
also–don’t the worms in mulch bins work as a counter effect (so to speak) on many of the contaminates, if not all?
December 4th, 2008 at 1:11 pm #
then you get into issues of bioaccumulation. It passes into the worms but unless worms can process that stuff, it won’t help and eventually we’ll gain immunity or be effed up.
Unfortunately we can’t control those things, which means that someone (maybe ourselves?) have to put more pressure on Big Pharma to fix these problems.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:17 pm #
The value of urine is that it contains urea, which is loaded with “fixed” nitrogen; nitrogen that is chemically combined with carbon molecules and is thus usable by microorganisms that can use it to grow and convert it into forms that in turn can be used by plants. Organisms absolutely cannot make protein without nitrogen.
Protein is not just used for muscle building. Protein is also used to make enzymes, which are the catalysts that all organisms use to make all the biochemical reactions that occur in every cell of your body work. It’s also involved in a number of structural components of cells. Even plants that have no muscles at all must be able to make protein or they die.
The usual substances that go into a compost pile are very low in nitrogen. Urinating in your mulch pile provides an excellent source of nitrogen and I can well imagine that it accelerates decomposition. I’ve thrown a little lawn fertilizer in to do the same thing, but you have now inspired me.
I wouldn’t worry about medicines and other such things that might be in your urine. The increased temperatures and high microbial growth in the pile will tend to cause them to degrade. Couple that with dilution from rain and the limited uptake by the plants and I’d say it’s very unlikely that pissing in your compost heap will cause any problems with the vegetables grown with it, and will definitely lead to more nutritious food. And unless you have a urinary infection, your urine is sterile.
BTW – farmers in the old days used to save up the manure from their livestock and spread it around in their fields for fertilizer. The best garden I ever had was when I rented a house with a barn in back where the owners had been keeping horses for years. I dug into an old pile of manure/sawdust mix that they’d been shoveling out of the barn for the last 20 years and mixed it in with my garden. I swear, if I had stuck my rake handle-first in the ground and left it there it would have sprouted.
Some still do this; but how would you like to drive a wagon around filled with manure spreading it all round? One of the problems we’ve had here in Illinois is that when farmers do this in the spring the people who have moved into the new subdivisions next door complain about the smell and start filing suit. Never mind that the farmers were there long before they were and that this is ecologically a much better thing to do than to spread chemical fertilizers.
All people should claim working in the soil as their birthright. Even if you only grow some flowers and a few tomatoes, you’ll start to connect to the earth. It belongs to everyone.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm #
Great post, Bfp!
I have the feeling that more and more people are going to have the epiphany “Wait, I spent all that money on MiracleGro and nasty chemicals when I could have just pissed/taken a shit??”
“Do you know what it’s like to for literally the first time in your life, value every single cell of your body? To look upon every single thing your body does, every single function it performs, as valuable and important?”
I’ve been having similar feelings about menstrual blood lately. (I think it would probably be a good fertilizer, too, although a little harder to collect than urine.) I’ve been using cloth pads for about two years now and they’ve really changed my attitude about bodily excretions.
At first I wanted to use them so I wouldn’t create so much landfill waste, but then I began to like them because they made me come to terms with my own body. As a teenager, I was given rigorous training in how to handle tampons and disposable pads. This training was based on the “ew ew EW!!” factor — flush it down the toilet or throw it in the trashcan as fast as humanly possible. Hold your breath, don’t look at it, don’t think about it. But when you find yourself having to soak and wash cloth pads, you actually start to pay attention to what comes out of your body — clots, color variations, pieces of the uterine lining, etc. I realized that, oh, this isn’t some horrible thing to be ashamed of — it’s just another part of myself.
I also love the feeling of, in that one tiny instance, having extricated myself from large corporations. I no longer have to make that trip to the grocery store each month, I no longer have to pay attention to the commercials.
So, while I haven’t been able to use my menstrual blood for anything, I’m able to value it for the first time. I can definitely relate to your feelings about your pee.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:49 pm #
Emily, I use cloth pads also and I water my plants with the bloody soaking water. I work at a blood bank, and old-timers tell me that in the early days (up until about oh, 1982*), expired / excess / unused blood bags went home with employees to fertilize the most amazing roses. So you could put the water from soaking the pads on your roses, and they’d love it.
December 4th, 2008 at 4:25 pm #
Well huh! this is one of the more interesting blog posts/threads I’ve come across recently (for real). I haven’t been all that grossed out by pee on a visceral level since I learned that it doesn’t have any bacteria in it till it hits the toilet bowl and starts accumulating–in terms of bacteria it’s cleaner than your own mouth. Poo however still grosses me out, in large part because it’s like 50% bacteria (as I learned from my completely awesome ninth grade bio teacher, who followed up this tidbit with: “and that is why you should always use a dental dam when practicing oral-anal sex.” which prompted a stunned/awkward/horrified silence from all us fifteen-year-olds until one girl asked timidly, “people do that?” My completely awesome teacher laughed and said one of the truest things I’ve ever heard: “If you can think of it, people have done it. And even if you can’t think of it, people have probably done it.”)
Is it wildly irrational to be freaked out by bacteria when they are freaking everywhere including as I mentioned all over our mouths? Yup. But, there you have it.
December 4th, 2008 at 4:52 pm #
Cool post! I would totally start doing this if I had a yard/garden/compost pile. Maybe some day.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:33 pm #
this is a really fascinating post. I really like that you are questioning all the assumptions you are questioning (one of my favorite things about your blog).
But it also seems like in this narrative your cycle from your own body only includes you. but if the mulch pile is outside, and your gardening is in the earth, isn’t the cycle of connection broader? And also, one of the other differences between the groups of people you are talking about is population density – having enough space to pee far from where you drink & eat. Sewage systems was not present in Europe either, for the poor, for a long time. And the poor died in massive numbers from epidemics as a result. This was ascribed to them being uncivilized, and I think sewage systems were part of how that stigma was altered – people weren’t blamed for getting sick once it was understood how diseases can be transmitted through water (I found The Ghost Map about a London cholera epidemic to be an interesting account of this)
It’s not like we need to fear bacteria in the abstract, but bacteria in one place can be okay while in another it can be lethal, so e.coli which is great in my gut is not so great in my mouth.
So I would also wonder about the public health implications – since that was a major element of why cities have sewage systems. It isn’t only civility, it was cholera. something which is a problem in cities where there aren’t sewage systems even today.
As you and your compost and garden are connected to the larger ecosystem and water table, that other people and beasties draw on, doesn’t that mean that medications or bacteria (including ones okay in the gut) you have could leach into groundwater and be drunk by others?
If you are healthy then I imagine that’s not a problem, but if I were doing this I would try to know exactly (as far as I can) what is in my physical system before I introduce it into the larger system. And I guess monitor myself in case that changes.
sorry if this is long.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm #
bfp, i am a long-time lurker and a HUGE fan of your writing. i am delurking now (of all topics!) to throw in my two cents about menstrual blood as well, haha. i use a menstrual cup (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cup), which allows me to capture my menstrual blood inside my body and then pour it out into the toilet, or, sometimes, a watering can! haha.
menstrual blood is very nutrient-rich (after all, it’s for making new life!) and works as a great fertilizer. using the cup also has made me feel a lot more connected to my body, as both you and emily touched on.
we have a compost pile at my house that has been composting much slower now that it’s getting cold, maybe some pee will help it along, after reading this i’m interested in trying it. thanks for another great post!
- robin
December 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm #
ripley–i have a compost bin, it’s not in the earth. at least not now. by the time it gets to earth it will be decomposed and broken down into nitrogen!
also, I do think it’s interesting that one person pouring pee into a mulch pile is considered as dangerous as millions of people in one area without sewage. as I have understood it, the problem with sewage in those type of conditions is not the sewage itself so much (it is, but not really) but that 1. there’s so much of it, and 2. there’s no way to adequately disburse it throughout the available space and 3. any massive pile of un’regulated’ shit will *always* be a health problem, no matter what it is. In other words, the problem is the quantity of byproducts due to too many people in one area, not that there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with pee/shit.
For example, as mentioned above, manure has historically been used to fertilize the land/food we eat–and yet there are things as most of us in the farming community or linked to the farming community know, where factory farms dump all their gathered shit into massive holes and create toxic pools of shit that kill off and mutate massive ecosystems throughout the area. The problem here is not that there’s shit, but that there’s so much of it because cows/pigs etc weren’t meant to living in factory farm type ecosystems.
Am I saying that everybody should start dumping their pee and shit outside their doors ala old time colonial u.s.? No. Am I saying that we should reconsider our relationship with shit and piss? yes. For example, if we as activists start demanding the right to go through training or something to use our byproducts in gardens that feed entire cities–what would naturally be an integral part of those demands? that, like meep said, pharma companies find a better way to deal with pill break downs, that anti-biotics stop being feed to animals in the food chain, etc. But to do that, we have to get over our inherent distaste with our by-products and our belief that there is something dirty or filthy with natural human functions (and I am talking *exclusively* about u.s. here–I don’t know what it’s like outside of u.s.).
Also– what do dogs/cats/mice/squirrels/birds/etc do every single day multiple times a day? dogs are peeing poison from the shit they eat (which is on many levels highly toxic at the worst and unhealthy at the best)–but we don’t consider that to be threatening. Is it because we recognize that it’s being evenly dispersed throughout the ecosystem? Or is it because it’s disgusting urine and we don’t want it in our house, screw the health implications?
I mean–I get what you’re saying about the health implications–I really do. and by all means, like I said, I’m not saying let’s all start throwing our slop buckets out in the streets every day! Hooray for walking on poop and pee! :p
I’m just saying that when used in the quantities that I’ve used them to feed mulch piles (which have worms that break that shit down and reintegrate into the earth etc) it’s 1. something that scientists are encouraging in huge inner cities like mexico city–it’s encouraging a respect for the body, it’s going to get me some good ass food, AND it’s making me as an activist reconsider the basic ‘good’ idea of sewage treatment plants that we are dependent upon, the wisdom of collecting shit into massive piles that are then released into local rivers (flint river is often completly closed off to fishing/swimming and even boating because it has so much raw sewage in it)–How could we shift the hugely negative implications of dumping an entire geographical region’s raw sewage into a river into something positive like using it for energy sources or fertilizer etc?
And can we achieve a change like that without reconsidering our cultural distaste for body byproducts?
December 4th, 2008 at 7:27 pm #
Mmmm, you’re awesome.
I do not have a compost pile, because I can’t even cook, let alone mulch and grow things. But I’ve had similar experiences just switching from tampons to alternative menstrual products–the DivaCup and such. Just moving beyond being grossed out by bodily functions and learning to appreciate them. And to talk about ‘em on blogs without feeling weird.
December 5th, 2008 at 3:37 am #
Hehehe I really don’t think you can fuck up a mulch pile, BFP!
I’d think that the success of using urine would depend on the particular chemistry of the soil, which you can find out using a simple test kit to read the pH balance and stuff, so you can figure out if it could use more or less nitrogen or whatever. This would probably be my main consideration. I’m not too worried about the rest. Frankly I don’t really even relate to the squeamishness about such things; I mean, the culture that produced the twinkie, the chicken mcnugget, and the hot dog is scared about trace chemicals in mulch? Come on.
Millions of people in China would starve without the widespread use of “night soil” to fertilize rice fields. That is, decomposed human feces. This is how they manage to feed 100 people using the same amount of farmland that feeds 10 people in the US. In the Chinese countryside, fecal matter is collected in septic tanks in the ground. The flammable gas that is discharged is often piped into the house and used for lighting, cooking, and sometimes even heating. After a certain level of decomposition, it becomes night soil, which is carried in baskets out onto the rice fields. This is how they push the land to yield 3 crops of rice per year. I don’t care what anyone in the US thinks about these techniques. Like I said, millions depend on it.
I learned about all this when I traveled to China for the first time when I was 7. I stayed on a farm and remember being impressed and delighted by how ingenious it was to light a lantern and heat up a wok using free natural gas. And no, it did not stink. It was a profound experience for a kid raised in the US/Canada.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts and ongoing exploration, BFP! Diggin it. Yes, gardening can be a site of liberation.
Peace.
December 5th, 2008 at 4:53 am #
I should add that the use of night soil in China is becoming less common as the country modernizes and urbanizes. Large stretches of the country today are practically unrecognizable as the same country I visited as a boy, in 1978! You wouldn’t believe the scale, scope, and speed of the transformation that’s happening, it’s really indescribable.
Here’s a link I found on the subject, too.
Okay, end of tangent.
December 5th, 2008 at 7:37 am #
I have to say, this is one of the *best* conversations I have ever been a part of anywhere eva. I was telling W* last night–Only online could there ever be a conversation which includes using menstrual blood to feed roses!!!! Who the hell knew!?
The thing I love best about the stories that are being shared is the assumption that so many people seem to have that meant the first thing people thought about when looking at ‘waste’ was–I wonder what I could use this for? *rather than*–mindlessly throwing it away.
I think that’s a Huuuuuge intervention into consumer culture–a consumer culture that encourages us to simply throw something away without even thinking about it, so that it can be replaced through buying something new. I love that at one point in time (and even now!)humans did own some semblance of free thought–where personal/community needs came before corporate needs–where human creativity birthed something as valuable into the world as beautiful healthy roses and three crops of rice a season. Human creativity and free thinking will *always* win over corporate created needs and desires…
December 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am #
in palestine the ancient stone houses are made of animal feces and stone. the feces is used as a mortar. nowadays they use concrete but they all say that the concrete does not hold together nearly as well.
urine is great as an antifungal (think athlete’s foot and other skin fungi)and an antiviral. and an internal antiseptic. gandhi drank it daily to clean out his system. i have done it to, esp when i was getting sick.
and of course putting menstrual blood to water your plants with…thats just being nice to the plants.
and breastmilk is great for eye conjunctivitis and is being used for people living with immune deficiency disorders to keep healthy. and of course bathing your baby in breastmilk to keep the skin soft and healthy…
so all this talk about chemicals and bacteria and viruses leaking out of the body and into the environment doesnt acknowledge that urine and breastmilk also act as an anti-germies as well…so the body has a way of balancing itself out with the rest of the universe…i imagine that for every new chemical we create the body and the natural world creates an ‘antidote’ and then we humans destroy the antidote because we think it is trash…
December 5th, 2008 at 12:07 pm #
BFP, after reading your post and writing my previous comment, I got to thinking, How is it that a Chinese American radical/progressive thinker who became familiar with agricultural use of night soil at age 7 has never even given a moment’s thought to potential implementations of similiar composting/recycling systems for use right here in North America? It’s funny how our cultural surroundings almost automatically constrict our thinking.
Anyway, so I got to doing some online research and came upon a post that I figured I had to share with you, if only because the title cracked me up: The Poop and Pee Revolution. Hehe. Enjoy.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:00 pm #
D’oh! I wanted to share the gospel of humanure, but Kai beat me to it.
I was really excited to read this post, because I’ve spent the past few months learning about the permaculture and urban homesteading movements. Yes, the garden is a site of liberation – we’ve been trained to view eating as passive consumption, food as a commodity only *someone else* can produce, and waste as something we rely on authority figures to get rid of for us. The most effective way to put a stop to destructive and abusive systems of industrial farming and waste management is to obviate them.
Sorry for the preaching – this is a subject that gets me really fired up! (I could also recommend a couple of books if you like, although since I’m a novice at this, you may have already heard of them.)
December 6th, 2008 at 5:49 pm #
wow, i am SO HAPPY that the first post i found on bfp’s new blog is this one! i wish more people talked about this shit (ha ha!), and the discussion in comments just kept the awesomeness going. my housemates and i were discussing the possibility of composting come spring – i wonder how they will respond to my new idea… or maybe i should just pee on the pile without telling them?
December 6th, 2008 at 8:11 pm #
I hail from Melbourne in Australia, home to a large population of Greek citrus growers (I used to say that Melbourne is demographically the second largest Greek city on earth, but it’s a long time since I learned this and it may be a factoid.) It has been known for a long time that one must always wee on the lemon tree in the back yard.
Another fact which may not please you is that if climate change causes your area to undergo water restrictions, you will be encouraged not to flush the toilet except for solids. “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” Of course if you’re putting all your wee on the compost then you won’t need the toilet for that anyway!
December 7th, 2008 at 9:22 am #
When I was in Mexico this summer, I learned a little about dry toilets, which are being promoted as ways to save water and also the terrible sewage system and to prevent pollution. With dry toilets, *everything* gets composted – you use ash to dry it out, and I’m not sure if there’s anything else that treats the waste, but it does become safe to put back into the soil. I think we should adopt these in the U.S.!!
December 8th, 2008 at 2:06 pm #
Wow–what an thought-provoking post! For the most part I agree with Ripley; especially when humans live in more crowded settings, sewage treatment and especially drinking water treatment are incredibly important from a human health standpoint. People may not always have had toilets and certainly our modern disconnect from our bodies and their functions is an issue, but I think there are separable health issues too. For example, people use digested feces (e.g. night soil, which I don’t really know much about specifically, but as mentioned above) but generally don’t spray fresh human sewage on food crops even though that would be a convenient way to get nutrients for free and get rid of a waste product. Outhouses and latrines might smell bad and be a more “in-your-face” reminder of our bodily functions, but people have still always tended to site them somewhat away from their homes and wells/drinking water sources. We may not have had “modern” sewage treatment for that long, but people have always managed their waste to try and minimize disease, in the same way perhaps that they are careful of how human and animal bodies are treated after death; some of it is an “ick factor,” but some is legitimate concern based on generations of observation that feces and corpses can spread illness.
I’ve heard urine is pretty safe; there are these compostable diapers you can get, and they encourage you to put the pee diapers on your compost pile. Poopy diapers are a different issue according to the manufacturer.
RonF, as to the manure sludge spreading, I have a slightly different take on it… I think it didn’t used to be a problem because (as bfp said in a different comment), animal production wasn’t as intensive as it is now. So farmers spread all their manure and it worked fine and that was it. But then they started having more animals on the farm and continued to spread all the manure, and the crops/soil get overloaded with nutrients and they run off and pollute the water. I think modern farmers who spread manure often spread too much just as a way to get rid of it, and sure the crops grow fine unless it’s way, way too much, but the watershed suffers (algae blooms, fish kills, people’s wells nearby get polluted, etc.) Also the confined animal feeding results in more risk of disease, which can then be spread through water polluted by the runoff. That’s what I think, anyway.
This is a really thought-provoking post!
December 16th, 2008 at 3:32 pm #
Weeks late, here is a garden link:
http://growinggardensforpalestine.blogspot.com/