At Last! A Word That Works!

[peristaltor]

In his latest book, The Ecotechnic Future, John Michael Greer notes the problem of increasing yields in organic crops using the most obvious fertilizer source, one that literally falls out of farmers' asses:

So why has the world been unable to get its fertilizer together on this issue? What keeps composted humanure and urine from being a primary

Comments

[alobar]

My only problem with human waste as fertilizer stem from the bad health of many humans. I am not worried about pathogens in manure, but I am concerned with GMO foods eaten by humans, antibiotics, and prescription drugs which will be in the manure.

[squidb0i]

The GMO foods will definitely break down when composted. Not sure about the other two.
But if you're not taking it in, you're not putting it out, right? So using your own..

[alobar]

Back when I owned my home I wanted to get a clivus multrum, but I could not afford the unit.

[albionwood]

The antibiotics and drugs are more of a problem for treated wastewater discharges. Most of them are soluble and some pass through the treatment process, ending up in rivers and oceans. It's possible some could also stay in the solids - I'm not sure how much work has been done on the partitioning. Certainly a valid concern.

[squidb0i]

I already fold my dogs manure into our compost, disappears in about a week or so.
And whenever it's convenient, I pee into the flower beds.

If the proverbial feces ever impacts the rotating airflow device, I've got 20+ buckets to use as (among other things) composting/sawdust toilets. Use, mix, seal, put away. Dump into compost pile after a week or so.

[albionwood]

While it's true there is a squick-factor that affects many people's attitudes about the generality of humanure, there are also a number of serious technical and logistical issues that make it problematic. The health concern should not be lightly dismissed, it is very real. Biophobia has roots in the discovery that dirt and biological waste can be very dangerous substances; Cholera and dysentery are no fun at all. So a half-assed (pun intended) effort at composting human waste could very well risk causing serious disease in the food consumer. A farmer who sickens his customers won't have customers

[peristaltor]

Yeah, I would venture a guess and say toxiphobia is more rampant than biophobia, but found in a different crowd. I'm reminded of a South Park episode featuring Miss Information.

I will grant the Organic crowd one concern, that of heavy metals that find their way into the sewer systems of larger and even small cities. I'm not sure what can be done about such discharges, and these metals are, I imagine, more of a concern as plant fertilizer than biological substances.

That said, I'm going to challenge your root for biophobia. I think, and I think Lewis had this in mind when he coined the word, that the roots are actually closer to an evolutionary revulsion to human waste, not a "discovery" one can make logically. Consider the miasma theory of disease, based on nothing more than disgust at smells.

Such a revulsion does carry an evolutionary advantage, of course, since those that wallow in feces will likely spread disease more readily than those who reflexively avoid crap based on the squick factor.

[albionwood]

Biophobia seems a relatively recent development, coming not long after the widespread acceptance and understanding of germ theory etc. That's why I suggested it might be related. The absence of biophobia created conditions for recurring plagues of cholera, dysentery, and other fecal-oral-route diseases throughout the premodern period. Things actually got worse in the Early Modern period, when cities did indeed collect humanure and export it to nearby fields where it was used to grow crops. (Great little scene in Baroque Cycle about that, btw

[peristaltor]

Allow me to challenge your challenge . . . with irony! Everything I know about the Miasma Theory came from Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, the account of how John Snow and Henry Whitehead figured out that the Broad St. Pump was the probable source of the outbreak. I just went back to my post that quoted the book and read:

In lay terms, the human brain appears to have evolved an alert system whereby a certain class of extreme smells triggers an involuntary disgust response that effectively short-circuits one's ability to think clearly -- and produces a powerful desire to avoid objects associated with the smell. It's easy to imagine the evolutionary pressures that would bring this trait into being.

(Johnson, The Ghost Map, Riverhead, 2007, p. 129.)

So, yes, Miasma was used as "an attempt to explain observations" as you note. As Johnson notes, though, there was more to miasma's wide acceptance -- a cultural inertia:

Why was the miasma theory so persuasive? . . . This kind of question leads one to a kind of mirror-image version of