[HN Gopher] Zapping manure with special electrode to produce fer...
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Zapping manure with special electrode to produce fertilizers, other
chemicals
Author : geox
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-12-12 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.wisc.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.wisc.edu)
| londons_explore wrote:
| Currently manure is typically spread on fields because it acts as
| a fertilizer and makes crops grow better.
|
| This proposes to extract various things from the manure and
| purify then and use them to spread on fields to make crops grow
| better.
|
| I have to wonder if such an approach can ever exceed the effects
| of the simple approach of muck-spreading...
| hosh wrote:
| The article claims that
|
| "Although manure itself can be used as fertilizer, doing so can
| be costly, logistically challenging and has environmental
| drawbacks."
|
| ... but knowing what I know about permaculture design, this
| assertion comes from a particular way of seeing, one that that
| contributes to system issues. It's not enough to look at
| efficiency, you also have to look at efficacy. I think the
| simple aproach of muck-spreading is better.
|
| Integrating ranching with farming reduces the "logistical
| challenge", and proper design means the "environmental
| drawbacks" turns into solutions.
| contingencies wrote:
| You don't have to be a permaculture gardener to have
| skepticism about highly processed artificial inputs to
| biological systems. Fungal and insect biome that break down
| and live within decaying organic matter represent hundreds of
| millions of years of development. Ancient Taoist philosophy
| is centered on the wisdom of aligning with natural process.
| IMHO modern science is learning, but still knows so little
| about natural systems, particularly relationships within
| insect, fungi and angiosperm communities which are the
| objective core of botanical systems. We live in exciting
| times, but the future of agriculture is certainly not DDT,
| trucking in guano from Pacific Islands, and John Deere
| harvesting machines.
| hosh wrote:
| I hear a lot of push-back and skepticism here about
| uncontextualized ideas coming from permaculture design, and
| I have learned to make it clear about the frame, paradigm,
| and worldview I am speaking from. A common push-back is
| about efficiency and scale and confusing it for efficacy.
|
| Going along further down this road, what's a bit of a mind
| twister is when I assert it's better to approach
| Kuberenetes like gardening. A lot of the apparent
| complexity are actually part of the self-healing
| mechanisms.
|
| As far as Taoist philosophy goes, not everyone buys into
| that, and there are multiple ways to interpret and approach
| Taoism. Still, have you ever read a book entitled,
| "Treatise on Efficacy"?
| nataliste wrote:
| Hey, I just want to thank you for the book
| recommendation. Reading the preface to "A Treatise on
| Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking"[1] it
| seems to codify a lot that I've previously thought about.
|
| And as a topical aside, I can personally vouch for the
| practicality of humanure[2] and ph-adjusted urine-
| capture[3]. They are indeed simpler, scalable, and well
| within that sweetspot of minimal inputs and maximal
| outputs, particularly when it comes to fertility.
|
| ---
|
| 1 - ISBN: 9780824843144
|
| 2 - https://humanurehandbook.com/
|
| 3 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S00
| 4896972...
| MightyBuzzard wrote:
| Given that most farmers already use chemical fertilizer rather
| than shit, we're not short on data for analysis.
|
| One benefit you overlooked is knowing exactly what and how much
| you're putting in your soil. A bag of ammonium nitrate gives
| you a known quantity to factor with while shit is far from
| homogeneous in its makeup.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| For non-subsistence farming, the amount of manure needed to
| replace the amount of nutrients being removed every year can
| result in too much of some things which can harm the ground.
| Growers have to be careful not to accidentally salt their
| ground with manure.
|
| Manure is also very heavy, and therefore expensive to
| transport, and that's without going into restrictions that kick
| in when moving animal waste long distances.
|
| Pathogens, weeds and even pesticide residue are also a concern.
| The dairy I work with makes use of large digester tanks that
| help reduce these.
|
| Basically manure is great when you are close to a source (like
| a dairy), but you can't put on too much or move it around too
| far without issues. So there is value in being able to
| economically break it up into it's components.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| I've wondered if it's a good/awful idea to use the widely used
| food irradiation tech [1] on manure to kill the microorganisms
| that can cause disease, while keeping the bioavailable nutrients
| intact, just like how radiation kills bacteria in food without
| affecting its taste.
|
| It's also very low energy as, unlike electro-shocking, the
| radiation sources are "always on".
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/food-
| irradiatio...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Feces ... _is_ microorganisms, mostly bacteria. It is mostly
| correct to say poo is made up of bacteria. Lots of kinds, lots
| of species. Soil is likewise alive.
|
| If you kill everything you take a competitive ecosystem of many
| species and leave raw materials for the next, most invasive
| colonizer which is often more likely to cause disease.
|
| Sterilizing manure is likewise pointless unless kept in a
| sealed container, once you expose it to the world it's going to
| get something alive in it real quick.
|
| To prevent disease you really need to do the opposite, let it
| ferment longer to allow the various waves of decomposers access
| to break down and metabolize as much as possible to get the
| resulting material further away from what it would be like
| inside a living body as the more different environments are,
| the less likely species will be able to thrive in both
| environments. (this is why fermenting pickles works, microbes
| that find salty veggies tasty won't find _you_ tasty because
| you 're not nearly so salty or acidic)
|
| You _do_ sterilize manure as mushroom culture to prevent
| competition with the fungi, but that is done in quite
| controlled environments.
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