[HN Gopher] Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops
___________________________________________________________________
Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops
Author : rmason
Score : 108 points
Date : 2025-03-02 21:36 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| technothrasher wrote:
| I recall visiting an experimental green technology farm in Wales
| back in about 1997. One of the things they were doing was
| composting leftover cardboard by peeing on it and waiting for it
| to breakdown. They also had a nifty water driven lift, and a big
| display about tidal power. I wish I could remember where exactly
| that place was.
| dflock wrote:
| Probably this place: https://cat.org.uk - Llwyngwern Quarry,
| Machynlleth, Powys, SY20 9AZ
| anticorporate wrote:
| I'm always a little surprised at how surprised other people are
| when they hear this.
|
| I've been peeing on our compost pile for years. We have a lot of
| carbons in the pile (mostly leaves) so adding the nitrogen helps
| it all break down faster. On my acre plot I've probably gotten
| three or four cubic yards of compost a year broken down with the
| help of pee.
| 27theo wrote:
| Yes it's amusing when people aren't aware of the benefits. I,
| too, have been peeing on anticorporate's compost pile for two
| or three years.
| fifticon wrote:
| I have been peeing on corporate for years, but I am very
| discrete about it, lest they find out it is me.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Too late, they already ran a DNA analysis on it and
| partnered with 23andMe, and because your cousin took a DNA
| ancestry test after receiving a kit as a present four years
| ago, corporate now knows it was you.
| anticorporate wrote:
| Jokes aside, part of my reduced reliance on corporations is
| growing as much of our food as we can ourselves.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| What about the vast majority of people who live in the
| suburbs or cities?
|
| Wouldn't a better solution be regulations so it doesn't
| matter who is growing the food?
| anticorporate wrote:
| It's not either/or. I also strongly support major changes
| to agricultural and food policy.
|
| For what it's worth, my property is suburban. It's a
| post-war subdivision with rather large lots, we just
| choose to use most of ours productively. Food and timber
| for us, native plants for the critters, grass be damned.
| When we commuted, we lived in a denser area with better
| transit access, but neither my wife nor I have had a
| commute since before the pandemic.
| michelpp wrote:
| Sprouting is an excellent and compact way to get some
| fresh greens into your diet in a small space. No urine
| required (although I too do dump my urine on my farm
| hosts' compost). I live in a short school bus with less
| than 8sqm of space and do my sprouting in a small clear
| plastic tote. Every day I eat fresh sprouts, usually with
| something like wild-caught canned mackerel.
| diggan wrote:
| > What about the vast majority of people who live in the
| suburbs or cities?
|
| Suburban houses usually have a garden around them, you
| can grow vegetables and stuff in/on top of those. Plant
| some fruit trees/bushes as well and you have a start :)
|
| Cities are more difficult, unless you have access to a
| balcony/patio/roof. I know in some local neighborhoods,
| neighbors have gotten together to create little co-cops,
| and took over small unused plots and grow some stuff
| together there. Plots like these for example: https://www
| .google.com/maps/place/Carrer+del+Doctor+Trueta,+...
|
| Sure, none of these will make you 100% independent when
| it comes to what you eat, but small differences can add
| up and also spread the knowledge/ambition for more people
| to do it.
| RobRivera wrote:
| One year I'll go this route.
|
| Living in a city I can't really raise anything beyond
| herbs, however hunting once a year reduces my reliance on
| factory farming so much.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| When I lived on a standard city lot in Minneapolis, I was
| growing corn (lost most of it to squirrels), tomatoes,
| carrots, horseradish (can't kill that stuff), squash and
| a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. And a "natural
| prairie" section of mostly native grasses and
| wildflowers.
|
| Just depends on how much land you have and how much of
| your lawn you want to dig up :-)
| pengaru wrote:
| nit: discreet
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| > nit discreet
|
| Or maybe fifticon's pee comes out as quantized packets of
| a fixed size.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I pee on corporate as well, but I do so continuously
| instead of discretely. I'm peeing on corporate as I type
| this!
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| The plastic bamboo in the foyer grows like crazy.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > We have a lot of carbons in the pile (mostly leaves) so
| adding the nitrogen helps it all break down faster
|
| I know that nitrogen/carbon ratio is being brought a lot in
| compost discussions, but AFAIK most of the time people bring
| that up they are actually talking about bringing _water_ , not
| nitrogen, to their compost.
|
| And regarding this particular comment of yours about "nitrogen
| helping it break down" I suspect this is another instance of
| it. Dry leaves aren't a favorable environment for fungi and
| bacteria to grow, so adding water will definitely speed up the
| process a lot, while I'm not convinced adding nitrogen would
| have any effect in that regard.
|
| Peeing on a compost pile is still good because it ads nitrogen
| to the compost itself, part of which will end up in the plant
| you give it, but it's probably less effective at it than peeing
| on the plants directly, because some of it will evaporate over
| time.
| diggan wrote:
| > Dry leaves aren't a favorable environment for fungi and
| bacteria to grow, so adding water will definitely speed up
| the process a lot
|
| Nor is an environment without sufficient nitrogen, IIRC,
| especially since dry leaves are really carbon-rich.
|
| I'm guessing it would be easy for parent to test if it's the
| water, the nitrogen or both that helps the most. Science your
| way to an answer, as long as you're logging metrics should be
| easy enough :)
| anticorporate wrote:
| Since there were a couple of comments asking about water
| content, yes, we also keep our compost moist through adding
| water when needed (I also live in a rather moist region of
| the US). The previous owners of our property "gifted" us an
| above-ground pool that makes for a lousy swimming spot but
| a great water collection tank. We rarely have to use
| municipal water for anything garden-related.
| krunck wrote:
| No, nitrogen is very important. The carbon to nitrogen ratios
| is crucial for optimal composting.[1]
|
| Yes, compost must be moist to decompose. And peeing on the
| compost adds required moisture and nitrogen.
|
| Don't pee on your plants. It can chemically burn some of
| them. Not to mention peeing on your lettuce is just gross.
|
| My compost is for dealing with kitchen waste: veggie and
| fruit scraps, coffee grounds etc. It it so nitrogen rich that
| I need to add leaves to it regularly to keep the C/N ratio
| where it needs to be or it goes "sour".
|
| [1] https://compost.css.cornell.edu/chemistry.html
| knowitnone wrote:
| I pee on my compost and I don't see any difference to the
| speed of composting between a good rain vs a gallon of pee.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Did not realize this. I will have to try it!
|
| Late at night of course, my compost pile is by the road.
|
| Anyone know if exposing yourself on your own property is
| considered public indecency? Asking for a friend.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Pee in a cup or jug at home and take it outside.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| I tend to relieve myself into a watering can in the privacy
| of the shed.
| mc32 wrote:
| Isn't that what pisspans are for? You don't do it out in the
| open.
|
| If you have a farm, cattle would probably produce much more
| though.
| User23 wrote:
| I believe that there are barn designs that capture urine.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| As far as I've seen that's just normal barn design. Cows
| relieve themselves (both ways) into a gutter that runs
| behind their stalls, and then when you clean the gutters
| it all gets spread onto the field.
| interestica wrote:
| There will be a few things you'll want to do to minimize
| nitrogen loss. As soon as it's out, it going to start turning
| into ammonia and as a gas, it will escape. (The ammonia
| itself has useful properties, and it's why urine has been
| used for all sorts of processes in history(. Making the
| 'outputs' fairly acidic or basic will help keep the nitrogen
| from leaving in that way. Add vinegar so that the low pH will
| reduce the bacterial activity that creates the ammonia. Add
| wood ash to create a very basic environment (high pH) (you
| should actually get ammonium as a precipitate). Vinegar
| should also help reduce smells. You might wanna store it for
| a bit before depositing. (Unless you're doing the direct
| deposit method).
| always-open wrote:
| Are you saying to add vinegar to the urine and then wood
| ash to the urine?
| interestica wrote:
| Sorry! Those were the two separate options: either high
| pH or low pH. Adding vinegar is prob easiest and it's
| what Rich Tree does.
| debacle wrote:
| I've heard mixed things. Most folks recommend keeping human +
| pet waste out of compost. It depends on how hot your pile is
| and how quickly you move it into your garden.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| I believe that's referring to feces, not urine.
|
| Most household (cat, dog, and human) feces is full of meat
| which draws the wrong kind of insects to the pile.
|
| Urine though is okay and, arguably, beneficial to breaking
| down compost.
|
| The only hard part is figuring out how to wave at your
| neighbors while fertilizing your compost heap. Do you wave
| with your off-hand or hot-swap as necessary? Decisions
| decisions...
| debacle wrote:
| The only neighbors in eyeshot of my compost pile are the
| ducks, and I don't think they really mind.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I think people would be even more surprised to learn how common
| it is to use processed sewage for fertilizer. Human waste.
|
| In California, 76% of processed sewage goes to farming. 86% in
| Colorado.
|
| https://investigatemidwest.org/2024/08/07/fertilizer-from-hu...
|
| And its not just the US
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/02/sewage-s...
|
| >Spreading the sludge on farmland is banned in the Netherlands,
| where incineration is preferred, but allowed in the UK. Dutch
| water authorities are eyeing the UK as a possible destination
| for their sewage
| beebaween wrote:
| Favorite part of my morning - like food waste I compost, why
| would I pay to use water to send back all of my urine nutrients
| back to my local water municipality?
| tw04 wrote:
| Wait until they find out that truckers and large pickup drivers
| everywhere pour essentially urine into their trucks every few
| fill-ups as part of their emmissions systems.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Can confirm, once had a DEF spill inside a Golf TDI, took 48
| hours before the car smelled -exactly- like a truck stop
| bathroom.
| dghughes wrote:
| The NitroVolt concept looks interesting it uses less energy than
| Haber-Bosch process but it's only for nitrogen not phosphorus.
|
| If you grow anything or even lawn care you know anything with
| phosphorus is very expensive usually double the cost of just
| nitrogen.
|
| https://www.nitrovolt.com/
| scythe wrote:
| They're not the only ones on that track:
|
| https://tsubame-bhb.co.jp/en/
|
| But I do think the name NitroVolt is a little unfortunate
| because there is also a much more speculative (TRL 3)
| methodology in development which dispenses with fuel altogether
| to perform the reaction:
|
| N2 + 12 OH- >> 2 NO3- + 6 H2O + 10 e-
|
| ...effectively producing nitrate directly from nitrogen with
| electricity. So I clicked expecting to see that, but it's still
| years to decades away.
| btown wrote:
| Any links to the research here?
| bluGill wrote:
| No healthy lawn needs Nitrogen or Phosphorus! People just think
| drug addicted monocultres are beautiful, change attitudes and
| the world will be better off. There are suburban lots using as
| much fertilizer as an entire field on a farm.
|
| A healthy lawn will have plenty of clover and other plants to
| fix nitrogen. People call those plants weeds, but they are not
| and we need to quit killing them. Rabbits peeing on your lawn
| will add nitrogen as well.
|
| Phosphorus is a mineral and shouldn't be going anywhere. The
| plants take it in, then they die and it goes right back into
| the soil. If you have a new house you might need some initial
| phosphorus treatments because developments often destroy the
| soil, but after a few years there will be plenty.
|
| Gardens are different. When you remove anything to eat it you
| take some phosphorus (and other minerals) away. If you are not
| returning your poop to the soil those minerals are gone.
| (returning poop if not done right can kill - there is good
| reason we have modern sanitation systems to remove human
| waste!) Nitrogen fixers can compete with your food plants and
| reduce yields by enough that you are often better off removing
| them from your garden and getting nitrogen otherwise. A lawn is
| not a garden.
| amoshebb wrote:
| The emphasis on containerization and strictly using green
| energy makes me skeptical about the underlying technology...
|
| If this "lithium-mediated ammonia synthesis reactor" is really
| so much more efficient, surely incumbent nitrogen plants would
| be camping on the sidewalk to be first in line?
|
| Maybe it's different elsewhere, but here farmers don't use
| daily applications of small amounts of pure ammonia, they get
| an armada of co-op spreaders to deliver and apply dozens-
| hundreds of tons of dry blend in one big shot and then do
| nothing for months. There's a reason production is so
| concentrated, and it's not because farmers haven't realized air
| is the main ingredient.
| bluGill wrote:
| From what I can tell, the efficiency comes from logistics and
| not the cost. Those large plants are cheaper to run, but then
| you need to get that ammonia from the factory to the field.
| Ammonia is very toxic (your household Ammonia CONCENTRATE is
| 99% water! we are talking 100% ammonia here). Your truck
| drivers need special training to haul it, they cannot drive
| on some roads (tunnels). Farmers - the least safety
| conscience group I know of - wear gas masks and protective
| clothing when they work with it (they will drink roundup on a
| dare). Everyone in the chain of handling it needs extra
| safety effort.
|
| This thing is instead a box you put on the farm which means
| much less handling of it. It also means you can plan to have
| it on time (fertilizer shipments are sometimes late - when
| you apply notrogen matters). In short this can be more
| expensive than traditional processes, but has enough other
| benefits that people will be willing to pay that difference
| (after talking to their accountant).
| amoshebb wrote:
| so, we're observing the same things, but drawing opposite
| conclusions.
|
| A box on a farm means much MORE handling of it, no?
| Currently no farmer I've met has ever handled pure ammonia,
| only UAN or nitrate/other dry solids. And like you said,
| they'd rather not. (although I also don't know any who
| would drink glyphosates with how quickly they eat sprayers)
|
| How does a box help with timing? Each farm must either
| store enough on site for an entire application (which
| farmers could already do if that was worth the cost) as
| it's slowly generated, or they're constrained by daily
| output of the box. Late shipments are bad, but a renewable
| only box running out on a cloudy week? No angry phone call
| to the coop fixes this.
|
| Spreading the cost to centrally produce and store lots over
| many farms/industries seems optimal when one needs
| infrequent but huge quantities of anything.
| bluGill wrote:
| A box on the farm means a little more handling on the
| farm, but nobody else has to handle it.
|
| The farmers I know of work with "anhydrous". Urea and
| other solid forms are used too, but anhydrous is very
| common.
|
| AFAIK this box isn't available to anyone yet. Farmers are
| interested, but only if it really helps. If it is less
| predictable than ordering and hoping it arrives on time
| (every once in a while you order something for delivery
| on some date and you don't get it then with nothing you
| can do even though the date is the date you need it) they
| don't want it. If it is more predictable because they can
| turn it on and be assured that there will be what they
| need on some day (despite clouds - which over a few
| months is predictable enough) they want it.
|
| (I don't think many farmers have drunk glyphosates, but
| they would on the right bet and the SDS says it is safe
| enough to take a sip. Though the other additives might
| not be safe).
| amoshebb wrote:
| Anhydrous isn't common here, so the only way I've seen it
| applied is with shanks that cut everything up to inject
| high rates maybe not even annually.
|
| So how would farmers familiar with anhydrous use "A box
| that makes 330lbs of ammonia a day"? Treat an acre a day?
| Apply a 1/300th rate and do 300 applications a year?
| Maintain a high-pressure 100,000lb tank of ammonia slowly
| being drip-filled until they need it all in fall? Buy 50
| sea-cans and leave them shut off for 51 weeks a year?
| bluGill wrote:
| I believe shanks are the only way to apply anhydrous. You
| need to get it into the soil or it will evaporate and do
| no good.
|
| Your question paragraph is full of great questions that I
| don't think anyone has figured out. These things are
| still very new, farmers are interested because they have
| the potential to be better than what they are doing now.
| However it is all potential and how it works in the real
| world remains to be seen.
| hcfman wrote:
| So how many drugs are the people who consume the crops now
| ingesting because of this I wonder ?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Many people are, however, concerned about pharmaceutical
| content in the urine. "It's the biggest question we get,"
| Shupack says. REI has conducted research to find out just how
| much of common drugs like caffeine and the painkiller
| acetaminophen are evident in vegetables grown using urine
| fertiliser. The final results are yet to be released, but the
| preliminary findings suggest the amount of pharmaceuticals in
| vegetables fertilised with urine to be "extremely small".
| "You'd have to eat a pretty obscene amount of lettuce, every
| day, for way longer than you can live" to get a cup of coffee's
| worth of caffeine, Shupack says.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| What about THC (or its metabolites)?
| LegitShady wrote:
| my man here is trying to develop the devil's lettuce for
| real.
| tokai wrote:
| Caffeine?! I bet people are more worried about cocaine,
| amphetamine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, ketamine, and THC,
| which are all found in sewage. To not include SSRIs et. al.
| and anti psychotics.
|
| This is study is European, but still shows the issue:
|
| https://www.euda.europa.eu/news/2024/4/latest-wastewater-
| dat...
| NotGMan wrote:
| Another huge issue is estrogen from women using birth
| control pills.
| appointment wrote:
| Why is that an issue? I don't think anyone is given
| mandatory tests for estrogen.
| gruez wrote:
| Apparently it's a non issue, see:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43268848
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Tbh I'm not at all worried about any of the party drugs you
| mentioned. If you took 1mg of each of those, at the same
| time you would feel about the same as you do after a cup of
| coffee (the amphetamines are relevant at that dose,
| MDMA/THC/ketamine would be deeply sub-threshold).
|
| At the nanogram level? Forget it. There's all kinds of crap
| in everything we eat, drink, and breathe. Dose makes the
| poison - there's a big difference between a detectable
| level of something and a clinically significant amount.
| You'd be better off improving the ventilation in your house
| than worrying about whether your lettuce has 1PPT of
| cocaine metabolite in it.
|
| Note that all of the above is about the party drugs. I have
| no idea about what the deal is with the psychiatric meds
| and hormones. If anyone has knowledge of whether chronic
| exposure to extremely small quantities of them and their
| metabolites has clinical significance I'd be interested to
| know more. I sort of doubt it, but I'd be happy to be
| proven wrong
| Steven420 wrote:
| That's why it's best to grow your own food and compost with
| your own pee
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| that way you get your meth back for free
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Scientists call it "the meth cycle."
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Probably similar to drinking tap or bottled water:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3273502/
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| if you'd researched instead of wondering you'd know that it's
| effectively zero
| bluGill wrote:
| Urine and poop have been known as great fertilizers for longer
| than recorded history. However be careful about trying this for
| yourself. These are both toxic wastes and if not handled
| correctly can kill you. Urine isn't too bad in amounts you are
| likely to deal with in a garden. Poop provides are lot more
| benefit than Urine in the garden - but tiny amounts not handled
| correct can kill.
|
| I do not know all the factors in play. If you are considering
| this instead of commercial fertilizer for your garden then you
| need to do real research (not youtube research - read real
| academic papers)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm curious how poop is so deadly.
| bluGill wrote:
| Bacteria, parasites and other nasty things live in it.
|
| I'm being vague because if you need a more detailed answer
| you really need to break open academic papers and spend years
| reading them, not try to figure things our from a discussion
| forum. (I only need the discussion forum version so I don't
| know more than the above)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You know how there's periodically a recall of green onions or
| lettuce due to e.coli contamination? That is because farms in
| the desert irrigate the plants with water contaminated with
| cow or pig feces.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| [warning - skip reading this comment if you don't want to
| be reminded how raw produce may get to your tabletop]
|
| see https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/New-focus-on-
| field-s...
|
| If there are humans picking the crops, and if their hygiene
| is lax, then there might be some contamination via a human
| vector.
| bluGill wrote:
| "I know a guy" who went to tour a lettuce farm at
| harvest. He had to wear special booties, gloves, and a
| hair net. The farmers proudly showed how the lettuce was
| picked and immediately (no wash step!) wrapped in plastic
| so that no contamination could happen. Then he looked up
| and say birds flying overhead and as bird do pooping in
| mid flight.
|
| Wash your lettuce.
| em-bee wrote:
| i don't think you can store lettuce after washing. it
| would get soggy. you can rinse it. like rain. but that's
| about it. so this is not surprising.
| _bigbear_ wrote:
| Human urine - yes good source of nitrates, although it will
| kill plants if undiluted (too much of a good thing...) . Human
| poop NO! it should NEVER be used as fertilizer. Typical human
| diet makes it pretty worthless as fertilizer, and pathogens
| make it a really dumb thing to do. Poop from grazing animals
| isn't the same stuff as human poop, which is where i think
| people get mixed up.
| wswope wrote:
| This is highly misinformed. There are strict processing
| requirements, but it is safe and legally permitted in many
| specific contexts. This page lists some of the processing
| techniques and statutory requirements:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet
|
| See also: Dillo dirt
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Bat guano is a common fertilizer that should be used with
| caution. Remember covid? Bad stuff lurks in the feces of cave
| dwelling mammals... You hope it has been safely composted, but
| has it?
| alkh wrote:
| Unfortunately, poop and urine is one of the main reasons for soil
| contamination by Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances
| (PFAS).[1] [2] . I think farmers will have to rethink using those
| as fertilisers soon
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/climate/pfas-
| fertilizer-s... [2]
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473455/pfas-forever-chemi...
| LarsAlereon wrote:
| That's why they're capturing the urine directly instead of
| using potentially contaminated sewage solids.
| chakintosh wrote:
| From the article: "Windham County's pee-donations are collected
| by a lorry and driven to a large tank where the urine is
| pasteurised by heating it to 80C (176F) for 90 seconds. It is
| then stored in a pasteurised tank, ready to be sprayed on local
| farmland when the time is right to fertilise crops."
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| does pasteurization break down PFAs? They're chemicals, not
| microbes. My understanding is that pasteurization only kills
| microbes.
| moate wrote:
| The PFA's aren't largely concentrated in the urine/feces,
| they're in the sewage water (from people flushing/washing
| things down the drain/chemical runoff).
|
| If the issue was "people are so full of PFA's that their
| urine/feces contain so much they're contaminating the
| planet" the problem would be too far advanced, right? Like
| if your body was so radioactive that standing near you
| caused people to develop cancer, you probably shouldn't
| worry about getting cancer yourself, you're already fucked.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| that's not unfair, thank you for clarifying. though I
| will add that elsewhere in the thread we're having the
| exact conversation from your second paragraph but about
| prescription and...ahem...non-prescription drugs.
| interestica wrote:
| > Unfortunately, poop and urine is one of the main reasons for
| soil contamination by Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl
| Substances (PFAS).
|
| That's not true and that's absolutely not what those articles
| say.
|
| Biosolid fertilizer [?] "poop and urine"
|
| Each article refers to general sewage "sludge" which is the
| primary output from wastewater treatment plants. That
| "biosolids" mix is far removed from "poop and urine" and has
| many other things added to it (eg for treatment) and taken out.
|
| From your [1] > The E.P.A. is currently studying the risks
| posed by PFAS in sludge fertilizer (which the industry calls
| biosolids) to determine if new rules are necessary.
|
| > She said regulators should focus on curbing the PFAS entering
| wastewater by banning use in consumer products or requiring
| industries to clean their effluent before sending it to
| treatment plants. "There's not enough money in the world to
| take it out at the end," she said.
|
| To actually use poop and urine effectively, it has to be
| separated (ahem) "at the source" and processed appropriately
| _before_ any PFAS can enter. The Rich Tree Institute of the
| main article are focused entirely on the urine (ahem) "stream"
| and demonstrating how it could be viable as a fertilizer.
| ghfhghg wrote:
| I grew up being taught to urinate on our rhubarb patches.
| appointment wrote:
| The headline should specify _human_ urine. Spreading animal urine
| on crops is of course standard practice everywhere.
| erehweb wrote:
| Pecunia non olet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| Wait until people find out what blood meal and bone meal are.
|
| I hate that this article makes it sound like there's some magical
| component to it "double your yields!". A ton of things are a
| fertilizer. Urea and ammonia based nitrogen fertilizers are
| already very common. Ammonia should be used with caution, because
| it is a small molecule and plants have very little inhibition
| toward its uptake. It also reduces pH due to H+ release in the
| nitrification process.
| alecco wrote:
| Zero mention of the problem of hormones (contraception),
| antibiotics, and a lot of random things coming with human urine.
| It's very hard to get rid of those, last time I checked the best
| way was to let it break over YEARS. This is not viable at large
| scale. (My family used to be farmers)
|
| And note the animal waste from feedlots is quite toxic and yet
| it's being used at scale without proper processing in some
| unscrupulous corporate farms. Or they dump it in "swine lagoons".
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Eh, uv diods? You lower them in, vibrate and rotate the
| material, degrade it? Standard processing step
| memhole wrote:
| Are those taken up by plants? I think there's even some debate
| around the effects of using treated wood for raised vegetable
| gardens. Last when I looked into it, I think there was some
| elevated arsenic in plants and the advice was to plant a few
| inches away from the edges of the bed since the exposure drops
| off.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >I think there's even some debate around the effects of using
| treated wood for raised vegetable gardens
|
| It's not a debate or the matter or health or organic wonks.
| "pressure treated wood" is treated with a compound of
| arsenic. Arsenic is quite toxic and readily leaches into the
| ground and your garden. Like you really shouldn't touch
| pressure treated wood, you should wear gloves and wash your
| hands after. It is banned in the US for construction of
| residential things which come into contact with humans and
| totally banned in several countries.
|
| Leave pressure treated wood away from your food... a few
| inches planting away from it isn't enough.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| > "pressure treated wood" is treated with a compound of
| arsenic.
|
| It depends--I am assuming you're referring to chromated
| copper arsenate [0] (CCA), which has been widely phased out
| in favor of other treatments, like copper azole [1].
|
| I wouldn't go and build a raised garden bed out of copper
| azole treated wood either, but I also wouldn't be surprised
| if the leached copper etc. is quite a bit safer than CCA.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromated_copper_arsenate
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_preservation#Copper_a
| zole
| colechristensen wrote:
| CCA is restricted in some residential applications, but
| it is still very much for sale for industrial and some
| structural uses. Most pressure treated you will find
| won't have it any more, but not all.
|
| https://www.menards.com/main/find.html?find=CCA+treated.&
| ski...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Chromated arsenic treatment was banned in pressure treated
| wood in 2003. Pressure treatment with less toxic chemicals
| is not banned.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-
| products/over...
| colechristensen wrote:
| You can still buy it, you're just not supposed to use CCA
| treated wood for a list of residential uses.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| https://richearthinstitute.org/how-it-works/
|
| There is a treatment section on their website. They list
| details about pharmaceuticals in their guide as well.
|
| https://richearthinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Ur...
| gruez wrote:
| >While there are some pharmaceutical compounds detectable in
| crop tissue, the levels are extremely small-in the nanogram
| per gram (or parts per billion) range
|
| I was somewhat skeptical about this given all the headline
| I've seen about birth control causing hormones to be in the
| water supply, but it checks out.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20977246/
|
| >This paper reviews the literature regarding various sources
| of estrogens, in surface, source and drinking water, with an
| emphasis on the active molecule that comes from OCs. It
| includes discussion of the various agricultural, industrial,
| and municipal sources and outlines the contributions of
| estrogenic chemicals to the estrogenicity of waterways and
| estimates that the risk of exposure to synthetic estrogens in
| drinking water on human health is negligible
| gruez wrote:
| see also:
|
| PFAS in [sewage sludge] blamed for killing livestock in Texas
| and wreaking havoc
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43245674
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > Zero mention of the problem of hormones
|
| This isn't true.
|
| TFA links to a page that points out hormone uptake wasn't found
| in plant tissue and that the uptake of drugs like caffeine and
| tylenol are at tiny fractions of a minimum effective dose.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| For caffeine this should be somewhat expected - it's a
| chemical produced as an insecticide by at least 3 or four
| completely unrelated families of plants.
| knowitnone wrote:
| except nowadays, so many people are on medication that the urine
| may be contaminated by other chemicals.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I did a test with urine comparing it to other fertilizers a few
| years ago when I grew medical marijuana. Diluted about 1:10 it
| was pretty great. A little less growth than regular complete
| fertilizers but still quite good. I was surprised, I thought the
| sodium would be too high.
|
| Storing urine is about as ghastly as you might imagine and smells
| almost exactly like a bad truck stop bathroom.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Here's a relevant Cody's Lab video about the process of
| converting urea to nitrate to make the nitrogen more
| bioavailable:
|
| https://youtu.be/fhYW0QVS408?si=6sEtuWLEBSFfEk2f
| autoexec wrote:
| I'm pretty sure most of the crops in the US are regularly sprayed
| in urine and shit. Many of the immigrant workers used on farms
| are treated like slaves, locked up when they aren't in the fields
| or kept in overcrowded housing without basic utilities. These
| workers aren't getting bathroom breaks.
|
| Even on farms that don't treat their workers so poorly they
| aren't installing bathrooms in the middle of the fields they
| truck workers out to, or ferrying them back and forth all day
| either. Workers couldn't afford take the time to run off to the
| bathroom even if they had the option. They have quotas to meet
| and are paid by how much they get done in a day. They're not
| walking off the job site to use the bathroom. They'll just
| piss/shit on your veggies and smile to themselves as they think
| about Americans who don't wash their produce.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Pissing or shitting on plants has positive effects if those
| people have a proper food, hydration, no drugs
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > Many of the immigrant workers used on farms are treated like
| slaves, locked up when they aren't in the fields or kept in
| overcrowded housing without basic utilities.
|
| While conditions aren't what most people consider comfortable,
| this is at best a major exaggeration. No, there aren't portable
| toilets out there (some farms do have them) - we'd go off to
| the side of the field, do our business, and get back to work.
| No one actively relieved themselves on any product. Most of us
| kept a damp towel around our necks for cleaning and heat
| relief, so that's what we would use. Every farm I worked on
| that supplied to grocers or sold independently had a
| washing/sanitizing system as part of the operation. So while
| it's not operating room clean, it's pretty damn clean by the
| time it got to the consumer. Also, all the mistreatment of
| migrant workers I experienced was only ever by other migrant
| workers.
| autoexec wrote:
| Not all workers are treated that way, but many are. If you
| were working illegally in the US it sounds like you were
| lucky.
|
| It's been a huge problem in Florida: https://ciw-
| online.org/slavery/
|
| The same story plays out all over the place.
|
| Here it happened in Georgia:
| https://apnews.com/article/business-georgia-slavery-
| forced-l...
|
| Here in Colorado:
| https://www.denverpost.com/2024/11/01/h2a-visas-workers-
| traf...
|
| It's not even just limited to farms.
|
| These guys were kept locked up at night and only let out to
| build luxury condos:
| https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/slavery-towers-feds-
| sa...
|
| This Texas lady forced them to work for her cleaning company:
| https://kfor.com/news/texas-woman-convicted-of-forcing-
| two-u...
|
| This landscaping company in Tennessee did it:
| https://www.foxnews.com/world/tennessee-landscaping-
| business...
|
| This lady in Illinois just wanted house slaves:
| https://www.foxnews.com/us/mexican-migrant-trafficking-
| woman...
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| If anyone knows people in this project, here is another project
| that goes hand in hand with this. Please forward them this, I
| think these could be a fixture in the cities if the farmers are
| willing to collect the urine. it's the dutch portable urinals.
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portable-toilet-Neth...
| These can be bought from alibaba.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Sounds cleaner than Milorganite.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Transmissible prion diseases might become an issue. Prions do not
| compost and they are very difficult to inactivate (denaturing the
| misfolded protein is the only way)
| em-bee wrote:
| how is this any different from using manure? it's been used as
| fertilizer for centuries, at least in europe, and it is still in
| use today. do american farmers not do this?
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