Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops
(www.bbc.com)
COMMENTS:
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.
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.
Just depends on how much land you have and how much of your lawn you want to dig up :-)
Wouldn't a better solution be regulations so it doesn't matter who is growing the food?
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.
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.
Florida and Illinois, on complete opposite ends of the political spectrum, are the only two states with laws the explicitly prohibit towns and cities from preventing you from using your yard (front, back, side, whatever) as a vegetable garden. They allow for regulations about how big and where your greenhouses/hothouses could be, how much water you use, etc. But nothing that can defacto prohibit you from using your whole yard productively.
This is something that should be nationwide. In most places, growing crops in your front yard is either sort-of-tolerated-until-you-make-someone-mad or not at all allowed.
2) Sure, but growing food is something I can do using only myself and the materials to hand without having to wait for the crippled and backward process of creating new regulations to sort itself out, growing food now helps mitigate the problem now while we push for new regulations and growing food does nothing to get in the way of new regulations and if the push for new regulations fails I still have a garden
Or maybe fifticon's pee comes out as quantized packets of a fixed size.
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
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/climate/epa-pfas-fertiliz...
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/pfas-in-fertilisers-blam...
I have to say I'm kind of happy were not doing this in the Netherlands, because PFAS are a horrible class of chemicals that are causing all sorts of issues in nature as well as human health (obviously the two are intricately linked). I'm kind of ashamed to hear that the Netherlands are trying to get rid of their sewage in the UK though...
Edit: Upon reading the investigatemidwest.org article I see that it's about the exact same subject, apologies if my reply is perceived as noise.
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.
If you have a farm, cattle would probably produce much more though.
...this had led to a number of accidents, the latest I recall was where the floor collapsed and dozens of cows ended up in the cesspit below. Others involve people falling in and dying from the fumes.
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.
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".
> Don't pee on your plants. It can chemically burn some of them. Not to mention peeing on your lettuce is just gross.
Come on, I'm obviously not advising peeing on the leaves directly, but you shouldn't water the leaves directly either.
> 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".
And this is exactly why I say people obsess with C/N ratio too much when 90% of the issues people face is caused by a poor water/Oxygen ratio instead, compost “going sour” is almost always due lack of oxygen (which is very common when you put stuff that's very moist and you don't shuffle your compost often enough). Adding leaves is indeed a good solution to this problem, but as it's not carbon-related it can be solved by other means (just by oxygenating the compost).
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 :)
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...
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".
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.
But I also like to think (and this is all unscientific gut feeling) that processing it in compost and exposing it to the elements and UV sunlight helps break down everything. Entropy, or my probable misunderstanding thereof.
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...
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
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.
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_azole
https://www.menards.com/main/find.html?find=CCA+treated.&ski...
https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/over...
PFAS in [sewage sludge] blamed for killing livestock in Texas and wreaking havoc
If you grow anything or even lawn care you know anything with phosphorus is very expensive usually double the cost of just nitrogen.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
Storing urine is about as ghastly as you might imagine and smells almost exactly like a bad truck stop bathroom.
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.
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.
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...
You're never going to not have some population of people with influence and resources attempt to take advantage of people without those things - that is a story that's as old as time. But statistically these that you have listed are all one-offs - that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care - but it does mean that the tone of your first post is very much over-stated.
https://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/dosh_publications/Field-Sanitati...
https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...
Also you present below one off cases of human trafficking (some not even in agriculture) but these are rare cases and is not "Many" or "Most" by any stretch of imagination for immigrant farm labors.
That's not to say it's a great easy life nor a way to get fabulously wealthy or anything.
Source: I worked in produce with immigrant laborers on 4 different farms.
>A Salpetersjudare collected urine soaked earth to assist with the production of saltpeter.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Sweden_Occupation:_Salt...
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)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet
See also: Dillo dirt
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.
Wash your lettuce.
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)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/climate/pfas-fertilizer-s... [2] https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473455/pfas-forever-chemi...
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
This is study is European, but still shows the issue:
https://www.euda.europa.eu/news/2024/4/latest-wastewater-dat...
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 métabolites has clinical significance I'd be interested to know more. I sort of doubt it, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong
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