[Greenbuilding] fertilizer from human waste

John Salmen terrain at shaw.ca
Tue Jan 15 23:45:40 CST 2013


Talking about dregs...The biggest problem in any agricultural community that
has dairy, beef, sheep, pigs or chickens (horses) in the winter is what to
do with the growing piles of manure. It is a significant issue. We had
walkerton in Canada which was a raw manure poisoning contamination of a
water supply that resulted in 7 deaths and 2500 e-coli illnesses. We have
manure spreaders here running out regularly in the rain which causes
significant groundwater contamination (against 'regulations' but ignored by
the various ministries because it is what has always been done - like
walkerton). Lots of discussion as to how to safely contain and then spread
the stuff (not even considering the human reserves).

Gist of that is that anyone involved with acreage in NA will be using
non-composted manure as an amendment unless it is a hobby farm and they want
to subsidize the crops. manure on 300 acres works out to about 3-4 tons of
manure per acre at probably a cost of about 100 per ton (non-organic). That
would be a minimum to maintain soil nutrient levels if not he won't be doing
ok for long. Farming is basically shit on shit.

A good quote from Wes Jackson is something like ' the best of amish farm
practices failed to maintain soil'.

So the problem is bigger than anyone's backyard garden as your water supply
is coming in part from another backyard manure pile.

-----Original Message-----
From: Greenbuilding [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org]
On Behalf Of Benjamin Pratt
Sent: January-15-13 7:42 PM
To: topher at greenfret.com; Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] fertilizer from human waste

I'm not a big gardener myself, but I've I've seen lots of people who put
non-composted manure on their gardens/crops.
   After 8 years of only putting composted food scraps and leaves on my
vegetable garden--I realized this past summer that the soil was depleted. So
I am interested int he subject of compost now.
My friend farms around 300 acres and seems to be doing OK using
non-composted manure of any kind he can find--as long as it is organic. But
he doesn't use chicken (or turkey) shit!
-Ben


On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Corwyn <corwyn at midcoast.com> wrote:
> On 1/15/2013 9:30 PM, John Salmen wrote:
>> On the pessimistic side though I can only imagine the total dregs of 
>> waste being dumped into soils.
>
> Absolutely.  Question then becomes how close to things you are going 
> to eat and drink do you want those 'dregs'?  Where are you going to 
> put those dregs, and for how long?
>
> Since I know my 'waste' is going on my garden, I am very careful about 
> not acquiring in the first place, things I don't want there.  Please 
> feel free to replace 'garden' with 'planet'.
>
>
>
> Thank You Kindly,
>
> Corwyn
>
> --
> Topher Belknap
> Green Fret Consulting
> Kermit didn't know the half of it...
> http://www.greenfret.com/
> topher at greenfret.com
> (207) 882-7652
>
> On 1/15/2013 9:30 PM, John Salmen wrote:
>>
>> On the pessimistic side though I can only imagine the total dregs of 
>> waste being dumped into soils.
>
>
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-- 


b e n j a m i n p r a t t

professor art+design
the university of wisconsin stout

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