Sorry for another crappy question but...

[user801028]

I already tried asking this on a more gardening based forum which would be more fitting for the subject matter but they just shut down their rational minds and became emotional accusing me of being a troll or that I deserve to be proscuted for making such a suggestion.

 

So, 'humanure' is a practice of making ones waste into compost over a year plus to kill the pathogens or such. They had no issue with that but when I suggested using it without waiting, for the reasons below, they would not even entertain the idea and started the name caling.

 

I will add that I read that 40% or more of crops grown now are of the 'bio-solid' grown variety. Sure they will have been processed much more but it should allay people's squemishness about the concept. Also bill and melinda gates have some projects of using such waste to fuel energy plants. Ok not the same as eating but still using this usually taboo resource.

 

I thought that perhaps you all, as students of reason and the scientific method, would better be able to follow the logical thread and maintain your rationalist's hat.

 

My question is why wait IF the plants you are putting it on are going to be boiled, which would sterilize them anyway? Not going to be offering them to anyone else so don't see the problem or risk beyond normal precautions for dealing with other compost?

 

Also normal vegetable waste compost has loads of bacteria in it and parasites too so I don't see the difference. Sure the general principle is that composting causes the temp to raise to kill them all but that has not been my experience in practice working on farms. The new compost is chucked on the old stuff in a big mix and so the sterile compost is 'contaminating' the older stuff such that there is never a 'clean pile'.

 

Maybe I have misremembered that and they did cover some iirc but I doubt very much that the matured piles were 100% sterile as with uk weather being lukewarm at best most of the year I doubt the piles would get hot enough for long enough through out to be fully sterile.

 

In those cases that compost was used on the new vegetables as is. I will note a person I know who handled it a lot got worms suspected most likely from the compost. In this case it was from poor hygiene precautions though which would be the same issue with human waste.

 

Maybe this is not the correct way to do composting and they should be separated at a point to leave one for a year to mature. This didn't seem practical when it was always needed to put more on.

 

Also there is the long history of using the raw sewage to grow crops. Now of course people will jump to say disease also came along with that but in those days they didn't know about proper hygeine practices.

 

So if I don't want to wait a whole year for it to mature, and I would be boiling the food anyway, I don't see why it is any different than boiling water of unknown origin when camping in order to sterilize it? Also of course washing hands thoroughly after applying compost and perhaps even using a good quality face mask.

 

The whole point of the waiting a year seems to be so that the compost pile will reach temperatures of 70c+ to kill anything which would be harmful to consume. Well, that seems a redundant step if you would just be boiling the food anyway which would achieve the same result within minutes and saves a year of time.

 

As the land currently is very poor quality it seems a terrible waste to not use this crap based on, what seems, irrational sensibilities.

Edited Saturday at 10:10 AM by user801028

[swansont]

4 hours ago, user801028 said:

Also normal vegetable waste compost has loads of bacteria in it and parasites too so I don't see the difference

But human waste has bacteria and parasites that are specific to humans, so the concern is that there’s a higher chance of spreading disease. Cholera, for example. AFAICT it’s largely a matter of exposure to human waste, not other animals’

[TheVat]

The problem is not E Coli per se, as most strains are benign and reside in our own guts in a friendly symbiotic way.  The danger is that E Coli mutates very easily to a pathogen - a few strains like O157:H7 can cause severe illness.  And it only takes a few thanks to a process called conjugation.  The O157 refers to a  chromosome, called a plasmid, that can be shared between bacteria via conjugation.  So it can take over really easily and you get the Broad Street pump incident and so on.  Pertinent to your question is that some foods may be sourced from places where people poop while they are out in a crop field (or go into one, for the sole purpose), so there is an environment where the mutant E Coli strain like cholera, or a parasitic organism, can easily proliferate and then get transferred to the crop.

IIRC a small number of cattle also have a strain of the 0157, so their manure needs some processing. (cattle poo can also have other nasties like listeria or campylobacter)  Equine is better for a garden, I've been told, but fact check that. But always use processed, i.e. not fresh, manure.  Congress, though a rich source, is not recommended.  

5 hours ago, user801028 said:

Well, that seems a redundant step if you would just be boiling the food anyway which would achieve the same result within minutes and saves a year of time.

Do you boil cilantro?  Lettuce? Bell peppers?  Spinach for a salad?  Tomatoes?  Just saying.  Not all foods get boiled as a normal prep, and just going over them with a vegetable sprayer may not be sufficient.  

Edited Saturday at 03:06 PM by TheVat

[npts2020]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment

"Increasingly, people use treated or even untreated sewage for irrigation to produce crops. Cities provide lucrative markets for fresh produce, so are attractive to farmers. Because agriculture has to compete for increasingly scarce water resources with industry and municipal users, there is often no alternative for farmers but to use water polluted with sewage directly to water their crops. There can be significant health hazards related to using water loaded with pathogens in this way. The World Health Organization developed guidelines for safe use of wastewater in 2006.^[61] They advocate a 'multiple-barrier' approach to wastewater use, where farmers are encouraged to adopt various risk-reducing behaviors. These include ceasing irrigation a few days before harvesting to allow pathogens to die off in the sunlight, applying water carefully so it does not contaminate leaves likely to be eaten raw, cleaning vegetables with disinfectant or allowing fecal sludge used in farming to dry before being used as a human manure.^[62]"

While it is recommended that raw sewage not be used for crops, the WHO still has guidelines for doing so because in some places it is not practical to treat it first.

[studiot]

1 hour ago, user801028 said:

I thought that perhaps you all, as students of reason and the scientific method, would better be able to follow the logical thread and maintain your rationalist's hat.

Whilst I definitely see your question as a scientific subject, not a gardening one, I don't see at as a Chemistry one here either.

Perhaps the ecology section of earth scinece or the biology section (thoug that is a bit specialised).

 

You refer to the scientific method but you don't seem to be employing it.

What you are doing is to have an idea or a wish and to be looking for reasons to support it.

Employing the scientific method would be to sum up all the known pros and cons, if necessary doing further research into issues with unknown detail.

 

One aspect occurs to me is the effect of population density.

Take the US Eastern Seaboard conurbation.

Where (and how) are you advocating collecting distrubuting the waste from 50 million people ?

This same area had the highest polio incidence in the world until proper waste treatment was introduced.

Have you asked science about the details of killing virus polio ? -  It is not an easy task.

 

Or are you advocating some form of composting toilet without or permaculture ?

 

Raw cattle effluent (slurry) is already sprayed  thinly onto arable land, so by the time it has passed through a year's crop cycle it has effectively passed through a reed bed type filter.
But this is done (in England anyway) only in relatively low population density areas.
Moving all that slurry very far is expensive and ecologically unsound.

 

I really hopw this thread is not an excuse for the 'let some other blighter clean up after me' brigade that throw their fast food containers, covid masks, and other trash anywhere as soon as they have finished with it.

Man has found out to his cost that  'let Nature clear up after me' brings more disbenefits than benefits.
Moreover the disbenefits are usually felt by all, but the befenfits only felt by a very small minority, perhaps even a single person.

 

 

[toucana]

One of the more delightful occupations first recorded in the English language from the early 14th century period onwards was that of a ‘Gong Farmer’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gong_farmer

Quote

a term that entered use in Tudor England to describe someone who dug out and removed human excrement from privies and cesspits. The word "gong" was used for both a privy and its contents. As the work was considered unclean and off-putting to the public, gong farmers were only allowed to work at night, hence they were sometimes known as nightmen. The waste they collected, known as night soil, had to be taken outside the city or town boundary or to official dumps for disposal.

Cesspits normally had to be dug out by these 'Gong Farmers' every two years or so, and in the late 15th century they charged two shillings per ton of waste removed.

Quote

a good living for the period—but the working life of a gong farmer was "spent up to his knees, waist, even neck in human ordure.

The waste was usually carted out of town and spread as fertiliser on common land, or dumped in areas known as ‘laystalls’ such as the appropriately named ‘Dung Wharf’ on the banks of the river Thames .

[user801028]

On 1/4/2025 at 3:03 PM, TheVat said:

Do you boil cilantro?  Lettuce? Bell peppers?  Spinach for a salad?  Tomatoes?  Just saying.  Not all foods get boiled as a normal prep, and just going over them with a vegetable sprayer may not be sufficient.  

No, but believe it or not I am able to control what type of manure I put where.

So you concede that boiling would destroy all the nasties listed in your above post?

I could put the humanure on the boiled crops and use only 'kosher' compost for others. Besides, I am really not keen on the none cooked vegetables. I find them a waste of time. The ones you listed don't fill you up except the illusion of being full from fibre, not actually having nutritionally fulfilling qualities. I am more interested in growing things like root veges like potatoes and things that would offer high caloric (if that is the right term) content.

Beans too and legumes. Much more bang for your buck with those.

Lettuce and those 'light' vegetables seem a waste of time. All that effort growing them and they barely make a dent in your hunger.

I am glad there has been fruitful (crapful) discussion so far. If there are valid rational reasons for not doing it then I will not do it but it is 'ew yuch you sick' comments which were unhelpful which I received elsewhere as they did nothing to aid in me forming a conclusive opinion.

On 1/4/2025 at 4:50 PM, npts2020 said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment

"Increasingly, people use treated or even untreated sewage for irrigation to produce crops. Cities provide lucrative markets for fresh produce, so are attractive to farmers. Because agriculture has to compete for increasingly scarce water resources with industry and municipal users, there is often no alternative for farmers but to use water polluted with sewage directly to water their crops. There can be significant health hazards related to using water loaded with pathogens in this way. The World Health Organization developed guidelines for safe use of wastewater in 2006.^[61] They advocate a 'multiple-barrier' approach to wastewater use, where farmers are encouraged to adopt various risk-reducing behaviors. These include ceasing irrigation a few days before harvesting to allow pathogens to die off in the sunlight, applying water carefully so it does not contaminate leaves likely to be eaten raw, cleaning vegetables with disinfectant or allowing fecal sludge used in farming to dry before being used as a human manure.^[62]"

While it is recommended that raw sewage not be used for crops, the WHO still has guidelines for doing so because in some places it is not practical to treat it first.

That last sentence is interesting. So simple desiccation would do to sterilize it? That could only take a few days. In the damp uk weather that would probably not happen at all except in a couple of months in summer but one could imagine a crap oven could quite easily be made to manufacture the drying process no?

 

Even so, as per the OP, seems a waste of time and resources vs taking good precautions while spreading and cooking after harvest.

 

It is not pure sludge either, with danger of slopping around all over the places and into any cavities I don't think. The compost I am making is mixed with a good amount of other brown and green material so the actual humanure is only perhaps 30% of the total bulk. It doesn't have a smell after the first few days and just mixes in with the rest of the stuff.

 

Of course I would still take proper hygiene steps when handling regardless.

On 1/4/2025 at 5:21 PM, studiot said:

Whilst I definitely see your question as a scientific subject, not a gardening one, I don't see at as a Chemistry one here either.

Perhaps the ecology section of earth scinece or the biology section (thoug that is a bit specialised).

 

You refer to the scientific method but you don't seem to be employing it.

What you are doing is to have an idea or a wish and to be looking for reasons to support it.

Employing the scientific method would be to sum up all the known pros and cons, if necessary doing further research into issues with unknown detail.

The first postulate is form a hypothesis. Then the next ones are test it. I have not got to testing yet no. I have the hypothesis: can crap be put on crops safely untreated, and am exploring that before seeing if it is viable to put to action.

I have a hypothesis and I am looking for pros and cons to see if I should do it. I think it is disingenuous for you to imply I made it and post-hoc just want reasons to do it regardless of feedback. I have a hypothesis and of course, since it is of interest as a plausible idea, I want to look for reasons in favour of trying it. That doesn't mean I will ignore all advice to the contrary, which seems to be what you are implying.

Any scientist who wants to try an experiment are going to be biased for reasons to do it vs not aren't they or else why would they be wanting to try? They would not bother with any inquiry at all or even forming the question.

If the lion's share of valid reasons for not doing it presented themselves I would be open to changing my position but I still have not yet seen reason against it provided the vegetables would always be cooked which I have not deviated from as being a mandatory step.

On 1/4/2025 at 5:21 PM, studiot said:

One aspect occurs to me is the effect of population density.

Take the US Eastern Seaboard conurbation.

Where (and how) are you advocating collecting distrubuting the waste from 50 million people ?

This same area had the highest polio incidence in the world until proper waste treatment was introduced.

Have you asked science about the details of killing virus polio ? -  It is not an easy task.

 

Or are you advocating some form of composting toilet without or permaculture ?

I am not advocating for anything or anyone else. I mentioned 'humanure' already so I thought that would be understood as synonymous with permaculture and self-composting, which is where the term is coined from said circles.

 

As such I am only proposing using the waste I create, in generous sum on a week by week basis, and using it locally, not from anywhere else. One of the common phrases in those areas for the food chain is 'from field to fork'; well this is something like 'from ass to field'.

On 1/4/2025 at 5:21 PM, studiot said:

Moving all that slurry very far is expensive and ecologically unsound.

Not applicable, as above.

On 1/4/2025 at 5:21 PM, studiot said:

I really hopw this thread is not an excuse for the 'let some other blighter clean up after me' brigade that throw their fast food containers, covid masks, and other trash anywhere as soon as they have finished with it.

Man has found out to his cost that  'let Nature clear up after me' brings more disbenefits than benefits.
Moreover the disbenefits are usually felt by all, but the befenfits only felt by a very small minority, perhaps even a single person.

 

 

No idea how you got that interpretation from my post. It is quite the opposite. It is about closing the loop of sustainable living and using one's own crap for good (instead of say travelling to garden centers to buy compost bags) to rely less and less on outside resources, and in turn lowering your footprint and use of containers for transport, to sustain the individual.

Edited 22 hours ago by user801028

[TheVat]

9 hours ago, user801028 said:

Besides, I am really not keen on the none cooked vegetables. I find them a waste of time. The ones you listed don't fill you up except the illusion of being full from fibre, not actually having nutritionally fulfilling qualities.

Fibre and vitamins, which these foods contain, are important for good health.  But that's another topic.  One you need to research, it sounds like.  

Let me make this real simple:  do not put raw fresh human excrement on your crops.  Your risk (and that of other family members) of cholera or other infection is too high to be experimenting with this.  Do your research on composting manure, so that you can put something on there that's been through a process to eliminate human pathogens.  

While boiling, a form of pasteurization, will kill bacteria, there are still hazards from raw excrement from contact with your hands and shoes when you are gardening.  Raw excrement on the surface of your garden (or tracked into other areas on your shoe soles) can also potentially transmit pathogens to some household pets (unless they are absolutely kept indoors at all times, something few of us achieve in the RW).  If you think you can do the handwashing, boot washing, pet sequestering, child discouragement (from, say, plucking a ripe cherry tomato or strawberry while out playing in the yard), etc. then yes, you could probably reduce your risk.  I am going to speculate that you have never had a severe GI tract infection, or you might take these risks more seriously.  I have experienced one, and that was enough.  As the saying goes, "You probably won't die...but you will wish you could."  

I will also point out that the odor factor can become more prominent than you expected.  Basically, having your garden reek of raw sewage is not going to win you friends in the neighborhood (or much love from family members).  

Edited 12 hours ago by TheVat

[CharonY]

I have not read in detail all the posts, but I would like to point out that there ares studies on the use of human or other waste in agriculture. One aspect that has been promotes was the use of biosolids, which are processed byproducts of wastewater treatment.

Now, there are a couple of issues, but from what I remember they are not unique to human manure.

 A couple of things that one found is that even after treatment (compost or biosolids) antimicrobial resistance determinants persist. That is a health concern, but again, not specific to human waste). In waste, we often also are able to measure a range of chemicals (e.g. pharmaceuticals, pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants).

In some studies, some livestock and surprisingly many wastewater samples (i.e. human waste) had heavy metal levels beyond safe limits, which have raised question regarding the safe use of biosolids. However, not all of that might be attributed to human waste exclusively as some sewer lines might also connect to industrial waste (but many pharmaceuticals and personal care product contamination is likely caused by human urine/feces).

There is also some work on microbial risk and I think human urine is comparatively safe it has usually lower microbial contamination. Others, remain a risk (and again, composting or even heat treatment is insufficient), but I am not sure whether there is an increased risk over agricultural manure (neither are risk-free, though).

Generally speaking, the use of manure (human and animal) is strongly associated with risk of contamination with harmful bacteria (including mentioned E. coli as well as Salmonella, Listeria, Shigella, etc.). If present, even regular cooking might not enough to fully decontaminate, especially as certain toxins are fairly heat stable. Some have raised the issue that pathogens present in human feces might be better adapted to re-infect humans, but I do not know if studies have substantiated that (as in, I have not looked, not that those don't exist).