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Australian farmers are using human waste as fertilizer. And it's working.
Circa ^ | Sept. 27, 2017 | Julia Boccagno

Posted on 09/27/2017 5:59:22 AM PDT by bgill

The bio-solids have become particularly important this year. According to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, Australia experienced its hottest winter on record. That, coupled with frequent frosts, have made it difficult for farmers to grow their crops.

But the sewage sludge is more than a simple fertilizer. It's also good for the environment. That's because plant operators are able to make use of an often-ignored waste product.

"We beneficially reuse 100 percent of the bio solids that we generate every year, so that's about 180,000 tons of solid matter," said Gavin Landers of Sydney Water.

(Excerpt) Read more at circa.com ...


TOPICS: Agriculture
KEYWORDS: australia; humanfertilizer
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Stuart Kelly swapped his synthetic fertilizers for the bio solids about five years ago.

Natural over synthetic should be better but what about all the drugs humans put in their bodies?

1 posted on 09/27/2017 5:59:22 AM PDT by bgill
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To: bgill

People have been using human waste as fertilizer since agriculture began.


2 posted on 09/27/2017 6:01:13 AM PDT by C19fan
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To: bgill

Mind the parasitic worms.


3 posted on 09/27/2017 6:05:03 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy
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To: bgill

The Asians have been doing this for eons. Just make sure the foods are thoroughly washed in chlorine before you ingest them.


4 posted on 09/27/2017 6:06:34 AM PDT by vetvetdoug
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To: bgill

It should to be well aged. Fresh crap is what caused lettuce and other salad vegetables to give folks e coli infections. Manure of any type spread in the fall with a fall cover crop tends to eliminate those infections.


5 posted on 09/27/2017 6:07:53 AM PDT by Vaquero (Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you. .)
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To: C19fan

Exactly! Guess some reporter, foreign to the ways of farming, thought they had a good story. Human fertilizer has indeed been used “forever”.


6 posted on 09/27/2017 6:08:51 AM PDT by DaveA37
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To: bgill

Farmers use hog crap a lot... they have these giant barns that are fully automated with over 1000 hogs. The crap runs down the holes in the concrete floor and gets collected underneath and big pumper trucks pump it out and spray it on the fields...


7 posted on 09/27/2017 6:10:33 AM PDT by wyowolf (Be ware when the preachers take over the Republican party...)
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To: Vaquero

“Fresh crap is what caused lettuce and other salad vegetables to give folks e coli infections.”

Really. Driving by great expanses of crops in fields, you just don’t see toilets of any kind. Makes you wonder...


8 posted on 09/27/2017 6:10:34 AM PDT by MayflowerMadam
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To: bgill
It worked for Matt.


9 posted on 09/27/2017 6:10:44 AM PDT by Phlap (REDNECK@LIBARTS.EDU)
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To: bgill

Yup, there is a fancy name for it..its called waste management


10 posted on 09/27/2017 6:16:14 AM PDT by Leep (Less talk more ACTiON!)
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To: vetvetdoug
The Asians have been doing this for eons. Just make sure the foods are thoroughly washed in chlorine before you ingest them.

Ditto. We had to do this when living in Japan in the '60s, though it hasn't been true there for a long time now.

11 posted on 09/27/2017 6:16:56 AM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: bgill

I remember reading about a man in FL who went to the local treatment plant and brought home several trash barrels of the stuff and scattered it on his sickly-looking yard. His lawn did green up...with about a hundred thousand tomato plants!


12 posted on 09/27/2017 6:17:31 AM PDT by econjack
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To: bgill

Lots of farmers do not use this anymore because of the salt buildup in soil. The spread of diseases rules out this for growing food crops for humans especially in root crops like carrots.


13 posted on 09/27/2017 6:18:13 AM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: bgill

Neighbor covered his entire yard in sludge and new grass seed. It stunk mildly for a few weeks and then produced a beautiful lawn (which nobody stepped on). Don’t know if it was aging or new grass growing that took the smell away but we asked him to please not use sludge again.


14 posted on 09/27/2017 6:18:29 AM PDT by Boomer One ( ToUsesn)
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To: bgill

Sewage sludge as fertilizer is nothing new, but If you ask any big food company, you know, the famous brands who are all about “wholesomeness” and “wellness” - they all forbid farmers who supply them to use sewer sludge.

its because a lot of other chemicals and metals, besides just human waste, go down household drains.

So it really depends then on your source of human poop


15 posted on 09/27/2017 6:18:31 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: bgill
Brilliant idea. Wonder why nobody thought of that before?


16 posted on 09/27/2017 6:18:35 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: chajin

We lived in Yokohama in the 1950s-1961.
I remember the arrival of a stack of honey buckets overnight would signal a pumper campaign was about to start...


17 posted on 09/27/2017 6:21:17 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: vetvetdoug

A small family farm. Livestock living close together and intermixed like pigs and chickens and humans, you have a veritable petri dish to breed exotic strains of flu and other diseases.


18 posted on 09/27/2017 6:22:22 AM PDT by Fhios (Down with your fascism, up with our fascism.)
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To: wyowolf

We stayed at a lovely inn in Midway, Utah some years back that was situated next to some big crop fields. The weekend prior to our stay they held a beautiful wedding for some young bride and groom. You can guess what the farmer put down on his field right before the wedding! It was still a bit “fresh and earthy” smelling when we arrived.


19 posted on 09/27/2017 6:22:32 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: bgill

Finally, a practical application of Democrats and Vichy Republicans...


20 posted on 09/27/2017 6:25:03 AM PDT by Noumenon (Can you imagine if Islam were NOT the religion of peace?)
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