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Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops
- technothrasher 2y agoI 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 2y agoProbably this place: https://cat.org.uk https://cat.org.uk - Llwyngwern Quarry, Machynlleth, Powys, SY20 9AZ
- abbassix 2y ago[flagged]
- debo_ 2y ago[flagged]
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- anticorporate 2y agoI'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.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- 27theo 2y agoYes 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 2y agoI have been peeing on corporate for years, but I am very discrete about it, lest they find out it is me.
- RandomBacon 2y agoToo 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 2y agoJokes aside, part of my reduced reliance on corporations is growing as much of our food as we can ourselves.
- Braxton1980 2y agoWhat 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 2y agoIt'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.
- littlestymaar 2y ago> 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoSince 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 2y agoNo, 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 https://compost.css.cornell.edu/chemistry.html
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- RajT88 2y agoDid 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 2y agoPee in a cup or jug at home and take it outside.
- anonymous_sorry 2y agoI tend to relieve myself into a watering can in the privacy of the shed.
- mc32 2y agoIsn'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 2y agoI believe that there are barn designs that capture urine.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoAs 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.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoOr they stand on grating and it falls down there. ...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.
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- debacle 2y agoI'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 2y agoI 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 2y agoThe only neighbors in eyeshot of my compost pile are the ducks, and I don't think they really mind.
- nonethewiser 2y agoI 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-human-waste-faces-scrutiny-but-remains-a-profitable-industry/ https://investigatemidwest.org/2024/08/07/fertilizer-from-hu... And its not just the US https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/02/sewage-sludge-containing-human-waste-uk 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
- xolox 2y agoIn some places in the US the use of sewage sludge to fertilize farm land is turning into a shit show of epic proportions (sorry couldn't resist ;-) due to severe PFAS contamination: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/climate/epa-pfas-fertilizer-3m-forever-chemicals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/climate/epa-pfas-fertiliz... https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/pfas-in-fertilisers-blamed-for-killing-livestock-in-texas-and-wreaking-havoc/4020874.article 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.
- beebaween 2y agoFavorite 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?
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI feel the same way about our green waste, it's at least 5 full bins a year with the seasonal trimming / garden cleanup, leaf collections and kitchen scraps. I mean we only have a small garden but it still feels like we're donating it to someone else. Same with paper and nowadays plastics / recyclables. I want to say they can have the value of it because they come and collect it regularly, but we pay county taxes for that too.
- tw04 2y agoWait 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 2y agoCan confirm, once had a DEF spill inside a Golf TDI, took 48 hours before the car smelled -exactly- like a truck stop bathroom.
- dghughes 2y agoThe 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/ https://www.nitrovolt.com/
- scythe 2y agoThey're not the only ones on that track: https://tsubame-bhb.co.jp/en/ 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 2y agoAny links to the research here?
- bluGill 2y agoNo 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.
- hcfman 2y agoSo how many drugs are the people who consume the crops now ingesting because of this I wonder ?
- 0_____0 2y agoFrom 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 2y agoWhat about THC (or its metabolites)?
- LegitShady 2y agomy man here is trying to develop the devil's lettuce for real.
- tokai 2y agoCaffeine?! 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-data-88-european-cities-reveal-cocaine-detections-rise_en https://www.euda.europa.eu/news/2024/4/latest-wastewater-dat...
- NotGMan 2y agoAnother huge issue is estrogen from women using birth control pills.
- bluGill 2y agoUrine 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 2y agoI'm curious how poop is so deadly.
- bluGill 2y agoBacteria, 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 2y agoYou 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 2y ago[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-sanitation-E-coli-2551035.php 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.
- alkh 2y agoUnfortunately, 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-sludge-farm.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/climate/pfas-fertilizer-s... [2] https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473455/pfas-forever-chemicals-could-be-contaminating-millions-of-acres-of-farmland https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473455/pfas-forever-chemi...
- LarsAlereon 2y agoThat's why they're capturing the urine directly instead of using potentially contaminated sewage solids.
- chakintosh 2y agoFrom 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 2y agodoes pasteurization break down PFAs? They're chemicals, not microbes. My understanding is that pasteurization only kills microbes.
- moate 2y agoThe 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.
- ghfhghg 2y agoI grew up being taught to urinate on our rhubarb patches.
- appointment 2y agoThe headline should specify _human_ urine. Spreading animal urine on crops is of course standard practice everywhere.
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- kleinmatic 2y ago[flagged]
- erehweb 2y agoPecunia non olet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet
- deepsquirrelnet 2y agoWait 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 2y agoZero 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 2y agoEh, uv diods? You lower them in, vibrate and rotate the material, degrade it? Standard processing step
- memhole 2y agoAre 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 2y ago>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 2y ago> "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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromated_copper_arsenate 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_preservation#Copper_azole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_preservation#Copper_azole
- knowitnone 2y agoexcept nowadays, so many people are on medication that the urine may be contaminated by other chemicals.
- Mistletoe 2y agoI 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 2y agoHere'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 https://youtu.be/fhYW0QVS408?si=6sEtuWLEBSFfEk2f
- autoexec 2y agoI'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 2y agoPissing or shitting on plants has positive effects if those people have a proper food, hydration, no drugs
- brodouevencode 2y ago> 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 2y agoNot 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/ 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-labor-migrant-workers-0e0d7235e79a4e216307e007a7aa716b https://apnews.com/article/business-georgia-slavery-forced-l... Here in Colorado: https://www.denverpost.com/2024/11/01/h2a-visas-workers-trafficked-colorado-san-luis-valley/ 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-say-immigrant-workers-forced-to-build-luxury-condos-in-san-jose/211007/ 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-undocumented-immigrants-to-be-her-slaves-for-14-years/ 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-sued-by-mexican-workers-claiming-forced-labor 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-charged-reportedly-forcing-migrants-working-pay-off-debt https://www.foxnews.com/us/mexican-migrant-trafficking-woman...
- bzmrgonz 2y agoIf 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-Netherlands.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portable-toilet-Neth... These can be bought from alibaba.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoSounds cleaner than Milorganite.
- cluckindan 2y agoTransmissible 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 2y agohow 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?
- gsf_emergency_2 2y agosame climes, different times >A Salpetersjudare collected urine soaked earth to assist with the production of saltpeter. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Sweden_Occupation:_Saltpetersjudare https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Sweden_Occupation:_Salt...
- maxglute 2y agoMy grand parents garden always smelled like waste because they fertized from the septic tank. Juicy tomatoes though.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI've been playing Kingdom Come 1 & 2 and I'm 99% confident that all the houses there smell like that. Open compost / waste heaps everywhere, some with a plank or stool to uh. make stool on.
- erelong 2y agoon the other hand, the "humanure" handbook talks about how to compost "human manure"... maybe not to be applied to crops, though