Re: asking for the bathroom

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

>
> Is it? I'm told that the human digestive tract is remarkably inefficient
> compared to most mammals', and human feces are thusly quite good as
> fertilizer.
>
> My history book claim that human feces was the main fertilizer in China for
> a couple of millennia.
>
That's absolutely right, and it's also true for Europe. When there
weren'r sewers, feces were collected in cities and sold to farmers
nearby. In Chau Giang district in Vietnam, 96,9% of families are
using human faeces as fertilizer
(http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:KGbvIGNbqyk:www.oshvn.net/en/Tu%2520lieu/Hoi%2520nghi%2520y%2520hoc/bai19.htm+faeces+fertilizer&hl=en).

I also found an interesting table of nutrient values of different
kinds of fertilizer (google is your friend) at:

http://www.krishiworld.com/html/soil_ferti3.html

'nightsoil' are human faeces, and they score significanly better
than other types of dung:

                   nitrogen    phodrophoric acid   potash
Cattle dung, fresh 0.3 - 0.4   0.1 - 0.2           0.1 - 0.3
Horse dung, fresh  0.4 - 0.7   0.3 - 0.4           0.3 - 0.4
Sheep dung, fresh  0.5 - 0.7   0.4 - 0.6           0.3 - 1.0
Nightsoil, fresh   1.0 - 1.6   0.8 - 1.2           0.2 - 0.6

Fresh poultry manure is still better, though.


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org