EcoSanRes: Hello -- I'm new to the group
Carl R Lindstrom
I have followed your work from the sidelines and would like to participate in the dialogue of how we can close the cycle of healthy food and the plant nutrients in our and the other animal's excreta.
I feel that the prime reasons for the success of chemical fertilizer over human & domesticated animal fertilizer, has been a sense that it is easier, "cleaner" and less complicated to spread chemicals, partly created by a fantastic PR effort by the chemical industry and on all levels of society (politicians, media, universities, journalists and direct marketing to farmers). Now the "green revolution", which in reality was entirely a chemical revolution, is so main stream that it causes the same response to criticize chemical farming as for Copernicus to say that the earth is not the center of the solar system many hundreds of years ago. But when we scrutinize it, chemical farming is expensive, energy intensive and is the cause of a nearly doubling of water pollution AND it is not sustainable.
Our and the other animals excreta is the ideal fertilizer from a plant-nutrient point of view as it contains naturally the broad spectrum micro-nutrients that give plants (like fruit, vegetables) the scent, taste and nutrition we want and prefer. A supermarket tomato, repeatedly grown on chemical fertilizer, does not smell like a tomato, does not taste of anything (at best) and no matter how many we eat, it does not produce the feeling that we have eaten enough (received the nutrition we need from it).
So it is my point that if we want to retake this realm of organic farming on a larger scale, we have to offer a sanitation alternative to the flush toilet and sewer system that is equally or more attractive to the user, simpler, less expensive, less maintenance intensive to replace the WC and its convenience. I know from my 50 year experience that we could do it and that it will eventually be necessary.
http://www.slideshare.net/carllindstrom/sewage-sludge-can-never-get-clean
