Other Ag News: Discover the Power of Pee-Cycling for Plants on Small Farms Radio

Recycling just got a whole lot closer to home: your bathroom. In the United States today, human waste is collected and disposed of, transporting valuable resources and nutrients post-consumption away from agricultural areas. While farmers import manure, compost, and fertilizers to their land, human waste is sent to wastewater treatment facilities and landfills. Is there wasted potential in human waste?

On the lastest episode of Small Farms Radio, our own Jamie Johnson spoke about all things pee-cycling with Dr. Rebecca Nelson of Cornell’s Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment. They discussed the crop nutrient, financial, and human health contexts of pee-cycling on small farms and home gardens and the future of the circular resource economy.

Inspired by an agricultural community in Niger, Nelson has been studying the use of human urine and excreta as fertilizer for years. Dubbed “pee-cycling”, this practice may sound like a cultivation strategy from The Martian, but Dr. Nelson’s ongoing research on pee-cycling finds it to be more practical than it seems.

After eating, the broken down version of the food you consumed is partitioned into your feces, urine, breath, and sweat. Most magnesium, calcium, and iron are partitioned into your feces while most nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are partitioned into your urine, making the latter both easier to work with and comparable to most commercial N-P-K mixes. “When we have benchmarked urine against synthetic fertilizer we have benchmarked well,” said Nelson about the use of urine as fertilizer in the field.

The Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont is Nelson’s role model of a community pee-cycling operation, providing free fertilizer to local farmers and normalizing the practice. Nelson also cites “pee-powered” compost as a valuable alternative to synthetic fertilizer as the carbon-rich, composted residues are enhanced by the nitrogen and nutrients in urine. “The nutrients come out of us in plant-friendly form,” Nelson emphasized, “They breathe for us, we breathe for them. They feed us and we can feed them too.”

Pee-cycling isn’t all magic, though, and there are many factors to balance as the process is made safe. “We want to distinguish an ick reaction from technical concerns,” said Nelson as she walked through reliable procedures. Of chief concern is always the presence of fecal matter, which is hazardous. Pasteurization of clean urine itself is important when storing urine and avoiding microbial or chemical concerns. In a closed container, urine can be aged, sterilized, and pH adjusted in a variety of ways. If producers are still worried about urine application, both Johnson and Nelson highlighted that pee-cycling can be piloted in non-consumed crops, such as lumber or turfgrass.

“The circular economy is old but bold… people have been doing it forever,” said Nelson, referencing centuries of integration between humans and their agricultural systems. “Circular economy is always matching that little need with that little resource, stitching things together.” As input prices rise, Nelson hopes to give people a chance to learn about pee-cycling and think about implementation on their farms. Nelson is continuously seeking feedback from pee-cycling users and interested growers on everything from regulation to results. “Small farmers are probably the most creative people in the world because they have to be and they wouldn’t survive in the business if they weren’t… I feel like I have some ideas to share but a whole lot to gain from talking to small farm listeners.”

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