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posted by FatPhil on Friday March 29 2019, @11:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the bring-on-your-best-shitposts dept.

The planet's prodigious poo problem

How much poo is generated by the world’s farms?

Recent research has estimated that by 2030, the planet will be generating at least 5bn tonnes of poo each year, with the vast majority being deposited by livestock. With 80% of farms in the Netherlands already producing more cow dung than they can legally use as fertiliser, and China resorting to drastic measures to try to reduce the amount of manure being discharged into rivers, scientists say this is a major environment and health challenge.

“It’s a huge problem,” says Joe Brown, professor of environmental engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. “Animal waste is going up because as populations and wealth increase, there’s a bigger demand for protein. But while we’ve seen lots of initiatives to safely manage human waste, nobody is talking about this.” [...]

What are the knock-on environmental risks?

Because most first world farming systems are highly concentrated, industrial operations, this produces very concentrated streams of waste. Unless these are dealt with rapidly, they can pollute the air with large amounts of harmful gases such as ammonia, nitrous oxide and hydrogen sulphide.

Inhaling these toxic fumes can be lethal in large quantities, and studies have repeatedly shown that people who live near industrial farms have a much greater risk of chronic asthma, respiratory irritation, immune suppression, and even mood disorders.

Water pollution and climate change are also issues.

[Ed's notes: My first thoughts are on how this might be mirroring Victorian-era poolution in cities before cars took over, and from there to how many other times too much poo from too many nearby animals has deleteriously affected the humans who were encouraging the growth of the problem. Feel free to fling other examples at me if you can think of them! -- FP]


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 30 2019, @04:24AM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 30 2019, @04:24AM (#822222) Journal

    It's probably not economically viable to ship mountains of shit when competing with concentrated nutrients though

    You're probably not going to get nutrients more concentrated than dehydrated animal manure unless you're talking low mass nutrients like iron.

  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday March 30 2019, @02:11PM

    by Reziac (2489) on Saturday March 30 2019, @02:11PM (#822342) Homepage

    And iron is a micronutrient; you don't need it in mass quantities. However, plant crops do need nitrogen in mass quantities, especially those crops that produce proteins that primates (that would be us) can use.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.