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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]
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 30 2019, @10:47AM (7 children)
If only there were a large, free source of nitrogen somewhere...
Yes, I know. It's still funny though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday March 30 2019, @12:15PM
> If only there were a large, free source of nitrogen somewhere...
Now if you could somehow capture all the excess nitrogen here on SN using code...
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:02PM (4 children)
Notice the phrase in the grandparent
There's a lot of nitrogen in the air for free, but it's not free to turn it into a form that plants can use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:48PM (3 children)
It is not like we have an entire category of plants that can bind nitrogen in the soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legume#Nitrogen_fixation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Saturday March 30 2019, @02:01PM (2 children)
But to keep up with the needs of crops, you need 3 years of legumes for every year of high-production crops, and even then you'll slowly lose enough nitrogen that your yields will drop. And legumes that produce edible crops tend to both require a lot of water, and to be sensitive to temperature (frex, peas will only grow in cool weather).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @06:55PM (1 child)
So what? I don't feel bad for your industrial exploitation of nature.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 31 2019, @04:00AM
The grandparent stated that three years of growing legumes were required per year of cash crop. Just taken at face value, growing one good crop every four years is not free, but rather a very high cost operation.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday March 30 2019, @02:04PM
If only there were a large, free, and magically bio-available source.... I don't know why someone hasn't developed a way to plow in some atmosphere and make it usable by all. This legume supremacy needs to end..
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.