No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
THE UTILIZATION OF HUMAN EXCRETA IN CHINESE AGRICULTURE AND THE CHALLENGE FACED
Abstract
1. Chinese tradition of utilizing human excreta According to the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells in the Shang Dynasty about three thousand years ago, the use of human excreta may already have begun in China. During the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), the use of farm manure became quite popular when cropping system changed from crop/ fallow rotation to crop/crop rotation. In many articles written by famous persons in early Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), there were words about "using excreta to field". In "Lao Jie" written by Han Feizi, he wrote "in order to increase fertility of soil, human excreta must be used." During Qin and Han Dynasty(221-220 AC), there was inscription about the link of toilet and pigsty in one place, also about the compost using human excreta. The method of using human excreta included basal fertilization, top application, and seed coating. In Ming and Qing Dynasty (1368-1911), Xu Guangqi described the method to cook human waste with human hair and cattle dung with cattle bone. He also described the distillation method for human excreta just as distillation method for wine. A formula for making compound fertilizer included black bean, hemp seed, pigeon waste, human excreta, manure from goats, dogs etc. He suggested that the right method of using fertilizer was according to season. To apply human and animal waste in spring, compost and green manure in summer, plant ash in fall and bone meal , hair and skin in winter. He also suggested that to apply fertilizer according to different soil type just as using medicine for different diseases. He recommended that to use black bean compost for millet, to use human excreta and bean cake for vegetable. In "Zhi Ben Ti Gang. Nong Ce Geng Jia", organic fertilizers were divided into ten categories. They were human excreta, animal waste, river mud, shell and bone ash, green manure, home waste, bean cake compost, feather and hair compost." Under the influence of our long tradition, human excreta is always used as fertilizer for crops in China. The main application methods are (1) direct usage for crops and fruits as basal or top application after fermentation in a ditch for a certain period, (2) compost with crop stalk for basal application, (3) direct usage as feed for fish in pond. Even human waste generated in the cities and towns were very dear for farmers and were brought back to rural areas for production purposes. Before 1949, there were firms in Wuhan, Beijing, and other cities to control the commercial selling of human excreta. In Guangzhou city, farmers sent some yam or sweet potato to house wives to show their gratefulness. This situation lasted until the end of 1970's and early 1980's. 2. The Challenge Facing China for Agricultural Usage of Human Excreta Before the 1960's fertilization methods mainly relied on farm yard manure and organic fertilizer. In the mid-1960's, the wide use of semi dwarf rice variety promoted the growth of green manure in winter. At that time, the chemical fertilizer industry was on the eve of quick development in China. The maximum area of green manure reached 1.2 billion hectare in China and 8.7 million hectare in south China. From 1980 on, the amount of chemical fertilizer was more than organic fertilizer. Now organic fertilizer is only about 35% of the total fertilizer used. Although the tradition of using human waste has been carried on, the percentage of human excreta used is decreasing. In part of the developed area in China, farmers
... bile, milk, venoms) and excrements such as urine, faeces, kidney stones and ambergris [6][7][8][9]. Although the use of animal excrement may seem nauseating and repulsive in the modern era, the fact is, that the use of excrement as food, medicine and agriculture is a practice of old in Africa, Asia and even the West [10][11][12]. Of the many medical systems recorded, Egyptian medicine is among the oldest also had healing recipes for the excrement of animals [11]. ...
... Although excrement may be considered waste, its invaluable role in the restoration of health is not in doubt but there is limited information on the proportion of the population that uses them for any purpose. There are few studies on the perception and attitude towards the use of human excreta in agriculture [10,17] but there is a paucity of information on the perception of its use as medicine. This study which we consider possibly as the rst, measured the level of use of animal excrement in traditional medicine in Ghana and the attitude of the general population towards its use for restoration of human health. ...
Animal excrement although may be considered as a waste product, has since ancient days found use in the management of several physical disorders and sometimes for spiritual or mystical purposes. This study assessed the extent of use and the attitude towards the use of animal excrement in traditional medicine among the Ghanaian public. Data was collected from 399 persons in the Tamale metropolis of the Northern Region of Ghana using a semi-structured questionnaire. Data analysis involved the use of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version 26 and the results presented in the form of tables and charts. The multivariate logistic regression model was used to assess predictors. Using a confidence interval of 95%, an association between variables was assumed to be significant when p ≤ 0.05. Whereas 44 (11.6%) indicated a personal use of animal excrement for traditional medicine, up to 234 (58.6%) knew some other person who had ever used animal excrement as medicine. For users of animal excrements, the majority, 42 (97.7%) used them for therapeutic reasons with only 1 (2.3%) claiming to use them for spiritual or mystical purposes. The top two most cited excrements were from the Dromedary camel ( Camelus dromedarius ) and the cow ( Bos taurus ). Statistically significant associations were found between the use of animal excrement for traditional medicine and respondents’ ages (p-value < 0.001), religious affiliation (p-value < 0.001), employment status (p-value = 0.018), highest educational attainment (p-value = 0.003) and knowing someone who used animal excrement (p-value < 0.001). The predictors of the use of animal excrement for traditional medicine were age, religious affiliation and knowing a user. The attitude towards the use of animal excrement for traditional medicine is barely average (51.8%) with the worst attitude towards the therapeutic use of human excreta. This attitude towards animal excrement in traditional medicine was significantly associated with the age of respondents, their religious affiliation, their educational attainment, ever used animal excrement or knowing a user.
... For example, in Britain, Henry Moule persuaded farmers to fertilize their crops with earth from his latrine in the 1840's (Smet and Sudgen, 2006). In China, the use of human manure is predicted to have started more than three thousand years ago (Shiming, 2002). Shiming noted phrases like "use of excreta in the fields" in literature dating back to 475-221 BC and 221-207 BC. ...
... Shiming noted phrases like "use of excreta in the fields" in literature dating back to 475-221 BC and 221-207 BC. Ancient writers indicated that human excreta improve soil fertility and were used to fertilize crops directly and were also used for fish ponds as food for fish (Shiming, 2002). Swedish International Development Coorporation Agency (SIDA) started researching on sustainable ecological sanitation in 1993 while in Ethiopia, ecological sanitation started in 1994 as Economy, Ecology and Sanitation (ECOSAN) (Terrefe and Edstrom, 2005;Winblad et al., 2004). ...
REFEREED PAPER 1853 Studies have shown that manure harvested in ecological sanitation (ecosan) latrines has more thermo tolerant bacteria and helminthic eggs than the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation. The review was aimed at assessing adequacy of available guidelines on use of ecosan to produce safe manure. Relevant literature was searched and critically reviewed. Literature on effect on pathogen die off was not consistent from one study to the next and in some situations conflicting results have been found. Guidelines on waiting period after pit is sealed differed from one country to the next and there is an agreement that six months waiting period is not enough to produce safe manure. There is need for further research in real latrine situation to investigate all potential factors that affect pathogen die off. These may assist to explain inconsistencies in literature on pathogen die off and assist to develop specific guidelines for different locations.
... Hong Kong presents a more dissonant context, where activists and practitioners are resisting rampant, speculative development, concentrated land ownership and food-skill loss by carving out niches for agroecological thinking and acting ( Fig. 9.2). Hong Kong's highly fertile delta region was until the 1970s home to substantial rice and fish cultivation that appreciated human manure inside organized commodity markets to sustain yields (Xue 2005;Shiming 2002). Even today, smallholder farmers in southwestern China employ human waste for private use (Leung 2020). ...
In recent years, citizen designers have been working with urban communities on the ecological reuse of human waste. In this commoning effort, practitioners reclaim body-expelled resources for exploring the metabolically enabled household as a networked site of radical, co-productive transitions that harnesses nutrients and boosts local value chains. The commoning of human excrement is understood in the context of agroecological urbanization that seeks to empower urban dwellers to become contributing actors in the food-energy nexus by making the city more food-enabled for storing and proliferating feeds, fertilizer, and food. By introducing three cases of human-waste commons in Brussels, Hong Kong, and Berlin, this study approaches commoning design as a process grounded in the praxis of anticipation. In this way of life, consistent with the anticipatory nature of living systems, the transformative potential in people, their waste, and social arrangements stem from the dynamic continuum of mutual purpose, trust, and vigilance. Collective desire, resolutions, and statuses are a result of direct involvement, context, and relationships. The three examples show how citizen designers draw energy from anticipating regenerative, life-giving value chains around human waste that give momentum to overcome the given thresholds with perseverance and resourcefulness.KeywordsValue chain designEcological sanitationFood pedagogiesCollectivized resourcefulnessMetabolizing infrastructure
... The most common form of reuse as researched and published is composting for agriculture, which is also the lowest value product [14,20,21] (Table 1). The agricultural reuse of excreta has a history going back thousands of years and is more technically understood and abundant as a reuse option than other more recent systems or resources [60,61]. The more recent forms of reuse, including Black Soldier Fly, may prove to be more profitable, but limited published research makes comparison difficult. ...
Faecal sludge reuse could promote responsible waste management and alleviate resource shortages. However, for this reuse to be carried out at scale, it needs to be financially viable. This paper reviews the financial values of resource recovery from 112 data points from 43 publications from academic and grey literature. The results found 65% of the existing literature is projected rather than being based on observed data from products in practice, with limited studies providing actual experiences of revenue in practice. Some of the estimates of the potential value were ten times those observed in data from operating businesses. Reasons for this include pricing of products against unrealistic competitors, for example, pricing briquettes against diesel fuel, or difficulties in marketing or regulation of products in practice. The most common form of reuse in practice is agricultural composting, which is also the lowest value product. Few cases were able to achieve more than $5/person/year from sludge reuse, therefore other drivers are needed to promote proper human waste disposal, including the health and dignity of citizens, but which are not easily monetised. Certification and recognition of product safety can improve the perception of value and products. Resource recovery has a limited role in the financial viability of providing Circular Economy sanitation in low-income countries. Instead, there is a need to focus on supportive policies and subsidies enabling the transition towards a Circular Economy supporting environmental quality, ecological health and human health.
... [4] [5] The successful application of human waste at the present time has been confirmed by several publications. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] There are four main methods of treating human excreta. The first is the well-known flush toilet based sewage water infrastructure, when excreta is transported by the sewage system to the waste water treatment plant (or without treatment to freshwater or oceans). ...
Human excreta contains all the macroelements which are important for the soil, for example nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Although there are many ways of treating human excreta, composting is often regarded as the best solution because the final result of this treatment is valuable humus. However, human urine contains the most of the nutrients, so it may be more reasonable to apply human urine alone as a fertilizer. Direct utilization of urine emerges a lot of problems, but there are several existing technologies which are able to recover the nutrients from urine. These technologies (stripping, absorption, struvite precipitation and membrane technologies) also capable to recover nutrients from wastewater. Our paper are focusing on the comparison of composting toilet and urine-diversion toilet by analysing the advantages and disadvantages of the two methods.
... Most students found raw salad especially unacceptable. This belief may stem from the age-old Chinese agricultural practice of using night soil, or human and livestock feces, as a fertilizer (Luo, 2002). This practice necessitates the cooking of vegetables for food safety purposes. ...
Focus groups (n = 7) were conducted with Chinese students (n = 43) studying in the USA to determine how acculturation and environmental factors influence dietary behavior and body mass index (BMI). This study used mixed methodology, collecting both qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (24-h dietary recalls, food adoption scores, degree of acculturation, and height and weight measures) data. Themes emerging from focus group discussions were: a) dietary and social acculturation, b) factors influencing food intake, c) cultural importance of food, and d) changes in weight and BMI status. Environmental, behavioral, and cultural factors appear to have impacted the eating behaviors of the students. Because of the nature of the study, self-reported heights and weights were used to calculate BMI while living in China and actual heights and weights were taken for each student at the focus group to calculate current BMI after living in the USA. The majority of Chinese students (69% males; 85% females) experienced weight gain, resulting in an increased BMI based on weight/height data and as reported in focus group discussions. As a result, if students continue to gain weight, they may be at higher risk of developing chronic diseases in the future. Further, implemented dietary change may be transferred to other family members if students return to China. Results suggest that nutrition education should be provided to incoming foreign students during their orientation.
... International Journal of Social Economics 24(7/8/9): 1038-1051. 12 Luo, Shiming (2002). The Utilization of Human Excreta in Chinese Agriculture and the Challenge Faced. ...
China has seen rapid economic development and urbanisation and this has included the upgrading of traditional sanitation systems. But the speed of this transition raises concerns about the coexistence of diverging sanitation practices and their impact. This paper asks how this coexistence is experienced by low-income urban residents in Shanghai. It is based on field research during four weeks in July 2013 which involved in-depth, open-ended interviews with 20 low-income urban residents. The article concludes that these diverging everyday practices are situated at the core of urban socio-spatial differentiation, inequality, exclusion and discrimination. Particularly affected are rural-to-urban migrants and ageing working-class residents for whom the lack of access to improved sanitation may be associated with stigmatisation and social isolation. Future research should examine how changing sanitation cultures under urban development and diverging sanitation practices in different contexts can affect family ties, social relations and socio-spatial integration.
... The food wastes were used as feed in traditional animal farms. Before 1980s, human excrements were collected and used by farmers in rural areas as 'night soil' to fertilize the land (Shiming, 2002). However, the traditional recycling was replaced by poor-functioning sewage waste water collection systems and a poor municipal solid waste collection system, almost without recycling of N and P. In 2008, approximately 90% of municipal solid wastes was landfilled, 8% was incinerated and only 2% was recycled after composting (Zhen-shan et al., 2009). ...
... In the atmosphere, hair decomposes very slowly, but moisture and keratinolytic fungi present in soil, animal manure, and sewage sludge can degrade hair within a few months [13]. In traditional Chinese agriculture, human hair was mixed with cattle dung to prepare compost that was applied to the fields in the winter season [14,15]. In some communities in India, hair has been used directly as fertilizer for many fruit and vegetable crops and in making organic manures [16,17]. ...
Human hair is considered a waste material in most parts of the world and its accumulation in waste streams causes many environmental problems; however, it has many known uses. Preventing waste of such a material requires both addressing the problems in the current usage and developing its utilization systems at locations where they are missing. With focus on developing systematic utilization of human hair waste, this paper first reviews the possible uses of human hair gathered from large scale trades, local/traditional knowledge, upcoming innovations, and scientific research; along with the socioeconomic systems that have evolved around the known uses. Concerns and gaps in these systems are identified and possible directions to address these gaps are discussed. For expanding hair utilization to new contexts, important considerations such as knowledge, skill, and technology requirements and potential markets are discussed. Finally, a policy framework for socially and environmentally healthy utilization of human hair is outlined. This study shows that human hair is a highly versatile material with significant potential in several critical areas such as agriculture, medical applications, construction materials, and pollution control. Moreover, these uses are diverse enough for entrepreneurs ranging from unskilled to highly technical individuals and for the wide variety of human hair waste available in different locations.
... The application of human excreta to agriculture has been practiced in China for several millennia (Shiming, 2002); the EETP system's ecological sanitation principle of resource recovery from excreta can therefore be expected to be more accepted there than in many other parts of the world without a similar history. Surprisingly, however, the April/May 2009 survey found that only about 20% of the respondents found untreated urine application to agriculture to be acceptable and about 40% in the case of treated faeces (Flores, 2009). ...
The use of sustainability indicators for evaluating sanitation systems is applied to the Erdos Eco-Town Project (EETP) in China for illustration. The EETP is the largest urban settlement in the world employing ecological sanitation, which incorporates separation of waste streams, dry toilets, and resource recovery. The EETP's dry sanitation system is compared against the Dongsheng District's conventional sewer and centralised STP. The two systems are compared based on technological, environmental, economic, and societal indicators. Overall, the two systems perform reasonably well from a technological perspective. The conventional system performs significantly better than the dry system with regards to land and energy requirements, and global warming potential; it also performs better based on freshwater aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicity potentials, but by a smaller margin. The dry system has superior environmental performance based on water consumption, eutrophication potential, and nutrient and organic matter recovery. The dry system is a more costly system as it requires greater infrastructure and higher operational costs, and does not benefit from economies of scale. The waterborne system performs better based on the societal indicators largely because it is a well-established system.
... A more recent nationwide survey (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004) revealed a 20% overall prevalence of STH infection in China . Transmission of STHs in rural China is associated with the ancient practice of using human feces, or night soil, as fertilizer for dry land crops (Chang, 1949;Ling et al., 1993;Luo, 2001). With rural per capita incomes often less than $800 per year, night soil offers a readily available and inexpensive high quality substitute for commercial fertilizers and is treated as a valuable commodity by Chinese farmers. ...
Abstract Soil transmitted helminths (STH) refer to several parasitic nematode species that infect over 1 billion people worldwide. Infections with Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, and the hookworms Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale cause significant morbidity in more than 450 million people, primarily children and pregnant women, resulting in over 39 million disability adjusted life years lost. Considerable effort and resources have been, and continue to be, spent on top-down, medical based programs to control STH infections, with little success. This review discusses the problems with these methods, and proposes a new emphasis on sustainable, long-term investments in sanitation-based approaches using improved latrines (the "box") to provide bottom-up, culturally appropriate and economically desirable solutions to STH control in endemic areas. One such approach is the use of biogas technology. Waste undergoes fermentation in specially designed septic systems, generating a methane gas mixture ("biogas") that can be burned to augment or replace household energy needs like cooking and light generation. Also, the effluent from the fermentation chamber provides a high-quality, nitrogen rich fertilizer. Using China as an example, the use of biogas technology as a solution to rural sanitation and energy problems is described, and its advantages over current strategies of mass drug administration and vaccination for STH control highlighted.
... The return of human excreta to cropland has been practised for thousands of years. According to the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells in Shang Dynasty about 3000 years ago, the use of human excreta may have begun in China (Luo, 2001). Also sanitation records in China could be dated to 5000 years ago. ...
At present, urban water management in many cities does not appear to be sustainable. Water shortage is rising to the level of the number one problem of the world today. Although shortage of clean water is increasing, large volumes are used for the current water-borne sanitation. The aim of this paper is to investigate what a sanitation reform should be done. The research concludes that traditional water-borne sanitation is not a reasonable solution for many countries, especially for those that are under dry climate conditions. The ideal sanitation model is designed and analysed to recycle the nutrients and to save water as well.
The current approach to managing waste is one of the major reasons for ecosystem imbalances. In many parts of the world, human excreta is indiscriminately dumped in the environment, leading to the entry of high concentrations of nutrients and pathogens. In urban sanitary systems, nutrients are often not recovered, but large amounts of natural resources (e.g. water) are used for treating wastes at the expense of the environment. These practices are unsuitable and pose risks to human health and the environment, as such current efforts are geared towards providing on-site sanitation and opportunities for nutrient and resource recovery. This mini-review summarises the efforts to valorise human waste and process routes for the recovery of value-added products. These involve a review of ecological sanitation, systems that safely collect and treat human waste in situ and advanced waste-to-energy systems to convert recovered materials to fuels, heat and/or electricity. Focus is given to low-cost technological solutions that offer ecological benefits and opportunities to recover useful products. The barriers and opportunities to the adoption of on-site sanitation and appropriate technologies are discussed, considering current limitations and potential benefits. There are opportunities to recover useful products from human wastes; however, further research is needed to ascertain the value and impact of recovered products.
Sanitation is one of the most considered global health and environmental problems which have given high
priority in developing countries due to the rapid population growth and poor sanitary conditions. In response,
new sanitation technologies following different concepts have been introduced to overcome the inefficiencies
and other limitations of conventional sanitation systems. Though such new technologies are blessed by
engineering advancements and backed by sound technical feasibility assessments yet the social acceptability to these practices are not adequately studied. In this context, this research attempted to study the factors influence on stakeholder preference on ‘ecological sanitation’ – an emerging sanitation approach which recently introduced to Sri Lanka- with referring to a selected case study at Habardoowa, Sri Lanka. Results of the study revealed key factors which need to be considered in introducing, popularizing and adapting these new practices to people to competently overcome the challenges to conquer the poor sanitary conditions.
The key challenge facing many catchment authorities in Zimbabwe and elsewhere is the challenge of feeding the growing populations within their catchment boundaries. Modern agricultural practices continue to mine valuable crop nutrients through increased food production to satisfy ever-increasing food demand. In recent diagnostic survey of smallholder agricultural sector in the Manyame catchments of Zimbabwe it was revealed that exhausted soils depleted of their natural mineral and organic constituents by many years of cropping with little fertilization or manuring were the major factors contributing to low yields and poor food security in this sector in Zimbabwe. The objective of the study was to assess the effect of using sanitized human excreta on maize production and water productivity. The study involved six volunteer farmers with four 10 m × 10 m trial plots each with the following treatments the control, commercial fertilizer treatment urine only plot, and the feacal matter and urine plot. Harvest determination was carried by weighing the yield from each of the treatment plots and comparisons done. Water productivity was computed by calculating the amount of water used to produce a tone of maize per ha. The study showed that human excreta improves maize crop production and water productivity in rain-fed agriculture. The study recommends that the ecological sanitation concept and the reuse of human excreta both humanure and (ecofert) urine can be considered as alternative excreta management options in catchment areas.
The key stocks and flows of phosphorus (P) through food consumption in Beijing and Tianjin, two megacities in northern China, were explored using a material flow analysis (MFA) approach to construct a static model of P metabolism. A total of 4498 t P has accumulated with 72% of P flow imported through food consumption eventually remaining in Beijing in 2008. Around 64% of the total inflow of P (2670 t) remained in Tianjin in 2008. P in the uncollected sewage from both urban and rural residents and the effluents from sewage treatment plants has significant negative effects on water quality. An average of 55% the P flow remained in the sewage sludge through urban food consumption. The key problems in P metabolism and management in megacities are identified based on the quantitative analysis of P cycling through food consumption. Relevant solutions for improving P recycling efficiency are also discussed. It is important to link P flows with environmental regulations and to establish a strong coordination between urban and rural areas for nutrient recycling to attain sustainable development of megacities.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.