Hundreds of years ago, it was common practice for all the sh*t in a town or city to be gathered up each night and dumped on the nearby fields as fertilizer. This provided excellent nutrients for the crops, but it also created a lot of disease.
Scroll forwards hundreds of years later, and we still have to wash our fruit and veg because of all the chemical sh*t dumped on it. More to the point, real sh*t is being looked at again as a sustainable substitute for chemical and phosphate fertilizers used in intensive agriculture.
You can read the rest of Chris Milton’s thoughts on sh*t and industrial agriculture over on our sister site, Planetsave.
Picture Credit: Slurry spreading tractor and trailer by desomurchu under Creative Commons Attribute License.