Could Ending World Hunger Be as Simple as Collecting Your Pee?

Have you ever wondered what those NPK numbers on a bag a fertilizer stand for? They stand for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and they are the main macronutrients that plants need to grow. In what should come as no surprise in one of those what goes in must come out circle of life lessons your urine has the perfect balance of NPK and other micronutrients that plants need to grow the food you eat. Unlike solid waste that requires a lengthy composting to be safe urine comes out relatively sterile and once diluted with water can immediately be used in the garden.

As the cost of synthetic and mined fertilizers continue to skyrocket both government agencies and farmers have seriously been looking for cost effective alternatives to expensive chemical fertilizers. One such agency the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education program (SARE) granted the Rich Earth Institute in Vermont nearly $15,000 to do a farm scale demonstration of sustainable fertilization using reclaimed urine. They collected 3,000 gallons of urine from 170 volunteers and the results were very promising with urine fertilizer produced yields being statistically indistinguishable from yields dirived from comparable applications of synthetic fertilizer. Read more about their results in the project report found here: https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/one13-188/

Poor farmers who do not have access to expensive traditional fertilizers can use local reclaimed urine to improve crop yields decreasing the risk of famine in much of the world.

Try this experiment at home by collecting your urine then diluting it 1:1 with water and applying it to a small patch of your lawn leaving a nearby patch unfertilized to compare results with. In about a week you should notice that the urine fertilized patch of lawn is drastically greener and likely taller than the control patch.

Life on Earth is one big complicated self sustaining system and we humans are part of it. As rational sentient beings with a desire for self preservation it is our responsibility to understand how the system works and work with nature finding the synergies that create a greater abundance of life. Nature and natural law always win and the punishments for being unsustainable in the long term are severe.