Fertility Transfer

[ColinJEly]

In his books, Peter talks about NSF facilitating the transfer of fertility within a property, but what about the transfer of fertility out of a property. If the natural fertility of a property is used for cropping or grazing, and the resultant produce is then shipped to the market, which in Australia is predominently a few major cities, then it is consumed and the resultant waste ends up......er we know where it ends up, then it is no wonder that after 200 years of european farming that our farms are degraded?
Seems to me that we need to come up with a way to transfer that fertility back up to the farms? No wonder that farmers seem to prefer to chuck a couple of bags of powdered chemical fertiliser around, seems to me that it would be easier, but not better, than returning that fertility from whence it came!

[novaris]

Sweden has been developing recycling toilets for 30 years, I read somewhere that they are trialing town scale systems at the moment. The preferred method seems to be to separate the urine from the solids at the toilet, urine is relatively easy to recycle and contains about 80% of the nutrients, the solids are composted then the compost can be used.

Separret have a good example
http://www.separett.eu/default.asp?refi ... &ptid=2052

[duane]

Yes Col...we should be recycling all our waste back across the landscape.

[ColinJEly]

On page 6 of the current issue of 'Small Farms' magazine, there is a story about a farmer using 'humanure' (bio-solids) to fertilize his farm. Evidently he gets the raw product for free from the sewage works at Newcastle.

[Shirley Henderson]

There are a few companies in Australia now composting sewage a BIG business and many more opportunities in that business I would think. It takes about 10 weeks to make it and is a rich source of compost and a the most sensible recycling I have heard of for years. It is called Nitro Humus or humanure and is a fantastic nutrient rich compost for adding to any farmland (within guidelines and regulations) Look up State and National Guidelines. Apparently crops used on this are wheat, canola, oats and barley. Plus if you grow food and feed it to animals and they then pass it out of their other end it is ok to use THIER manure to grow our food crops. IRONIC isn't it! Also if you feed it to worms SAME!!! Anyhow my point is it is a fantaastic resource and should be used more better still, turn it into a business.
Shirley

[ColinJEly]

There was an article on the Melbourne TV recently about our sewage farms. The newest one at Carrum (SEPP) is selling the biosolids. The older one at Werribee cant sell theirs because in times past they were lax in what they could take and the biosolids have too much heavy metals. So what they are going to do is grow plants on them (mostly natives I think) then harvest them and burn them to generate heat for making electricity. Then they are going to process the resultant ash and recover the heavy metals for reuse.

[Ashlee]

we are building a new house and are using a worm farm as our septic system you can even use the 'worm juice' as fertiliser. requires no maintenance at all, even kitchen water goes through it and best of all no chemicals. If you are away on holiday and the worms get hungry, they lay eggs incase they die then when water and waste goes through the system the eggs hatch and more little worms begin the process again. may only be small scale but makes a small diifference!

[Shirley Henderson]

Hi Colin, just in response to what you said about the heavy metals. Apparently the worms can remove those heavy metals very well and that is a very sustainable way to do it. Better than burning anyway. And Ashlee, I think the worm septic is a great system. Can I ask do you see any worms from the toilet?
Shirley