In the Oh-Nowhere-Earth (Japanese language) mailing list concerning ecology, there is a topic concerning the recycling of human feces. While organic farming is fine -- we don't use chemicals anymore -- there is a still-broader approach to be taken: whatever comes from the earth has to go back to the earth.
   We eat vegetables. Then, the end result of this consuming process has to be returned to the the earth. This is real recycling! While the 21st century is an ecological millenium, if we continue to depend only on animal feces for fertilizer, there will be a severe shortage.
   Shinji Takara (upper-left photo), who is working in India as an EM organizer (the Association of Effective Micro-organisms, Japan), talks about the necessity of utilizing human feces to provide sufficient food for everybody on the earth without the use of chemicals.

  Shinji Takara:  If you use the help of micro-organisms, agricultural production will be definitely increased. This is far better than the modern method of using chemicals, and moreover it has no bad effects on the environment. However, even knowing it is a better method, it is not easily done in Japan where farms are small and close to each other. You might want to farm organically, but your neighbors are spraying chemicals which drift into your soil. Here in India, most farmers believe that chemical fertilizers are best; they don't understand the harmful results of chemicals: to the soil, the production of crops and the human body.

   Yes, there are a few problems working in agriculture with micro-organisms. For example, sometimes it becomes difficult to obtain organic material like cow dung for the making of fertilizer. Especially in the dry areas of India, it is difficult to get even weeds in the dry season -- and the price of animal feces is increasing each year. As the demand increases, there is a greater shortage.

   In you begin to farm organically, for the first years you need to use a great deal of fertilizer. Here in India, in the tropical regions, the temperature is high, so the micro-organisms are very active, making production difficult. By the third year, the micro-organisms have settled in the soil and crops will grow normally.

   If organic farming becomes more widespread, there will not be enough animal waste available for fertilizer. For that reason, the use of human feces for fertilizer is slowly returning. Now in the West and in Japan the use of human waste is again permitted. There are some who believe that the use of fertilizer made from human feces will save the world. I, myself, as an EM person, have used the fertilizer made from human feces and witnessed its high potential. And there are many scientists now who admit that human fertilizer is the best.

   From an ecological point of view, it is most rational to use human fertilizer. All humans are eating the produce from the farms and producing feces. Putting this back into the ground completes the cycle. In the past, this had been our practice. It is the traditional farming method of Japan.

   In the modern world, human feces are rarely used because of the smell and the presence of parasites. But now, with the help of micro-organisms, the bad smell is transformed and the parasites are destroyed.

   It is believed that the waste from one human being is enough to provide the fertilizer for the growing of that person's food. Here in India, with a population of 1 billion people, if we can utilize the waste from the entire population, we can make the fertilizer needed to feed the entire population. However, if we continue to depend solely on animal waste, we will be faced with a severe shortage and an ecology totally out of balance. The use of human waste is the answer.

   Mahasukh (editor from nowhere):   It will be revolutionary if we begin to use human feces. We eat the food from the farm, and then, whatever comes out of us we return to the soil. We need to understand the real concept of ecology. It is not only that you don't use chemicals. When you view the entire eco-system, then making use of what comes from the human body seems essential. But when I look around here, there are still old ideas of caste, whole concepts of cleanness and dirtiness. The right hand is clean and the left is dirty. There are clean people who are high caste, as well as dirty people of low caste like the untouchables who are only allowed to do toilet cleaning. To imagine eating with your clean right hand the foods made from "dirty" human waste seems impossible here. Such a system as I'm describing would be truly revolutionary.

   Sahaj (cordinator for Oh-Nowhere-Earth mailing list):   To me, it sounds very rational. I have heard that in India some people, like Desai, the former prime-minister of India, drink their own urine for the sake of their health, because one's own urine has special health properties. Ultimately, humans, their feces, vegetables -- these are all made of micro-organisms. So it is good to make veggies out of human waste. This is one circle, and, I think, a very healthy circle.

   Of course, introducing the use of human feces is not easy. Even in Japan where we made everything so hygienic, we certainly have resistance. One indirect way of dealing with this resistance is: we start to use the human fertilizer to grow food for animals and then we eat what the animals produce. Then meanwhile we begin to make people understand how beneficial it is.
   In Ukraine, I have seen a TV program where people were farming using the water from sewage. If they had included micro-organisms in the process, it would have been successful.