A government scientist urged Filipino farmers to use human urine as crop fertilizer.
Rafael Guerrero, executive director of the Philippine Council for Aquatic Marine Research and Development (PCAMRD) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), said human urine is high in nitrogen.
“Veggies respond more to nitrogen,” he said, adding that continuous use of fertilizer exhausts the soil.
“There’s need for restoring life of the soil by bringing back organic matter,” he said.
According to research, urine is being actively considered as a fertilizer for use in food-crop agriculture in developed countries.
Farmers often recommend a dilution of 10 to 20 parts water to one part of urine for application to pot plants and flower beds during the growing season. Pure urine can chemically burn the roots of some species, reports said.
Urine typically contains more than 50 percent of the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content of whole sewage, and is widely considered as good as or even better than commercially available chemical fertilizers or stabilized sludge from sewage plants.
Urine is also used in composting to increase the nitrogen content of the mulch, accelerating the composting process and increasing its final nutrient values.
In developing countries, the application of pure urine to crops is also rare, reports said.
In Japan, urine used to be sold to farmers who process it into fertilizer. – Helen Flores