The word, human excreta (feces and urine), sounds disgusting in our part of the world. Yet, it is one single product which can create sustenance, livelihood, employment, and restore all the messes in our environment created by our dependency on gold, oil and other non-renewable resources. Just recently, the world richest man, Bill Gates, drank a glass of water extracted and treated from human excreta. I can imagine the look on your face but it doesn’t change the fact that today’s waste is the needed resource for tomorrow’s challenges.
The way human excreta are handled in this country undoubtedly reveal our lack of knowledge toward its benefits. Many households are constructed without toilet facilities and those with toilet facilities are turning into rooms for rents. Most of our public toilets are not properly handled and the septic tanks are leaked into drainages and river bodies. Classrooms, uncompleted buildings, beaches, river banks, roadsides, bushy areas, have all been turned to “shitting” grounds. Open defecation has gained ground in almost all the regions in this country. It is so sad that in most institutions, both private and public, the toilet facilities are always listed as the most unhygienic part of the apartments while in some countries, such places have been designed to be the most hygienic and comfortable rooms. Upon all these, we are paying huge subsidies on chemical fertilizers to fertilizer our agricultural soils which effective management of human excreta would have done better and save the country a lot of money. Moreover, we are importing most of our vegetables and food crops from countries who use their own human excreta to fertilize their soil.
There is no doubt that agriculture has been a major backbone to this country’s economic and sustenance. Its importance affects all other sectors of the economic as it performs the following roles such as provision of food security, supply of raw materials for industries, creation of employment and generation of foreign exchange earnings. It is a fact that agriculture have a greater impact on poverty reduction as well as social stabilization, buffer during economic shocks and support to environmental sustainability. It is a field which employs more than half the population on a formal and informal basis and contribute enormously to the country’s Gross Domestic Product and export earnings. It becomes perilous if a country such as ours faces challenges with agriculture.
Yields in Agriculture in this country are relatively becoming low in almost all sectors. There have been several factors but the dominated among them is insufficient plant nutrients in the soil which has been mainly caused by our over reliance on chemical fertilizers. Though chemical or synthetic or inorganic fertilizers have been known to cause tremendous increase in yield, its negative effect outweighs its benefit. Several reports indicate that increase in chemical fertilizers usage in agriculture have caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects. Chemical fertilizers have been known to have poor affinity with the soil.
Residues of nutrients in the soil after plant uptake are easily washed into nearby waterbodies enhancing eutrophication which has higher probability of killing fishes, loss of biodiversity and rendering water unfit for drinking and other industrial uses. Chemical fertilizers with ammonium based emit gases which contribute greatly to global climate change when applied on crop fields. Moreover, chemical fertilizers have loaded soils with heavy metals which are easily absorbed by plant nutrients and subsequently accumulate in plant food for human consumption.
The cost of production of chemical fertilizer is high and largely depend on natural gas and therefore an increase in price of natural gases definitely lead to an increase in cost of chemical fertilizer. Research works have indicated that a farmer needs to keep on increasing the rate of application of chemical fertilizer in order to produce the same yield as produced in previous years. This therefore called for higher cost in the use of chemical fertilizer and therefore call for government subsidy.
In Malawi’s agriculture budget for example, fertilizer subsidies now consume 60 per cent of Malawi’s agriculture budget, which is a huge amount and leave out provisions for other essential factors such as, extension services, irrigation, research, which are not being done as a result. Just this year, the Ghanaian government announced a total of GHS 200million on fertilizer subsidies. This has made cost of production in agriculture very expensive, and not lucrative to practice. This country is grouped among countries where majority of farmers are poor as a result of spending almost their profit yields on acquisition of fertilizer. This in turn, affects the economic negatively.
Human excreta provide a good alternative to the problem of insufficient nutrients required by plants. Countries such as China, India, Melanesia, Sri Lanka, Central America, Vietnam, part of Europe, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, South-east Asia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand have been on record of using human excreta as fertilizer in agriculture sectors. In Africa, countries such as Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Uganda, and others use human excreta for the production of banana, pineapple, maize, cassava, sorghum, jackfruits and passion fruits, mango trees, etc. In Ghana, the story is not new. Research works have indicated that Ghanaian farmers who use human excreta compost have also attested to the agronomic benefits of excreta, and users of excreta make three times the net income of non-users. Human excreta have been known to possess greater fertilizing potential than animal wastes and its production rates are reliable than animal wastes.
Human excreta serves four major purposes. First, it is rich source of major plant nutrients such as phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen. Second, it encourages the formation of humus which is essential for optimum soil structure and water retention. Improving the soil structure makes soil easy to cultivate and resistant to erosion. It also has high affinity with the soil particles and therefore has the potential of retaining nutrients in the soil. Third, it contains trace elements which are not available in chemical fertilizers.
These trace elements protect the plant from parasites and diseases. Lastly, it contains small organisms thus microorganisms which convert minerals to forms that plants can easily use. These microorganisms are mostly destroyed through excessive use of chemical fertilizer. Yields from human excreta have been known to be the same as that of chemical fertilizer. The cost of producing refined and treated human excreta for agriculture is cheaper as compared to chemical fertilizer. Human excreta are able to meet the nutrient needs required to support agriculture both locally and outside the country. Moreover, most materials used in manufacturing chemical fertilizers are not renewable but human excreta, as a raw material would cease to exist when the last human dies. It is an unfailing raw material in this current world.
Seeing treated human excreta, ready to be applied to agricultural soil, would make one bet with his last dollar to challenge whether its source is from human excreta. It produces no smell, blackish in color, lighter than normal soil and full of readily available nutrients for plant usage. Human Excreta is no more waste but like every other substance, when they are in a wrong system, they turn to cause problems. For instance, a tomato plant would be classified as a weed in cotton plantation.
Human Excreta need to be treated, composted and returned to the soil. Passage of human excreta into water bodies, food and human digestive system would obviously cause sicknesses because they are not their habitation and therefore all measures should be made to prevent their contact with these systems. Ghana sewage system is more like a blessing in disguise. All sewages including human excreta, industrial wastewater are not channeled into one sewage system. This has a higher tendency of reducing the levels of heavy metals and other contaminants which make human excreta unwholesome for soil usage. This has been a great challenge for its usage in countries with one sewage system especially in some part of Europe.
As a country we need to;
Change perception about human excreta not as a waste but a valuable resource to empower our agriculture sector. Design sustainable acts and guidelines on proper management of human excreta to block its passage into water bodies and human contact. Engage private sectors in building plants that will treat human excreta at least at every district.
If human excreta, as a single component, can do much good to agriculture, then it can really cause a total transformation in this country than all the available non-renewable resources, which have failed to deliver.