Kolkata, India is a medium sized city of 4.4 million people that has a unique sewage treatment strategy.
The, ummmm, nutrients are moved by gravity to low-lying, flooded regions around the city where various species of fish are grown for human consumption.
Unfortunately, the city of Kolkata is sprawling and land is being diked-and-drained for development. The castes that historically managed the aquaculture system (approximately 50,000 people), harvested and marketed the fish are being squeezed out.
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| Planting fingerling fish |
This kind of thing makes Westerners squeamish.
But consider that nutrients are like money. A smaller amount of money can support a healthy economy if it has high velocity...basically moving hand-to-hand in rapid succession while a much larger amount of money can fail if it is stuffed into mattresses or buried beneath the lilac bushes.
In a similar way, fewer nutrients can support more people if the nutrients are cycled more quickly.
One of the minor themes in Management Intensive Grazing is to accelerate nutrient cycling. If a clump of grass is not grazed when a mob of animals goes through the paddock, it is better to mow the clump of grass and lay the stems on the ground so the nutrients can nourish the next flush of tender, new growth.
The model in Kolkata is to NOT use it to use fossil fuels to process the sewage. It is not to use fossil fuels to move the sludge to fertilize ground to grow grain to be processed into feed to feed Tilapia. Nope. They skip all of the steps in the middle. Since no process is 100% efficient, they also leap-frog the losses inherent in each step.
The Chinese method is similar and again very efficient for inputs IN vs Harvest out AND safely treats the otherwise dangerous affluent.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to look at Humanure Handbook for gardening ideas. Both are from the fact that China has fed far more population over Centuries than the "Western World" combined.
Snip: Briefly, Farmers of Forty Centuries describes the voyage agronomist and former US Department of Agriculture official Franklin Hiram King made to China, Korea and Japan in the early 1900s. The purpose of his trip was to study how the extremely dense populations of the Far East could produce massive amounts of food century after century without depleting their soils.
Only recently (in Chinese terms) the "Westernization" of Agriculture has created the soil depletion and flooding disasters we read about today.
We might have to resort to stealing...
ReplyDeleteSeriously!?? Duude, learn to Code!
Ewww.
ReplyDeleteYears ago shortly after Kissinger opened access to mainland China I read an article in one of the alternative farm mags about a system where the Chinese were raising pigs on the side of grass carp ponds, feeding them cannery waste and the manure fertilized the the water for the grass for the carp. On another note some one who was in Korea during the was said the difference between a rice paddy and a privy in Korea was that sometimes the privy had a roof! Also I read a story about one of our missions to China during WWII wouldn’t allow the locals to recycle the troops manure. One day an officer sitting in the latrine fell into the pit when it collapsed because the locals had tunneled their way to the pit to recover the manure!
ReplyDeleteYou don't want to walk in unannounced in the processing plants for any of the canned goods you eat in America. Veggies, fruit, meat, etc. You don't want to be a long haul truck driver that backs up to the loading docks of our California veggie fields and look around as they load up your reefer truck to deliver fresh lettuce and such to the East Coast.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason in Asia that all foods are cooked, only the "westernized" restaurants have salads and such. And I'd not suggest you eat those uncooked salads.
Gene Logsdon had a fair amount to say on this sort of thing. I might recommend his book "Holy !&*$: Managing Manure to Save Mankind".
ReplyDeleteGene is an awesome soul, met him once at a fair. His homestead small grain production book started my pancake patch effort.
ReplyDeleteMichael, that would have been a wonderful his experience. His book The Contrary Farmer started me down my own path, both in the various sorts of things I try and the way I write.
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