Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

In my experience I think that pathogens are not at all a problem. We have a 
septic tank overflowing into a small water purification area. I have seen 
all kinds of animals drink from that water at different places and not one 
sign of disease has been seen.
Under good circumstances pathogens are eaten out of a living by an 
overwhelming mass of non pathogens. The only way you can select for 
pathogens is by using man made chemicals that often kill off the others. And 
onfortunately that is the paradigm we have been fed with our mother's milk. 
Don't try to kill bacteria for you will fail and don't be too clean so as to 
keep plenty of non pathogen species on standby.

The water that comes out of the wetland shows no signs of nitrate or 
phosphate loss. It is clear and even in little pools no algae show up.

We harvest plants like comfrey and bullrush there and maybe 10 more species 
for animal food. Again never seen a problem and how could it? Pathogens are 
not taken up by plants in a cold swamp to be transported to an edible part. 
That simply does not happen.
john

> Several people on the list have mentioned the use of human waste for 
> agricultural purposes. I'm interested in what peoples experience has been 
> with this and what kinds of precautions people are taking to break the 
> pathogen-human cycles in order to avoid disease transmission. The World 
> health Organization has done a lot of work on this and their guidelines 
> are available online. 
> http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/wastewater/gsuww/en/index.html
>
> This appears to me to be one of the crucial linkages that will have to be 
> established in a steady state economy. Nutrient recycling is a fundamental 
> ecosystem function/service which must be integrated in the closed 
> human-earth system. Of course pathogens have evolved to exploit this 
> system and we have to assure a reasonable level of safety.
>
> Phil Bunch
> _______________________________________________
> Livingontheland mailing list
> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland