Any Korean veteran or visitor to many Asian countries will tell you about the rice fields fertilized with human waste. The stench is unforgettable.
I guess if it works whos to say it’s wrong? 
You often hear that Cholera can spread from sewage.
Yet, millions of people have used human feces in rice fields for thousands of years.
How do they avoid getting sick?
Just my guess but they don’t get sick for the same reasons the local Mexicans didn’t/don’t get Montezuma’s Revenge - they have gradually become immune to the local parasites and bacterial infections. Everybody in the area is a survivor of the diseases in the fields.
Now, if they composted it first, that would remove the problem.
♫
There’s no use explaining
Why we’re remaining
We’ve got what we’re fighting for!
Korea, Korea
And diarrhea
To make the rice grow some more!
♫
Perhaps it’s dried and treated, as is done in the US, before it’s used as fertilizer?
My grandad was a Korean veteran and we talked a lot when I was a kid. He often said back then it wasn’t unusual to see groups of people early in the morning in the rice fields squatting.
I’m sure things have modernized since then. Obviously they have indoor plumbing now. But it’s my understanding they still use feces to fertilize.
You boil rice. Not much survives a good boiling.
They do get sick. It’s one reason not to eat unwashed salad in third world countries. However I’d imagine there’s a little local immunity from the milder parasites, and the likelihood of something bad happening is slimmer than our hyper-hygienic culture imagines.
The Master has spoken on this topic before:
Why would it smell any worse than using non-human feces?
If you ever live in a town on the U.S./Mexico border, you will often hear this bit of advice regarding Mexican fruits and vegetables: “Wash it, peel it, cook it, or forget it!”
Because most non-human dung comes from grazing animals. The material is essentially decomposed grass and the smell of the faeces, even when fresh, is fairly neutral. After a few hours it is scarcely noticable at all.
In contrast the dung of animals like pigs, emus or humans is notoriously rank, to the point where you will often notice it in wilderness areas like before you see it. Which can be a blessing.
I know that in China, there is no tradition of eating raw vegetables. Veggies are cooked over high heat that kills any pathogens. All fruit is scrupulously peeled, even apples and grapes.
Yes, but that sewage must contain the cholera bacterium, and generally you get it from drinking contaminated water, not from eating cooked vegetables.
People in London were drinking water contaminated with sewage for years before cholera showed up in one of the wells somehow and caused an epidemic. After the epidemic was over, they were still drinking contaminated water; it just didn’t have the bacterium in it.
My husband lived in Chile for a while. He said he found out that the people there got sick too; they just didn’t complain about it all the time.
there are places i’ve read that have sealed latrines (much like medieval cesspools in castles are periodically cleaned out.) these are japan and india in days past. by this time, the feces would have degraded into a dark muck. good or bad, latrine cleaners aren’t very high in the food chain.
on the other hand, having a porous latrine that just absorbs the feces into the ground (or is swept into common sewers) is much more convenient than having to clean out a sealed vault. if farmers need manure for their compost, their poultry and pigstyes produce much more than they need.
Except that were are discussing those areas of Asia where the sewage is used as fertiliser. In those places it is almost entirely the case that the nightsoil buckets are emptied onto the fields each morning and evening. No latrine. No sewage. Shit in bucket, empty bucket into field. Simple as that.
well, if it was in centuries past, that must be an effective sewerage system. so it’s a question of what to do with impounded sewage from several housholds. the only examples i know are individual households and structures whose vaults have to be periodically cleaned out. night soil gatherers in pre-war japan collected for composting, latrine cleaners in india (dalits mainly) were basically paid to just get rid of of the stuff. farmers in the philippines never bothered with human feces for rice and vegetable planting AFAIK. but they often grew water cabbage and taro right in cesspools and maybe culture edible snails. hauling that muck into the fields doesn’t make much sense, especially now with modern fertilizers.
there is some concern in New South Wales
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/parasites-linked-to-sewage-fertiliser/story-fn7x8me2-1226052075801
^
i wanna see that article developed further. it might be more an issue of sanitation / waste-disposal, and food/water contamination, than an allied agricultural practice. in india, for instance, they once tracked the distribution of food- and water-borne diseases to the routes of domestic and international airlines.
as far as i can obseve (philippines, borneo-malaysia and indonesia,) composting using human feces is limited to vegetables and recently, fish pond culturing. it will probably take the sewage output of an entire city to make enough compost for thousands of hectares of riceland.
but swerving back to thread question, it’s not impossible to handle human feces in a safe and hygenic manner. no japanese has ever been accused of being filthy (i could be wrong on that.)
We’re going to have a Grand Experiment on the lower Mississippi Valley soon.