# Why did it take forever for the world to realize cow manure was better for farming than human poop? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 19, 2022, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964 "2022-08-19T20:08:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/1 "2022-08-19T20:08:56Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Medieval Monks were Riddled with Worms, Study Finds](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medieval-monks-were-riddled-with-worms-study-finds/969961/2): Ive read in various sources that parasites were a leading cause of death in the medieval and ancient world because of the use of human poop as a crop fertilizer (which is still a thing but it’s sterilized before such use) But it seems that no one caught on to the fact that cow poop was more useable and safer until the 1500s or so why so long ? ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/2 "2022-08-19T20:12:31Z")
DIdn’t people routinely toss their feces out of the window, onto the street, or into the garden? They had to figure out something to do with it, and I guess it took them a while to connect that everyday activity with sickness. I’m not sure you would think someone would put two and two together until they could identify the parasites in their feces. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/3 "2022-08-19T20:32:29Z")
The question has two assumptions: 1) people learned cow dung is better for farming than human dung, and 2) cow dung is safer than human dung for farming. Are those two things valid? Perhaps it was an availability thing. When did indoor plumbing/toilets become available? Maybe it has to do with how human waste started to be handled, so people looked for the next most available dung. For example, if people started using community latrines, and not just dropping trow here and there, it would be more difficult to collect what they needed (and also a crappy job) than to just collect dried cow pies from around the farm. Or maybe they noticed how well stuff was growing around the edges of collected cow waste, and that crops from said growth wasn’t making people sick. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/4 "2022-08-19T20:35:23Z")
There is a delicacy in Indonesia (or, at least in Java, which is where I saw it) Ikan Mas is Bahasa Indonesian for “goldfish”, and in a restaurant that will inevitably be the most expensive item on the menu. It turns put that these are a variety of carp, freshwater\* fish that resemble (or are?) koi. There is a large amount of small scale fish farming in west and central Java, it seems like every house in the little villages has a pond. Into which their toilet empties, so as to feed their fish. I am a fairly adventurous eater, but I saw the ponds before I saw the resultant fish on the menu. I’m afraid I balked at that. \* “fresh” here may not be appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/5 "2022-08-19T20:45:00Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > DIdn’t people routinely toss their feces out of the window, onto the street, or into the garden? They had to figure out something to do with it Yes, where there are humans, there will inevitably be human poop, and they had to do _something_ with it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/6 "2022-08-19T20:46:54Z")
To notice this, they would need to have a place to compare to, where human dung wasn’t used as fertilizer. Where would that have been? ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/7 "2022-08-19T20:54:12Z")
Not that I am an expert, but my WAG would be north India, a sizeable population requiring plentiful manure and with fairly strict Islamic religious rules about cleanliness. In the rural areas there people collect cow-dung and shape and dry it for manure, and for fires. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/8 "2022-08-19T21:27:04Z")
Adam Conover interviewed Lina Zeldovich in an Factually (podcast) episode earlier this year. [https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/factually-with/the-power-of-poop-with-lina-zNEOZM8lf\_r/](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/factually-with/the-power-of-poop-with-lina-zNEOZM8lf_r/) Lina is a science journalist and observed that amongst all animals, human diet is the most diverse and consequently our poop is the most diverse in elements / nutrients for plants. She mentioned that she grew up Jewish in Russia and her father used to compost their own poop. He would use that poop in his garden to grow vegetables which was a big deal for self sufficiency in Russia. She also advocated the use of Human poop for making fertilizers. Milorganite is a fertilizer made from poop (sewage sludge) of Milwaukee residents. It is treated to ensure all microbes are dead before it hits the store shelves. > **[Milorganite](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite)** > > Milorganite is a brand of biosolids fertilizer produced by treating sewage sludge by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. The term is a portmanteau of the term Milwaukee Organic Nitrogen. The sewer system of the District collects municipal wastewater from the Milwaukee metropolitan area. After settling, wastewater is treated with microbes to break down organic matter at the Jones Island sewage treatment plant (also called "Water Reclamation Facility") in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The bypr Th... ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/9 "2022-08-19T21:52:04Z")
> [@scudsucker](#): > > , but my WAG would be north India, a sizeable population requiring plentiful manure and with fairly strict Islamic religious rules The North Indian Indus Valley Civilization had plumbing / sanitation piping about 3000 years back, before there was any Islam on earth. > **[Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_civilisation)** > > The ancient Indus Valley Civilization in the Indian subcontinent (located in present-day eastern-Pakistan and north-India) was prominent in infrastructure, hydraulic engineering, and had many water supply and sanitation devices that are the first known examples of their kind.\[citation needed\] > Most houses of Indus Valley were made from mud, dried mud bricks, or clay bricks of a standardised size. The urban areas of the Indus Valley civilization included public and private baths. Many of the buil... Plenty of cows around too. Bulls were common on state seals. They knew how to keep the poops separate. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/10 "2022-08-19T22:14:20Z")
I don’t think it’s a matter of “better for farming”. I think it’s a matter of what’s easiest to accumulate in large quantities. Cities and towns generate large amounts of human feces, and getting rid of it has always been an important task. Before the 19th Century, when the gauchos in Argentina and the cowboys in the USA made cattle a huge industry, cows were fewer and far between, and collecting their manure might have been more effort than the average farmer was willing to expend. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/11 "2022-08-19T22:24:17Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > The question has two assumptions: 1) people learned cow dung is better for farming than human dung, and 2) cow dung is safer than human dung for farming. Three: it assumes that people didn’t indeed figure it out a lot earlier. Judging by the tendency to boil vegetables to death and consider them hazardous if eaten raw, they may well have done so; but used the human manure anyway, probably because manure from other animals wasn’t available in sufficient quantity to go around. Bear in mind that manure was also used as fuel – dried cow chips will burn; and I suspect burn better than human shit, because of the different composition of the diet. Also, human shit, being from a predator, may have deterred other animals from coming into the fields and eating the crop. > [@am77494](#): > > Milorganite is a fertilizer made from poop (sewage sludge) of Milwaukee residents. It is treated to ensure all microbes are dead before it hits the store shelves. It may, however, be contaminated with all sorts of other interesting things. People put a lot of stuff down the toilet, much of which sewage systems isn’t really designed to remove and heating won’t destroy. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/12 "2022-08-19T22:50:44Z")
I can’t see a necessary situation where the two would normally co-occur. Assuming we are talking something more than Old Bessy in a garden paddock, either: [a] cows shit at food location - feed rapidly depleted, risk of food plants being eaten or [b] cow kept somewhere lese and manure collected - requires lots of collection and transport. closer you keep the cows, the more fed is depleted. Cow dung is a very useful commodity and wasting it to have a bigger hill of beans may not necessarily be seen as the highest priority use, not when there were fires to fuel, walls to make, clay pots to make. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2022, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/13 "2022-08-19T23:16:52Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@am77494](#): > > > > Milorganite is a fertilizer made from poop (sewage sludge) of Milwaukee residents. It is treated to ensure all microbes are dead before it hits the store shelves. > > It may, however, be contaminated with all sorts of other interesting things. People put a lot of stuff down the toilet, much of which sewage systems isn’t really designed to remove and heating won’t destroy. [Bay State Fertilizer](https://www.mwra.com/publications/fertilizerbrochure.pdf) is another contribution to the genre, from Boston, Massachusetts. Use of human waste requires certain precautions, but it can be safe to use. At least these days it’s possible. 500 years ago maybe not so much. Cow poop has uses as building material (an important component of traditional wattle-and-daub building, for example), and due to plant content it can be used as a fuel for heating or cooking. Human poop doesn’t burn the same way, and doesn’t have the straw/fiber content (usually) to be used the same way in building. That sort of leaves “fertilizer” for human poop (and whatever cow poop is leftover, I suppose). When armies aren’t using a trebuchet to lob great balls o’ poo over a castle wall (along with dead horses and plague victims when they run out of big rocks). ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2022, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/14 "2022-08-20T04:28:58Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Milorganite is a fertilizer made from poop (sewage sludge) of Milwaukee residents. It is treated to ensure all microbes are dead before it hits the store shelves. This is sort of true. What they do is have a giant vat where they pump the sewage in and let microbes (as I recall, a bacteria) consume it. Add a steady stream of oxygen and the bacteria grow like crazy, consuming the sewage. Then they cut the oxygen and food, the bacteria starve/suffocate, die and sink and Milorganite is made up of the biomass from the dead microbes, not from the sewage itself. It’s “made from poop” but like saying a steak is made of grains. From the Milorganite FAQ: > It’s been a common misconception that [Milorganite](http://www.milorganite.com/index.php?cID=800) is “poop in a bag.” Milorganite is composed of microbes that have eaten well, died, and been dried. Microbes eat the organic material found in wastewater, die when they have nothing else to eat, and are heat-dried in dryers that operate at 900–1200°F which heats the Milorganite to an internal temperature of 176°F. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2022, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/15 "2022-08-20T10:53:12Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Use of human waste requires certain precautions, but it can be safe to use. At least these days it’s possible. 500 years ago maybe not so much. In some ways, it might have been safer all that time ago (although maybe not safer overall), if it was poop that was dug out after rotting down in a latrine hole in the ground - because it wouldn’t have been contaminated with all of the other things that are found in the modern waste water stream ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2022, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/16 "2022-08-20T12:08:41Z")
[Nice article on nightsoil men](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-american-cities-were-full-of-crap) - says considerably more was just dumped than used for fertilizer. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2022, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/17 "2022-08-20T13:11:19Z")
Re: Milorganite and related biosolids, there have been issues of late with PFAS contamination: > **[Concerns grow over tainted sewage sludge spread on croplands](https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-waste-treatment-mi-state-wire-health-32c65a5b3c27468ea2cdd2ce97848825)** > > LAPEER, Mich. (AP) — For more than 20 years, the eastern Michigan town of Lapeer sent leftover sludge from its sewage treatment plant to area farms, supplying them with high-quality, free fertilizer while avoiding the expense of disposal elsewhere... ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2022, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/18 "2022-08-20T19:13:57Z")
Sure, but there are also now [PFAS concerns with _rainwater_](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62391069). That shit is now everywhere. That shit is in the water. That shit is in the food. That shit is in the shit. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2022, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-it-take-forever-for-the-world-to-realize-cow-manure-was-better-for-farming-than-human-poop/969964/19 "2022-09-05T16:35:41Z")
nm wrong thread