Agreed, we're making a lot of progress on this front!
>Unfortunately "long-distance imported fertilizer to in-situ fertility produced by soil organisms" cannot work if food is exported off of the farm.
It's not like there's a shortage of rocks (where soil bacteria and deep rooted plants harvest and dissolve micronutrients) or air (the source of carbon, as well as nitrogen fixed by rhizobium bacteria in root nodules). Soil tests only look at dissolved nutrients, not those yet to be released from the minerals in rock, which range in size from bedrock to clay. This is detailed in the video I linked.
But it certainly helps if you recycle human waste into fertilizer, rather than just releasing those nutrients into waterways (and ultimately, the ocean) or landfills. The key is to close the fertility loop while also interrupting the fecal-oral route. Thermophilic composting or biogas digesters can do this on a small scale, and systems like those used by Milorganite can do this on a city scale.
>Unfortunately "long-distance imported fertilizer to in-situ fertility produced by soil organisms" cannot work if food is exported off of the farm.
It's not like there's a shortage of rocks (where soil bacteria and deep rooted plants harvest and dissolve micronutrients) or air (the source of carbon, as well as nitrogen fixed by rhizobium bacteria in root nodules). Soil tests only look at dissolved nutrients, not those yet to be released from the minerals in rock, which range in size from bedrock to clay. This is detailed in the video I linked.
But it certainly helps if you recycle human waste into fertilizer, rather than just releasing those nutrients into waterways (and ultimately, the ocean) or landfills. The key is to close the fertility loop while also interrupting the fecal-oral route. Thermophilic composting or biogas digesters can do this on a small scale, and systems like those used by Milorganite can do this on a city scale.