Organic Gardening

Fruits and veggies are pretty cheap in China, much cheaper than in the U.S. I can go to the local wet market and get sack fulls of fruits-n-veggies for mere dollars. Here is a photo of one of the markets I shop at (this is the veggie part; fruits are sold in a separate section. Notice the 3-person family on the scooter):


Even better, by and large, the local Chinese growers use what we would recognize as "organic" methods of gardening. Part and parcel of this is their use of night soil. Night soil is a euphemistic synonym for human feces:

"Night soil" is produced as a result of a waste management system in areas without community infrastructure such as a sewage treatment facility, or individual septic disposal. In this system of waste management, the human faeces are collected in solid form.

Now, aside from some of the health concerns of such a practice, I personally think that this is a good use of something that generally goes unused today in the U.S. But I did wonder how this was collected. Then, on a walk through Jin Ding, I found out.

See this dude in the picture?

He's squatting next to a manhole and has slid aside its cover. Rushing through the pipes below is all the waste water -- including water from the village's flushable toilets. You can't see it in this photo, of course, but he was using a big ladle to scoop the poo-filled water (well, it was more like poo soup by this point) into a bucket that's sitting behind the cement block on his left.

I do wonder if some locals still use the 'old school' method of collection (i.e., the honey bucket). I imagine so since a lot of locals don't even have a bathroom, let alone a porcelain toilet -- in their homes.

I'm also wondering if this isn't an untapped U.S. market, especially with the economy being so poor and with organic foods being so popular. Who wants to invest in my start-up: Organic Humanure Fertilizer?