Earlier in this collection of essays, we commented on a humorous story that I would like to repeat to set the context for this current exploration. A close friend of mine has told me several times of the way that he, when visiting the coastal Oregon town of Tillamook, which is noted for its cheese, that he would comment when smelling the cow manure upon entering the area of the town that the smell of manure was the smell of money. Many people think of poop as a thing that they would rather not have to think about or talk about, and sometimes it is easy to get tired of others who talk about it as a sign of their health, but there are some people who see poop as profit. Admittedly, this is a rather niche sort of phenomenon, but it is worth reflecting on because of its implications. Knowing the circumstances when waste can be profitable offers the chance for there to be a great many virtuous cycles in life where what is waste in one process can serve useful roles in other processes, thus increasing the well-being of people by increasing the efficiency of life in dramatic ways.

In general, we may think of poop as profit largely when it comes to the field of agriculture. Indeed, there are at least three different ways over the course of human history that poop has become profitable with regards to agriculture in some fashion. The first way is perhaps the most simple and straightforward, and is the way that was familiar for my own farming family, and that is the use of manure from our own farm animals as a natural (organic even) fertilizer for our farming operations. Given the general lack of profitability of small family farms like our own, it was a considerable savings to us to use the cow manure that our dairy cows generated in such large amounts that we collected while milking them in the morning and the evening that we would use to fertilize the crops that we grew, mostly hay and corn, saving at least a bit of money on fertilizer in the process. This was not the only way we sought to enrich our soil via natural means, as we also grew alfalfa as a cover crop when a given field was fallow with the goal of also aiding in the enriching of our soil via natural means. In addition to this, in the past there were people in cities who would sell nightsoil, which is human poop, as a way of fertilizing urban gardens with what would otherwise be waste that would clog city streets and gutters and make cities more unsanitary as a result. Finding a use for this rather unsanitary poop in helping to enrich the yields of urban gardens proved to be useful in many medieval cities, though the practice did die out during the last two centuries or so as people got squeamish about the practice. Interestingly enough, around this time for a few decades guano, or bird poop, became a fashionable means of increasing crop yields before the development of chemical fertilizers that are most popular today, despite the problems that result from their use with regards to downstream waters.

While some aspects of poop have become profitable over the course of human history–and we will comment shortly on the role of poop in world history itself–there are other uses of poop that have not proven to be particularly profitable as of yet despite the best efforts of people in the contemporary age to find secondary uses for our prodigious waste. I was witness to one of these abortive efforts when I lived in Los Angeles as a university student, where I would see that graywater (slightly processed sewage) served as water being used in certain places to minimize the use of fresh water from the overstressed Owens River and Colorado River Aqueducts. Despite the best efforts to encourage Angelines to recycle their sewage and use it on non-potable water purposes, the inability of the processing done to get rid of the smell of sewage was a major factor in limiting the use of such graywater in the area. A great many people in the contemporary area are highly sensitive when it comes to the smell of sewage, and this makes the smell of profit a scent that is acceptable only to those few people who have learned to associate manure with increased profitability, which is an admittedly small part of the population.

It is notable that the reason why farmers and those who are at least farming-adjacent see poop as profitable is because of a knowledge of the working natural processes and materials involved in their farming operations and a rather clear-minded attitude towards how to make those operations run as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Farming is not a line of business for the squeamish or the sentimental, and running family farms successfully requires a sharp attitude when it comes to seeking opportunities to reduce expenses, make operations more efficient and dependent on fewer outside purchases, as well as finding alternative means at generating income. Knowing the difference between the profitability of cow poop as a fertilizer for one’s crops which are being fed to cattle (and not to human beings) and the problems that result when unsanitary human poop is used as an unintentional fertilizer for one’s crops like alfalfa and spinach can be the difference between saving a considerable amount of money on buying NPK fertilizer and having one’s operations subject to recalls on account of bacteria that comes from the poop of one’s laborers mixing in with one’s otherwise profitable agricultural goods. While the farmer must always be on the lookout for ways at making operations more efficient by using waste products as an input somewhere else, one must also be sure that this can be done in a way that does not jeopardize the well-being of the farming operation as a whole. Sometimes attempts at profiting off of poop can lead to a damaging loss of profits and reputation and even public health crises in vegetables. The lure of turning poop into profit can sometimes go deeply wrong.

Nevertheless, although there are potential dangers from the search for farming profits relating to issues of poop–including the downstream effects of the overuse of chemical fertilizers, to say nothing of the threat of e. coli from the intestines of farm laborers, farming at least has the potential of using waste in an efficient and profitable fashion that is rare in our contemporary world. It is therefore to be regretted that farmers find themselves to be so greatly ignored and looked down upon in general, except to be blamed for problems that are not their fault by environmentalists. Indeed, it is hard to understand what is worse, the widespread ignorance of where food comes from or the situation where contemporary environmental advocates frequently promote inefficient and problematic vat-grown meat as a substitute for healthy and natural meat raised by farmers and herders. When some people think that their food comes from a supermarket while others are plotting to make people eat bugs and vat-grown fungal proteins with unknown and possibly serious and negative effects on those beta testers of dubious food fads, one longs for the simplicity and honesty of those who see in cow poop the possibility to reduce expenses and make one’s farming operations more profitable.