It’s a right-wing conspiracy theory that elites want to keep expanding human population until the peasants are forced to eat bugs. Debunking this theory, a recent article in MIT’s Technology Review, “How poop could help feed the planet”:
Nutrients crucial for agriculture are in “short supply,” but certainly there is no reason to close the border to low-skill migrants or reconsider the goal of another doubling of U.S. population:
(Note that the 340 million people might be an underestimate of 10 million undocumented humans or more; see “Yale Study Finds Twice as Many Undocumented Immigrants as Previous Estimates” (2016 data).)
Could this possibly work? If you live in Seattle you’re already eating food derived from human poop:
A recent review in the Journal of Environmental Management, in fact, touts wastewater treatment plants as “renewable biological nitrogen mines” that can supply the essential but expensive component from reclaimed sewage sludge at a time when many farmers are finding it harder to obtain. Sewage can, the authors conclude, “become an important raw material for the sustainable production of organic-mineral fertilizers from renewable resources available locally, with a low carbon footprint.” Extracting nitrogen and phosphorus for reuse can also help remove those pollutants from the plants’ outflow and reduce the amount of organic matter destined for landfills and manure lagoons, which store and manage huge concentrations of livestock waste. Reinserting ourselves into nature’s recycling system, in other words, could help us meet the planet’s growing food needs without unduly fouling the environment.
The Varcor system heats the incoming poop and separates it into solid matter and vapor. A process called mechanical vapor recompression allows the compressed steam to be reused as a heat source while the water and ammonia vapor are separated and distilled. The conveyor belt/dryer carries the remaining solids to the giant crepe-making spindles and then into a waiting truck below. The plant is now selling three to four truckloads of this dry fertilizer to farms every week.
What’s happening with the population collapse that Elon Musk keeps warning about? It’s exacerbated by what the Technology Review authors call “the planet’s burgeoning population”:
Waste-to-fertilizer strategies, even if scaled up, won’t be enough on their own to help feed the planet’s burgeoning population. By viewing people as not only consumers but also producers, however, they could help us take far better advantage of some underrated natural assets that won’t run dry anytime soon.
Is MIT now suggesting importing human waste? US is by far world’s largest producer and exporter of corn and also exports wheat. US human waist supply would not even dent perceived nitrogen deficiency of American farming conglomerates. I assume that laws of conservation work for waste production and that US consumers eat more of US farm produce then is coming out as waste. You should read Vladimir Voinovich’s satirical dystopia Mosscow 2042. Clearly MIT got the idea from it.
It’s already a scandal that “Nearly 70 million acres of U.S. farmland could be contaminated by the toxic `forever chemicals’ known as PFAS, according to estimates from biosolids industry groups. This contamination stems from the widespread use of sewage sludge as fertilizer.” Did the article address this problem? (Source: https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2025/01/forever-chemicals-sludge-may-taint-nearly-70-million-farmland-acres )
MIT is way too late for solving fertilizer problem. Haber–Bosch process is a very cheap technology that makes ammonia out of thin air, and it has been used for more then 100 years. This is the thing that the basis for Green Revolution and as such is credited to be one of the basis for world population expansion in the past 100 years in the first place. Lot’s of BS from MIT lately. Do not really see MIT folks on this list, at least at top of it. “Who Saved the Most Lives in History?!” https://web.archive.org/web/20201128185053/http://www.scienceheroes.com/ I bet if someone compiled the list of most taxpayers money appropriated and wealth destroyed MIT names would dominate the ranking.