Human urine gives the fields of African farmers a big boost

Okay, you have to “sell” the stuff to the locals a bit. But if that is successful, the puddle of people can significantly increase the yield of arable land.

It has been known for thousands of years that plants grow better with urine. The stuff contains the same substances as fertilizer: phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium. Yet human pee is not widely used in agriculture – not even in areas where the alternatives are too expensive.

A team of researchers from Niger, Germany and the United Kingdom has now Viewed whether farmers from Niger in particular could benefit from urine as manure. And that indeed turns out to be the case.

No artificial, but real manure

In Sub-Saharan Africa, women put more effort into food production than men. But the land they work on their own is usually further from home – and often less fertile. In addition, often at the beginning of the sowing season they first have to help their husbands. As a result, they can only sow their own fields later and the plants have less time to grow.

It therefore seems a good thing to provide these women with a way to boost their crops. Fertilizer is then not really an option, because it is too expensive. Instead, the researchers suggested real manure. As in: human urine, whether or not mixed with animal faeces.

‘The boss’

The advantage of urine is, of course, that it is produced free of charge in every household. However, the farmers were initially a bit hesitant to get started with the stuff. It felt unsanitary, and they also argued for religious reasons.

The researchers seem to have responded cleverly to this. They held discussions with religious leaders about what the Quran had to say about the use of urine, and with medical experts about the hygiene aspect. They made a film of that, which they showed in the villages.

They also renamed the stuff Oga on the advice of one of the farmers involved. That word means something like ‘the boss’ and is used to express respect for someone in high places, the researchers write.

Good example…

Subsequently, some farmers’ wives were instructed to take care of their land in the normal way, while others started working with Oga, whether or not mixed with animal excrement. The result: fields of pearl millet treated with Oga had an average yield of 30 percent higher than the traditionally worked fields.

On the left, pearl millet plants fertilized with human urine (‘Oga’), on the right plants grown in the usual way. Photo: Agronomy for Sustainable Development (2021). DOI: 10.1007/s13593-021-00675-2

And good example is good to follow, writes the site Phys.org† More than a thousand other women from the region are said to have already learned the art from the participants in the experiment and now also use Oga.