How ’bout them strawberries?
My father overcame poverty and institutionalization (he was an orphan) as a young man to build a new life in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, NY. One of his few friends from that period was an Italian man named George, an auto-parts dealer who loved to fix cars with his massive hands — socket wrench in one, pastrami sandwich in the other.
George once told us about an uncle’s strawberry farm out on Long Island. It was a glorious enterprise, drawing tourists from all over to sample what were undoubtedly the largest, sweetest strawberries ever seen. Larger than apples, they would say, streams of juice streaking across extended chin, dripping, making the pavement sticky in the oppressive summer heat. Sadly, my sister and I were never allowed to sample the strawberries; worse, we were never told why.
Years later we thanked dad for that. Turns out the secret to growing good strawberries is to use lots of fertilizer. The secret to growing award-winning strawberries, however, is to use human feces as fertilizer. Apparently, when it comes to growing fruit, our shit is magical. It makes everything grow well.
I was reminded of this while watching Kristof’s feature of SOIL, a non-profit that works to turn your crap into fertilizer:
The project looks supremely promising, and the scenes are surprisingly African, though I’m unsure why they rely on motorcycle taxis for transportation. I use them whenever I’m in Uganda, and I can say unabashedly that they are completely unsafe and unsuitable for transporting guests from the NY Times.
SOIL must, however, address the obvious problems my dad had with the strawberries: how do you keep the production safe for humans at all levels? How do you ensure the raw fecal material isn’t contaminated and, if it is, how do you purify it for production? Due diligence, folks. You’re putting your shit in my food; I need to know I’m not going to get infected with E. Coli. Even if the strawberries are to die for.