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New Farmer Guide to Fertilizing with Urine
The Rich Earth Institute is delighted to announce the release of its new Farmer Guide to Fertilizing with Urine. This resource provides farmers with practical insights into reclaiming human urine as a nutrient-rich fertilizer. It joins Rich Earth’s guides to community and home garden urine recycling, offering resources to practitioners at different scales.
Farmers around the world have harnessed the fertilizing power of human urine for millennia. In recent years, interest in urine nutrient reclamation has been surging, driven by spiking synthetic fertilizer prices, global supply disruptions, and increasing regulations on aquatic nutrient pollution.
The Rich Earth Institute has been researching the production and use of fertilizer derived from human urine since 2012. As the operator of the first urine nutrient reclamation program in the United States, Rich Earth provides over 12,000 gallons of urine-derived fertilizer to local farmers annually. The Institute is now supporting other communities to establish their own urine reclamation programs.
As urine fertilizer supplies become increasingly available surrounding these early adopter communities, this guide aims to empower farmers to make informed decisions about integrating this soil amendment into their practices. Topics covered include regulatory considerations, urine nutrient content, application methods, crop-specific applications, and perspectives on communication.
The guide is rooted in Rich Earth’s extensive research with farmer-partners in Southern Vermont and enriched by insights from the international research community. Studies from around the world confirm that urine fertilization can achieve yields comparable to synthetic fertilizers across various crops. Rich Earth has conducted the only known field studies of human urine fertilizer in the U.S. Northeast, with trials on hay, hemp, sweet corn, figs, cut flowers, and nursery trees. All participating farmers reported positive outcomes, noting comparable or improved yields and enhanced plant robustness with urine-treated crops.
A presentation about this guide–along with two in-depth panels on urine fertilizer in agriculture–will be featured at the Rich Earth Summit, the global conference on urine reclamation on November 12 – 14, 2024. To access the Farmer Guide to Fertilizing with Urine and learn more about the Rich Earth Institute’s initiatives, visit richearthinstitute.org/farmer-guide or contact us at .
This research was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, through the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under subaward number ONE21-402. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this webinar are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
