summary
Western European agriculture loses vital nutrients by treating human excreta as waste. This presents a major obstacle for agricultural sustainability transitions, as nutrient cycles in current food systems are not circular. Instead, agriculture depends heavily on other nutrient inputs, primarily artificial fertilizers and animal manure, which pose environmental, geopolitical and health threats. Moreover, regarding excreta as waste exacerbates the disconnect between human bodies and ecosystems, perpetuating exploitative dynamics within human and non-human relations. Excluding human excreta from agricultural cycles is exemplary for how humans have effectively been placed outside more-than-human webs of life. While scholarship on human excreta management has demonstrated that the material has great potential as a safe and effective fertilizer to close nutrient cycles and shows potential for integrating human excreta in earthly metabolisms, public and farmer attitudes towards the use of human excreta pose barriers that remain understudied. This project explores affective responses to excreta, ranging from curiosity to disgust, engaging with alternative sanitation (e.g. compost toilets) and agroecological farming practices to understand how affective experiences shape the potential for integrating human excreta in agriculture. I will ethnographically examine ongoing initiatives in the UK that experiment with compost toilets or human-excreta related farming practices. Building on previous arts-based research experiences and personal experience with composting human excreta, I will also experiment artistically with fostering new relations between humans and agroecological systems to advance a human-inclusive circular agriculture.
partners
This project is an NWO-funded Rubicon project in collaboration with Dr. Eva Giraud, Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, UK.
Project duration: 1 December 2024 – 1 December 2026.
who's working on this project
Contact: Marieke Meesters
