Located in West Africa, Niger is experiencing intense drought due to climate change. This causes crops to die and people to starve. The problem is so extreme that in 2014, farmers had no choice but to use dangerous black market pesticides as they had nothing else on their hands. But science stepped in to revive the dying plants in the country. For this, an interesting “thing” was used; to human urine.
THEY ARE USING HUMAN URINE IN AGRICULTURE
To revive dying plants in Niger, scientists are using human urine, a mineral-rich, low-cost and easily accessible fertilizer, the British Daily Mail reported. A research team from Niger, United Kingdom and Germany combines sterilized urine with organic fertilizer to increase the yield of robust, fast-growing clusters of pearl millet. The mixture was tested on farms from 2014 to 2016, showing a 30 percent increase in crops compared to farms that did not fertilize with urine.
According to the farmers using the new fertilizer, the only disadvantage is the smell. One farmer said, “The only problem is that the smell is not very good. When I apply urine, I cover my nose and it’s not a big deal.”
A team of researchers led by Hannatou Moussa with the Niger National Agricultural Research Institute worked with a group of Niger women. Because women dominate the agricultural industry in Niger and about 52 percent of farms are run by women. Moussa and his team taught farmers how to sterilize and properly store urine.
THEY SAID OGA FOR URINE
To get rid of the negative connotation of the term “urine”, scientists began their work by renaming urine “Oga”. In the next part of the experiment, farms in the area were divided into two groups. One group used conventional fertilizers, while the other used Oga, or urine, from 2014 to 2016.
30 PERCENT DIFFERENCE IN PRODUCTION
In the study, published in Agronomy for Sustainable Development, trials were conducted on a total of 159, 288 and 234 farms in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Data collected from farms showed that Oga fertilisers produced about 30 percent more grain than conventional composting farms.
The differences were large, and other women in the area began imitating those in the experiment, the researchers said. They also discovered that two years after the experiment, more than a thousand female farmers were using Oga to fertilize their crops.