Does a bear poop in the woods?

I’m not growing crops in the forest. It doesn’t need manure. It’s a closed system. We interrupt that system. Animal waste isn’t benign. We contact much more disease from each other. Most of our food borne illness comes from poor farming or packing methods. What is sold to farmers has gone through a regulated composting program though it can be pasteurized.

“Abstract The overuse and misuse of chemical fertilizers attributed to critical environmental and health problems such as Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in Sri Lanka. Therefore, there is a growing trend among present researches to explore low cost, effective fertilizer substitutes for inorgnaic fertilizers in cropproduction. Human urine is a liquid waste rich in essential plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. This study was conducted to explorethe possibility of utilizing human urine in edible crop production as a low cost and effective nitrogen fertilizer.The study was conducted in a greenhouse using bushita bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) as crop species. Five treatments: T1 (Albert solution), T2 (Agriculture department recommendation for nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K) fertilizers; Urea, TSP and MOP), T3 (Human urine; nitrogen concentration adjusted to 20% less than the nitrogen concentration in T2), T4 (Human urine; nitrogen concentration adjusted similar to T2), and T5 (human urine; nitrogen concentration adjusted to 20% more than the concentration in T2) were applied three weeks after planting. Results revealed that T5 showed the highest increase in plant height, leaf area, root dry weight and total nitrogen content of leaves. Bean yield was significantly higher (p<0.05) in plants received T1 and T2 compared to urine-fertilized treatments. Even though, bean yields of urine-fertilized treatments (T1, T2 and T3) not directly comparable to that in the industrial-fertilized treatments (T1 and T2) were at a satisfactory level. The urine treatments were more cost effective than T1 and T2. Based on the results, we suggest that urine can effectively be used as a nitrogen fertilizer substitute in agricultural production”

I beg to differ with Terran that soil doesn’t need animal waste. It’s certainly evolved along with tons of animal waste–think of buffalo herds, bird droppings, deer marmots etc et as I already mentioned.

p.s. I’m very much just playing devil’s advocate in this thread.

Animals don’t produce nitrogen, they just pass it on in more concentrated form from the vegetation they consume. It’s the microbiology of the soil that really matters. Legumes and nitrogen fixing plants. Native wildlife only return to the soil what the consume from the soil. While the large animals disappear, they’re replaced with rodents and humans which can lead to a shrinking and unhealthy forest. Is it good or bad? That only depends on our perspective.

Microbe Organics

Terran…so, soil and the micro organisms that inhabit it are the one thing in nature that just shrug off millions of years of interaction with a major contributor to their chemical make up, namely animal poop?

I doubt that. why in the world would plants respond positively to animal manure if not for the fact that they evolved in coordination with it? this is so well known that from the beginnings of agriculture thousands of years ago right up until now, people knew and took the trouble to apply manure to the soils where they grew crops.  It’s not just a matter of nitrogen. You seem to claim that wilderness plants are different from domesticated plants. Hmmm…

there’s a parable in the New Testament where a gardener asks to be allowed to spread manure around a barren fig tree to get it to blossom and fruit. (Hey, wait, it’s talking about me!) no matter, it shows that this is an ancient knowledge and practice.

Your claim that forest ecologies are a “closed system”, implying somehow that animal poop is excluded from that system and ecologically shrugged off somehow is, well, moose poop. Animals are part of that system and well, animals poop. Everything evolves together; every part in response to every part.

How does the plant digest manure?  You have some preconceived ideas.

https://lpelc.org/environmental-benefits-of-manure-application/#:~:text=When%20compared%20to%20more%20conventional%20fertilizer%2C%20manure,erosion%20and%20runoff.%20*%20Reduced%20nitrate%20leaching.

You think perhaps they have a conflict of interest? Nitrogen and other nutrients in manure isn’t available to plants until the microbes break it down. Nutrients are also available from composting vegetative matter. It matters not to the trees. Forest soil doesn’t need extra nutrients.