How our poop could become our greatest asset
By Kate Brown
Substack
Feb 13, 2026
Excerpt:
In The Earth, the 19th-century novelist, Emile Zola describes how an old woman in the village who has been reduced to a half acre grows huge and lush vegetables by fertilizing with human waste. Even in a novel where peasants are often standing waste deep in manure pile, the use of household excrement provoked disgust. The villagers jeer at her, calling her Mother Caca, which damaged her reputation but because her vegetables were so superior, the merchants and inn-keepers gradually got over their repulsion and Mother Caca made a good living on her small patch of land.
Meanwhile, Monsieur Hourdequin, the largest landowner in the village, suffered from financial problems. He bought fertilizers and the newest machinery, but could not compete with cheap American grain flooding the market and was steadily losing his fortune.
Watching Mother Caca, he became converted. Overcoming his disgust, he piped the slops of the kitchen, toliet and the farm into a resevoir and kept it damp with urine from humans and animals. His only regret was he didn’t have enough of the valuable stuff.
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