Night soil

Urban Farm DB summary

This Wikipedia article on night soil describes how, in the city of Edo, compost merchants gathered feces to sell to farmers, and that human excreta of rich people were sold at higher prices because their better diet presumably left more nutrients in it. Various historic documents detailing toilet-waste disposal procedures date from as early as the 9th century. The article states that after World War II the practice declined rapidly due to sanitation concerns and the spread of chemical fertilizer, and that today less than 1% of human waste is used for night soil fertilization.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 1 %↓ Decrease

  current usage share(night soil fertilization)

  SocialControl: historical Edo/Meiji-era usage

  region

  Japan

  qualifier

  less than 1%

• 9th century

  earliest documented era(toilet waste disposal records)

  Social

  region

  Japan

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Compost / nutrient cycleSupportsWith caveats