ISSUE 36: Can waste treatment and land utilization of organic nutrients be regulated with exact science ?
RESPONSE: NO. Management and treatment of organic materials is part of a dynamic process because of the constantly changing nature of biological systems. What is true of the characteristics of a biological system today will be different tomorrow. Science helps us to navigate through this biological system in the least intrusive way. However, society or sectors of society cannot be regulated on the basis that the biology of treating waste or using organic nutrients to grow agricultural crops are exact sciences. The difficulty of predicting the availability of organic nutrients for plant growth is an example of how factors including, but not limited to, climate, meteorology, soil type, topography, geology, plant variety and microbial populations, most of which are constantly changing, can influence the prediction. Growing crops with commercial fertilizer is subject to many of the same changing factors. In any given growing season, crop harvest yields and nutrient uptakes are no more pred
Related Questions
- ISSUE 17: Can municipal and industrial waste treatment technology simply be transferred off-the-shelf to the farm ?
- ISSUE 36: Can waste treatment and land utilization of organic nutrients be regulated with exact science ?
- ISSUE 16: Do waste treatment processes cause organic matter and nutrients to disappear ?
