It seems strange that we as humans are perfectly fine with fertilizing crops with manure from chickens, cows, pigs, practically anything. We are fine with anything but our own manure. We have to take our manure, flush it into a sewer with water that has been cleaned and filtered so that we could’ve used it for drinking, then it is treated with chemicals, and eventually sludge remains that has to be scraped out. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to do with our own feces what we do with other animals? Some people are doing this already and it’s called humanure.

Localvore is a new “buzz word” if you will, that was coined as a term for people who try to eat food that grown or raised close by to where they live. They see it as being good for the environment because there is no longer a truck driving possibly thousands of miles to bring apples to your grocery store from Washington or Oregon. The other side of this is that buying into your local economy helps raise up the community as your dollars spent in the community are going into a community member’s wallet. Unlike shopping at a Wal-Mart where the cash you spend goes to a multi-national corporation that most likely won’t reinvest it back into your community. So let’s take a look at the facts behind these two ideas.

Much of California has a climate that is considered Mediterranean―cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Five Mediterranean-climate regions occur around the world―California, central Chile, Southwest Africa, Southwest Australia, and the Mediterranean proper―and all of them are notable for being extraordinarily rich in plant species, most of which are entirely restricted to their particular ecoregion. Indeed, taken together the five Mediterranean-climate ecoregions cover only 2% of the Earth’s land surface, but contain 20% of its flora.