"It's madness": Didier Giraud's outburst against urine used as fertilizer

Using urine as fertilizer is making a comeback. Much to the dismay of Didier Giraud, a farmer from Grandes Gueules, who laments that livestock farmers are simultaneously subject to numerous regulations related to the spreading of animal waste.

What if the future of agricultural fertilizer was urine? This ancestral technique is making a comeback. Because urine is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium , all elements that help promote agricultural fertilizer.

Thus, some places collect human urine in their toilets. This is the case at a middle school in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region and at the Paris headquarters of the European Space Agency. And starting in 2026, the new Saint-Vincent de Paul district in Paris plans to collect its residents' urine to use as fertilizer for the capital's gardeners.

"Urine contains three essential elements: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which nourish the plant," explained farmer Didier Giraud on Wednesday on the Grandes Gueules set, although he has a large reserve.

"But it drives me crazy because all the farmers in France are bothered by standards on animal waste, spreading dates, maximum per hectare! Everything is regulated and we are creating a new fertilizer that is human piss, it's madness," the cattle farmer rants on RMC and RMC Story .

"Some people are forced to limit their livestock because they can't spread enough. There are standards for a maximum per hectare, for neighbors, we're highly regulated with our animals' shit, and we're going to add human piss," adds a very angry Didier Giraud.

According to a study by the Water, Environment and Urban Systems Laboratory (Leesu) reported by Les Echos , urine could represent up to 20% of global nitrogen inputs to cultivated land within a few years.