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[Adventurer]

New goldmining: Caving for bat droppings
Saturday, February 10, 2007
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Piles of bat refuse have become an unlikely favorite among some investors, from shepherds to university students, hoping to get rich quick

SİBEL CİNGİ
ISTANBUL � Referans


The goat herders who have long tended their flocks on Turkey's Taurus Mountains now have a new job � one that could make them richer than they ever imagined. Bat droppings � or guano � that have been piling up undisturbed for centuries in caves are now going for $5 per kilogram crude and $25 per kilogram when processed for use as fertilizer in organic farming � proof of the old adage that where there's muck, there's brass.

Would-be entrepreneurs may apply to Forestry Ministry or National Real Estate Management for permits to work in the caves. Agriculture engineer from Adana Şevket Ak�am, 36, and Harun Serbest from İzmir are two such people. Having rented a cave in the Taurus Mountains from the Forestry Ministry with his partners, Ak�am has applied for permits to work in three more caves, while Serbest has already copyrighted the name under which he plans to distribute bat guano as fertilizer.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=65867

[Ryst Helmut]

I remember Anda (you all remember him...how could you forget!) headed out of Korea just before the millenium to Australia to do just the same.

I wonder how much he made doing it. Then again, I think he did it for alternative reasons....

!shoosh,

Ryst

[mindmetoo]

That's actually where our fertilizer used to come from before Fritz Haber figured out a way to get it from thin air. Nitrogen makes up about 70% or something of our atmosphere. It's the reason the oxygen in the atmosphere doesn't burn everything in a flash.

Anyway, right before WWI the natural stocks of nitrogen from bat and bird dung was running out. The world was, naturally, rather addicted to the large food supplies nitrogen fertilizers were producing. When it ran out, billions of people were at risk of starving. Haber developed a process to synthesize it. And the world was saved.

The funny thing is Haber was a German and his process also let Germans make gun powder and stay in the WWI fight a lot longer. He was also the father of chemical warfare. Haber was also Jewish. Without his process, Germany would have only lasted a year in WWI. It would not have been financially ruined. It would not have given rise to Hitler. And Haber's family would not have been sent to the gas chambers. Haber was actually allowed by the Nazis to leave Germany...owing to his contributions. He actually didn't live much longer after he left Germany.

One of the great ironies in science.