natural fertilizer

The Dutch landscape picture provided by humble farmer reminds me of the meadows of my youth, though they were located just north of Amsterdam (and mostly built up now). There were no trees in them, but the horizons east and west did make for a long line of trees around the homes in the stretched out villages (streekdorpen) of Landsmeer and Oostzaan. It so happened that I had been thinking about those meadows all last week after reading an article about the fear of E-coli on lettuce etc. fields in California which led to the banning of cattle from within 30ft of those fields and other measures that are said to prevent the blowing of dust from dried animal waste unto the crops. My own feeling is that the E-coli outbreak in 2006 was most likely caused by the poor hygiene of the (migrant) farm workers who are not provided with clean bathrooms (incl. signs reading "employees must wash their hands" or in this case their shoes also as they often stand in urine that did not make it into the urinal). For ex. E-coli were found on green onions etc. imported from Mexico that were not grown near cattle. Interestingly enough one of the rules adopted by the growers is "workers with diarrhea may not enter the fields" which is telling enough as it presumes that a lot of workers "shit in the field" or nearby bushes (which the growers are told to cut down). The reason why I thought back to these villages is that each farmer had a pile of cow dung, mixed with the straw bedding from the winter stalls) behind the farm. This was (and I did some of it, helping a (girl)friend after school or on Saturdays) spread out after the frosts over the meadows destined for June hay fields, as best I remember (I certainly remember the haycocks in the fields! They were hard work with the pitchfork). In 1943+ (during the German occupation of WW II) some of the drier fields were ploughed up and used to grow potatoes etc. They were fertilized the same way. It is true that lots of people were sick from time to time but none of the problems were attributed to the animal origin of the fertilizer and certainly no one in my suburban school that lived in those farm areas or were children of farmers, died in greater numbers (in spite of increasing malnutrition of non-farm families). In north-east Holland (my father's family) there were lots of very small farms (keuterboertjes) that had a mixed exploitation of arable plots and a few animals (which provided the fertilizer for the arable fields). Not a few had no indoor plumbing and used well water that they pumped by hand and was supplemented by rainwater collected in half buried cement tanks or open barrels. This was a centuries' old farming tradition and all my father's relatives lived to well into their 80s, except the two uncles that moved away from the farming villages. One farming uncle fell off his bike at 94 (he might have been killed earlier as he was stone deaf and didn't hear the traffic, but in his village there was little traffic), my father - who had lived in Amsterdam since he was 24 - died at 88, in bed. In spite of a tradition that today would likely be considered unhygienic and thus a threat to one's health, the Dutch population, as those of other West Eur. countries increased steadily from about 1600 on and especially after the so-called agrarian revolution of the 18th century and the importation of different foods and fruits from the colonies.

Could it be that before 1950 or so, when there were no anti-biotics in general use for people and certainly not permanently in the food chain, our normal immune system was not compromised and the people thus more resistant?