FRESNO, Calif. – The wind moves softly through the trees at Sumner Peck Ranch, along the San Joaquin River north of Fresno.
Much of the soil here looks as normal as one would expect soil to look – green and earthy – but some of this is different.
It’s been composted not from food scraps, but from human bodies.
Some people call it “human compost,” but Sharon Weaver prefers a different term.
“It is technically called natural organic reduction soil,” said Weaver, who is executive director of the non-profit San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust.
Whatever it’s called, it’s derived from human remains.
The process is an environmental alternative to burial or cremation, and the soil that’s produced is marketed as safe and rich in nutrients.
“The compost that we were using here looks exactly the same, feels exactly the same,” Weaver said. “It just happens to be made in a different way.”
Weaver approved of using this compost along the San Joaquin River because, she said, it would help restore the land.
“We were approaching it simply from a soil health standpoint,” Weaver said. “The lens we were looking at it through was, ‘Would it be beneficial for the river environment?”
The practice had been happening for more than a year. But last month, it became the center of a public conversation.
That’s because Fresno County Supervisor Garry Bredefeld caught word of it. He immediately called a press conference to speak out – not just against the soil, but also about where it was being used.
“When you take that without telling anybody it’s being used on public lands, and you just do it, I think that’s wrong,” Bredefeld said.
He said the practice was upsetting because the land is used by the community for things like fruit picking and wine tasting.
“I think people have a right to know that that’s the kind of thing that’s being done,” Bredefeld said.
The Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians also opposed the practice.
“The idea that composted human remains would be distributed across these lands where our ancestors lived, prayed, and were laid to rest there is deeply troubling and profoundly disrespectful,” a tribe spokesperson wrote in a press release.
In March, the county handed Weaver a cease-and-desist letter to stop using this soil along the San Joaquin River – and she did stop.
The soil is no longer being applied there. Still, green burials like this are gaining popularity around the country.
The company that created this compost is Earth Funeral. In a promotional video, the Washington and Nevada-based company refers to itself as “America’s leading human composting provider.”
“The majority of people in California and the West Coast are on track to be cremated, but cremation is a fossil fuel-driven process that is quite overtly emitting [carbon dioxide]and conceptually doesn't resonate with a lot of people,” said CEO Tom Harries. “Composting, as it's colloquially referred to, offers a sort of nicer alternative in our view of the world.”
According to Earth Funeral, each body is washed, wrapped in an organic piece of cloth, and placed in a canister that resembles a tanning booth. Inside the vessel, the body is layered with natural materials like organic mulch, wood chips, and wildflowers.
By maintaining the body at a warm temperature, bacteria and microbes transform the body into soil after about 30 days. This process is similar to the way veggie scraps and orange peels would break down in an average backyard composter.
“We are creating a perfect combination of carbon and nitrogen, and then we’re optimizing temperature, moisture and oxygen levels to create perfect conditions for microbes to then break the body down at a molecular level,” Harries said.
The result looks just like soil, and Harries said the soil is tested to make sure it’s free of pathogens and contaminants.
He said it’s a different way to think about death.
“You can plant it – maybe that’s a tree, maybe that’s a memorial garden, maybe that’s a small bonsai plant, something like that – and then any remaining soil can be donated to conservation projects,” Harries said.
California doesn’t currently allow the human composting process. In a twist, however, that process will be legal in California starting in 2027 under a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022. Currently there’s no law prohibiting the application of the soil.
Still, county leaders are working on an ordinance that would ban using human compost not just at the river but on many other public lands as well.
Weaver, from the Parkway and Conservation Trust, wants to emphasize that the decomposition process itself didn’t happen along the San Joaquin River.
“The only thing that came out to the Sumner Peck Ranch site is the soil itself,” Weaver said. “There was a lot of confusion and misinformation, and the idea that we were somehow engaged in human composting – we do not do that.”
