The central Italian region of Emilia has set up a prize for the most nutritious and best-smelling manure to help its cows produce that Italian culinary glory, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese .
"You can usually tell from the smell what kind of manure is the best food for your fields," said jury chief Ettore Tibaldi, an emeritus zoology professor at Milan University .
"Farmers have been doing just that for thousands of years," Tibaldi told ANSA in a phone interview .
"But we'll also be looking, obviously, for nutrients like the nitrogen compounds that give you the juiciest grass" .
Tibaldi will head a scientific commission which will judge the best offerings from the pastures around the central Emilian city of Modena, just up the road from Parma .
The manure contest will be an eagerly awaited sideshow at this weekend's celebration of Parmigiano-Reggiano at the Apennine town of Lama Mocugno .
"We aim to show the whole cycle of production, from the cows to the milk, the cheese, the best hay and the best manure which is of course produced by the same cows" .
Children will be kept away from the manure but given free tastings of Parmigiano in a cheese-themed round of entertainment organised by a theatre troupe, Koine .
Koine will also be bringing the steaming mounds of competing manure on stage for Sunday's final, wearing traditional farmer's smocks and "sniffing away like mad," organisers said .
The contest also has a very serious side .
"We want to find the best natural fertiliser for farming at a time when the whole world has been inundated by synthetic products," said Modena Agriculture Councillor Graziano Poggioli, one of the organisers .
As well as Oscar-like awards celebrating the quality of their manure, the winners will be given free trips to Tuscany to visit farms with a similar tradition of organic farming using home-grown manure .
"The Manure Award 2006 will hopefully help us spread the use of the world's oldest fertiliser," Poggioli said. "At present more than one million tonnes of cow and pig dung is laid on local pastures each year. Added to that, we have liquid products from the animals which brings us to a grand total of three and a half million tonnes" .
Poggioli said a prize local breed of cattle, the Modena White, was the best in terms of both droppings and cheese .
The fair at Lama Mocugno aims to show adults and kids how splendid these endangered animals are .
