If the phrase ‘The Real Shit‘ comes out in your conversation, you are probably speaking with some youngster who wants to chat about an instance of true authenticity. Instead, if you are conversing with Federico Lodolini, ‘The Real Shit’ becomes synonymous of a revolution, in the form of packed… shit.
‘I spent my youth in the Italian countryside, where I used to have my small vegetable garden and my hens’, said Lodolini, who founded ‘The Real Shit’ together with Riccardo Mercati and Alan Dindo. Describing the visit to his neighbour’s manure piles he said ‘It was such a great sensorial experience – the smell, the smoke, the heat. With these memories in mind, we started to develop the story of Real Shit’.
The product gain his space in the table of the Urban Farmers, people who wants to feed their vegetables, herbs, flowers and plants with the best organic fertilizer on their terrace facing the urban jungle.
You don’t need to be a green-toe to know that at the base of a good harvest there is the manure, but in big metropolis the only ‘true and natural’ manure you can grab is probably in the little garden, thanks to your neighbour’s dog.
And that’s when ‘the real shit’ comes to help: the product in fact consists of real manure packed in a fancy can. ‘We use only organic manures from non-industrial farms in Italy’, said Lodolini. He added ‘We let the manure ripen for nine months and we overturn it seven times in order to have the perfect ripeness; this makes The Real Shit the best manure available on the market’.
The Real Shit manure is indeed produced according to the Italian tradition of Manure Piles (cumuli di letame), and has already been a great success story in Italy. From celebrities to common people, everybody wants to take part in this revolution, which has also his own ‘Dirtyfesto’.
‘We believe that growing food makes you independent from the food industry – it enables you to choose what you eat, and the quality of the food, and stops food from being a commodity’, explained Lodolini, under lighting the importance of eating healthy in a society that puts profit over food quality.
Right now, Federico is in London trying to expand the ‘black gold’ business. ‘The ‘grow your own’ trend is much more developed in the UK than it is in Italy’, said Federico, adding ‘We receive a lot of good feedback from the UK market (even though we are still not here yet)’.
Some retailers expressed their interest, and surely the British market will see soon the real Italian shit on its shelves… so keep your eyes and your nose open!
