Anecdotal evidence suggests the number of urban professionals trading BlackBerries for manure spreaders is growing fast.
A potential solution, regulators say, is to find new uses for manure.
But applicants are required to submit a plan for manure removal and storage and for rodent and fly control.
He wore a blazer and had a detailed budget, which included a line item for manure sales.
But a solution may be at hand, from a Canadian company selling a sewage treatment system tuned for manure.
Keen to "beat the Brits and catch up with the Americans", the people give up their iron for smelting, chop down forests to fuel furnaces and tear down pagodas for manure.
The relatives of Italian politicians don't sell themselves as cleaning ladies for pocket money, nor do they claim compensation for manure: Prodi's government fell after the wife of the minister of justice was arrested for involvement with the Mafia.
M.P.s were exposed as having claimed money for the cleaning of a moat, for porn movies watched by a member's husband, for a floating duck house, for manure, for the removal of wisteria from the front of a house.
Food and offal were sold for manure, linen rags went to paper makers, broken crockery and oyster shells became hardcore for road makers, and old iron was sold to trunk manufacturers who used it to make corners for their products.
Self-feeders, diets composed of grains and oilseed by-products, and construction of slotted floors and outside tanks or lagoons for manure storage have become almost universal among large-scale commercial producers in developed countries.
But he was obliged to pay back nearly £30,000 in parliamentary-expenses claimed for manure and other gardening costs at his house in Pilton (which he counts his second home).
