Shit and Chicks

by Kees van der Geest

Surprisingly enough, behind the hip sounding title Shit & Chicks lurks the story of an old Ghanaian chicken farmer who has an ingenious way of collecting feed for his chickens. The short film is a wordless plea for organic sustainable agriculture. Each day, the old man collects cans of cow manure in the savannah. Back on his own premises, he breaks the dry pies into pieces and dampens the manure again. He trades the freshly filled cans with cans from the day before that he buried around the savannah. Countless termites have collected in them, which are a tasty and nutritious meal for the chickens. It's an age-old technique that the man learned from his father, who in turn learned it from his father. But how long will this small-scale form of agriculture be kept alive?

This documentary was the winner at the Bessensap contest of the Dutch Council for Scientific Research in 2007.