Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

Other than by increasing tariffs on foreign grains, how was Italy to increase its wheat production? On July 4, 1925, in a speech that inaugurated the work of the Permanent Wheat Committee, Mussolini used emphatic rhetoric to give first priority to the distribution of high-yield seeds to Italian farmers. Other measures, such as intensive use of fertilizers and better preparation of the soil, were directly dependent of the success of that first task. Only by employing wheat varieties with high-yield potential could one capitalize the Italian fields with fertilizers and machinery. It would not make much sense to launch powerful para-state agencies such as S. A. Fertilizzanti Naturali Italia (SAFNI), founded in 1927 to promote the modernization of the chemical industry, if the seeds employed by farmers could not profit from the use of phosphates and nitrates.[14] The Battle of Wheat was not designed only to have a profound influence on the rural world; it was also supposed to boost the output of the chemical industry—a requisite for any policy of autarky as perceived by such first-rank leaders of the regime as the engineer Giuseppe Belluzzo, Minister of the National Economy from 1925 to 1928.[15]

It is, then, no surprise to find that the committee included Emanuele De Cillis and Enrico Fineli. Professor De Cillis, of the Royal Institute of Agriculture of Portici (Naples), the foremost expert on methods of wheat cultivation in the southern regions of Italy, dedicated his efforts to coping with the difficult conditions of the arid regions of Apulia, Basilicata, and Calabria.[16] Fineli, a no less important figure, was head of the extended network of Cattedre ambulanti d’agricoltura, which consisted of about 500 local chairs of agriculture in charge of introducing Italian farmers to the latest developments in husbandry.[17] Each local chair was made responsible for a Commission for Granary Propaganda consisting of twelve to twenty experts recruited by the newly formed National Union of Fascist Agricultural Technicians.[18] These commissions reproduced lectures and courses for local farmers, distributed leaflets and advertisements, and cultivated demonstration fields, all in order to make the case for proper rotation, good cultivation methods, application of fertilizers, and the planting of selected seeds. Their extension work was inspired by the words of the Duce: “You, the technicians… shall awaken agricultural activity from where it was left behind by the old procedures, or accelerate it where something has already been done; you shall be the energizers reaching out everywhere, till the last village, till the last man.”[19]

But, once again, this complex propaganda structure that enabled the Fascist state to reach into the most remote spots of rural Italy was built on the promise of high yields that would be made possible by new strains of wheat. If some scientists, such as De Cillis, owed their reputations to their capacity for revealing the potential of the seeds by experimenting with cultivation techniques, others, such as Nazareno Strampelli (another member of the Permanent Wheat Committee), were hailed as the creators of the new strains. Strampelli was by far the most famous of the Italian wheat geneticists; he was known as Il Mago del Grano—the Grain Magician.[20]

^{Figure 1.3 Nazareno Strampelli (1866–1942).}

^{(Fondo Nazareno Strampelli, Rieti State Archives)}

Producing and Circulating Purity

By the time Strampelli was mobilized for the Battle of Wheat, he was already an experienced scientist. In 1903 he had been hired as the local Experimental Chair of Grain Cultivation (Cattedra Sperimentale di Granicoltura) in Rieti, a small town of the Sabine region in central Italy. Although it seems quite a humble place to launch such a career, Rieti was renowned in Italy for its cereal production—especially for being the place of origin of the Rieti wheat variety.[21] This landrace was highly prized for its strong resistance to stem rusts, caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis, the most common of wheat diseases and well known among cereal growers for its potentially catastrophic effects. Rieti’s wide and fertile valley was a lake until the Romans drained it in the third century BC. Its cold winters and hot, humid summers offered ideal conditions for the development of the fungus.[22] The rust resistance of the local wheat evolved as a result of repeated annual exposure to the extreme environment.

^{Figure 1.4 The Royal Experiment Station of Wheat Cultivation in Rieti, 1932.}