Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

For northern and central Italy, where demand for the new strains was greater, it was the Rieti Experiment Station that was in direct control of the entire circuit. Making use of its large multiplication fields, the Station sold seeds to the Association of Seed Reproducers of Rieti, which had been formed in 1926 by the fascist government to encourage the use of Strampelli’s varieties. Strampelli himself was the technical director of the association, and his National Institute of Genetics partially funded its formation. The members of the association, all farmers in the Rieti region, were responsible for reproducing seeds under strict supervision of personnel from the National Institute of Genetics, who controlled every step from sowing to threshing. The seeds were then collected, separated, and packed in the association’s building, a major facility with ten silos. Seed bags, identified with the stamps of the Association of Seed Reproducers and the National Institute of Genetics, were distributed among the millions of farmers of northern and central Italy. It is not easy to decide who mobilized whom: was it the fascist state that mobilized Strampelli for the success of its Battle of Wheat, or was it the geneticist who mobilized the state to put his Ardito into circulation?

^{Figure 1.7 The building of the Association of Rieti Reproducers of Seed, 1932.}

^{(Strampelli, “I Miei Lavori, p. 156)}

And wheat circulation didn’t involve only farmers. Millers and bread consumers were also important. Indeed, when dealing with the science involved in the Battle of Wheat one is immediately struck by the amount of literature dedicated to the subject of rationalizing bread production, discussing in great detail the physical and chemical properties of flour or the design of bakers’ ovens.[57] Such material deserves, to be sure, an entire volume. Here it will be enough to mention that Strampelli’s strains, particularly Ardito, were objects of a controversy involving their quality for bread production.[58] In comparison with traditional Italian wheats, and with imported hard wheats such as Manitoba, Ardito was said to have worse dietary properties and to be ill adapted to bakers’ processes. And this was a time when bread consumers all over Europe increasingly valued whiter and lighter breads requiring specific properties of the wheat gluten, which justified the millers’ preference for high-strength flours.[59] The very same baking technology that transformed baking from a manual activity into a mechanized one also demanded stronger flours. Thus, while Strampelli conducted experiments to demonstrate the good technological properties of Ardito flours, the government decreed in 1931 that millers and bakers were required to use at least 95 percent Italian wheat in the production of bread and pasta. Strampelli’s National Institute of Genetics for Grain Cultivation, which had just moved into its new building in the outskirts of Rome, was granted a technological laboratory with a pilot facility for milling, baking, and pasta making, with the aim of demonstrating the superiority of national wheats.

While the experimental fields in Rieti or in Foggia enhanced the circulation of Strampelli’s hybrids on larger scales, the modest ovens and mills of the Technological Laboratory in Rome made them circulate among millers and consumers. Such instruments were crucial in guaranteeing that Italians were eating proper bread or pasta following autarkic principles. No true Italian was to use flour made from Manitoba wheat.[60] Again, it makes little sense to talk here about propaganda without substance, as too many scholars have referred to the Battle of Wheat, when such strong connections were being woven between millions of farmers, bakers, consumers, and the state by way of circulating geneticists’ artifacts.