Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

If such figures confirm the verdict that the Battle of Wheat benefited primarily the more modern sectors of Italian agriculture, such as the areas of capitalist agriculture of the Po Valley, the effects were no less dramatic in the south, where the legendarily backward large estates dominated.[49] In 1938 the newspaper Agricoltura Fascista claimed that no less than 65 percent of the wheat fields of the south were cultivated with the new hybrids.[50] In Apulia, Senatore Cappelli was the strain of hard wheat responsible for the diffusion of Strampelli’s name through the fields. Between 1937 and 1938 there was a fierce debate among Italian wheat experts on where in the southern regions it was advisable to use the new high-yield soft wheats, and which areas should stick to the more reliable but less productive hard wheats, which were better adapted to the arid conditions.[51] But if the main results in northern regions were due to intensify grain production, in the south the “Battle of Wheat” was fought by greatly expanding wheat acreage into previously uncultivated areas occupied by grasslands and woods. While in northern and central Italy the area dedicated to wheat cultivation increased by only 5 percent between the beginning of the 1920s and the end of the 1930s, corresponding to an extra 116,000 hectares (290,000 acres), in the south the wheat fields were enlarged by about 265,000 hectares (662,500 acres), or 13 percent.[52] The immediate result of such expansion was not only an increment in wheat production but also a true disaster for animal husbandry, a major activity in the economy of southern Italy: between 1926 and 1929 the number of sheep and goats declined by between 4 million and 5 million.[53]

Such major effects on the Italian landscape were, of course, results of the gigantic act of propaganda of the Battle of Wheat. This was not just empty fascist rhetoric, for we are dealing here with a concrete increased infrastructural presence of the state in the territory. In fact, one of the initiatives promoted by the campaign was the formation of associations and consortia of farmers financed by the state with the aim of producing and distributing new high-yield seeds.[54] By 1930, seven seed centers (in Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria, Puglia, Basilicata, Lazio, and Tuscany) had been set up by farmers’ syndicates. The connection with Strampelli’s Institute of Genetics couldn’t be more intimate: its local experiment stations, such as those in Foggia and on the island of Sardinia, were responsible for forming the local consortia. Selected farmers in each region were trusted with the task of reproducing the elite seeds under controlled conditions by the experiment station, after which the consortia would sell the certified seeds to farmers at controlled prices. Small landholders were given, gratis, a small quantity of selected seed under the obligation of cultivating it and getting rid of an equivalent amount of traditional landraces or, as an alternative, were paid back the difference between the price of new strains and traditional ones. From 1926 to 1930 about 100,000 quintals of selected seed were handed to small farmers through this scheme of “seed exchange,” which aimed at a large-scale replacement of traditional varieties in Italian fields by the breeders’ technoscientific artifacts.[55]

The targeting of small landholders didn’t change the fact that large farmers were the main beneficiaries of the system: they controlled the consortia, got extra income from reproducing selected seeds because they had been selected as model farmers, and had more capital with which to buy the fertilizers that revealed the good qualities of the new strains. Only if small farmers were given Strampelli’s varieties at no cost could they be persuaded to use the new seeds. To convince them, the campaign funded, in addition, no less than 30,000 demonstration fields scattered through every wheat-producing village in the country.[56] These were small properties of no more than a hectare (2½ acres), always close to public roads, for which small farmers received free seed and fertilizers for a couple of years. At key moments—seeding, fertilization, and harvest—the consortia invited the rest of the local farmers to observe the results, which were also publicized in the local press and by local priests.