The Global Battle of Wheat

Transnational Seed Networks in the Fascist Green Revolution

In 1925, the Italian fascist regime launched the “Battle of Wheat”, a vast plan of agrarian development aimed at domestic autarky in wheat, Italy’s main food crop. Besides including a set of producer-oriented economic policies, the Battle of Wheat envisaged to raise the productivity of Italian wheat farming through the mass dissemination of scientific expertise and modern technological inputs. While the expansion of mechanization and fertilizer use were important components of this undertaking, the technological keystone of the fascist quest for wheat autarky was the “seed replacement” strategy: the creation and diffusion of “elite” seeds – i.e. high-yielding and disease-resistant cultivars – in lieu of traditional varieties. The global ramifications and long-term legacies of this endeavor constitute the key focus of this research. 

With this project, I aim to re-conceptualize the Battle of Wheat as a “fascist Green Revolution”. Similarly to the set of modernization narratives, scientific principles, and technological inputs that came to be identified as “Green Revolution” (GR) in the 1960s, I investigate how the Battle of Wheat became a global model of agrarian development during the interwar years. Similarly to the “miracle seeds” created by US wheat scientist and godfather of the GR Norman Borlaug, I argue that following their transnational experimentation and diffusion, Italian “elite” seeds became the crucial vectors of the globalization of the Battle of Wheat. 

To this end, this research draws on an innovative set of methodologies from global history, the environmental humanities, and science & technology studies. Physically (and often culturally) rooted and yet deeply mobile, seeds are an excellent framing device to weave a historical narrative combining local with global scales of analysis. Following the global “travels” of Italian “elite” wheat varieties, their lives as seed in farmers’ fields and “afterlives” as germplasm in breeders’ experiment stations, I track the complex historical relationship between agricultural biotechnology, farmers’ knowledge and practices, and the environment. This research provides a new framework to observe not just the similarities between the “global” Battle of Wheat and the GR, but also their direct historical connections, to the extent that it is indeed possible to group these two phenomena within the common framework of a “Long Green Revolution”. 

To this end, I concentrate on the transnational seed networks that link fascist Italy with Latin America, commonly considered as the original breeding ground of the GR. Focusing on the trajectories of Italian “elite” wheat seeds in Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, this research aims to reconstruct the dynamics of their dissemination, their interplay with local environments and farming systems, as well as their role in the long-term quest towards wheat self-sufficiency in these respective countries. The expected impact encompasses critical issues of contemporary relevance. As calls for a “second Green Revolution” and for the adoption of “new genomic techniques” are currently gaining momentum as a solution to ensure global food security in a drying world, this research will provide historical depth and new insights on key themes at the heart of this debate.