Sorta, yeah, but mussolini was really into wheat, too, especially as the way to “develop” southern Italy. Northern Italy mostly grew corn and rice, and southern Italy has been growing wheat for over 2000 years. One of the largest agricultural projects of the fascist era was the pursue of higher yields of wheat, mostly by the substitution of local, heirloom wheat varieties that co-evolved with local biodiversity and production methods, in favor of “modern” wheat, which required heavy tilling, chemical fertilizers and mechanized agriculture.

All of this and more, like the multiple “sagre” (agricultural festivals based around a local product; for example “the sagra of the Piedmontese fat Ox” in the north) was done in the name of “agricultural autarchy”, a rudimentary, fascist understanding of national food security, and the uplifting of the individual peasant’s image in Italian consciousness as a patriotic, self-determined, and independent example of the kind of man that fascist Italy expected of its citizenry, despite the material reality of most peasants being somewhere between day laborers in large landholder’s land (the real powrr base of the rural fascist), and impoverished subsistence farmers.