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Comment by gabythenerd | Hacker News Reader

> ...He wanted to wean Italy off of foreign wheat imports, which were becoming increasingly difficult to acquire amidst international sanctions and a suffering domestic economy. Rice grew well in Northern Italy, so Mussolini sent free rice samples throughout the country and bombarded Italians with pro-rice propaganda.

How did pasta get so popular if they had to import the wheat? Seems they cannot produce enough for the whole population without imports even now, I would think that would make it expensive over staples thay they can grow themselves.

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Romans were importing grain from Egypt in the 0s so I guess Italy has been doing so long it didn't matter.

> How did pasta get so popular if they had to import the wheat?

It didn’t. The population increased and the country didn’t have the wheat-growing regions it would have needed to match.

And pasta is not the only wheat sink, bread and other doughs (e.g. pizza) are generally wheat based as well.

Those are different wheats

You still have to import most of them.

East Asia imports loads of wheat, yet wheat noodle dishes and breads are still popular.

In peacetime, it’s usually better to just import cheap things like grains and focus more on making high value foods. Italy probably makes good money selling their cheese worldwide—they and France are basically synonymous with good, expensive cheese. Nobody will pay a premium for Italian wheat though.

Now, this is just a guess not backed up even by a google search, but being that Italians have been eating pasta since the Middle Ages, I would guess that it has something to do with Northern Italy being part of the Holy Roman Empire.

Umm, northern Italy? Where do you think Rome is?

Rome wasn't part of the HRE for a large part of its existence. The emperor was considered the continuation of the old Roman emperors, and was "holy" because the Pope crowned him.

I'm not an expert on Italian geography or anything but I think of Rome as the beginning of southern Italy. Milan and Turin are the major cities I associate with north Italy.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_in_the_Holy_Rom...

Most Romans would probably frown at you for debating whether Rome is in northern or southern Italy. Rome is at the center of the world, or failing that, at least at the center of Italy!

Ok so then it's definitely not Northern Italy :-)

Well, yes, as the old joke goes, the Holy Roman Empire wasn't holy, wasn't Roman and wasn't an Empire.

Voltaire made that joke in the late 18th century, when the dying HRE had been reduced to a multi-confessional German confederation.

The medieval HRE, especially the Carolingian one, had a much better claim to the titles.

The Carolingian Empire isn't the HRE. The HRE started with the Ottonians.

Wikipedia says that the population of Italy nearly doubled between 1861 and 1936, this despite the fact that there was massive emigration of Italians to places like the United States and Argentina over the same period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy

Fun fact, most italian pasta brands use american and canadian grains. We just don't have much wheat, never had it even in ancient times. With EU we produce even less of it as we have benefits to focus on farming other specialties or produce cheese and meat.

The US is the #1 exporter of grain worldwide. Not the #1 producer, not the #1 consumer -- that's China -- but the #1 exporter. So much produced that they can ship more than anyone.

It is a fantastic source of American soft power. And also explains why Americans are so soft around the waist.

Wheat had been the staple food of the Italian peninsula since at least the days of Rome, though the Romans ate bread rather than pasta. It was the staple they could grow themselves.

Specialize and trade. If other regions are really good at farming wheat, why bother farming it yourself when you can produce fish and grapes?

trade is ruled by comparative advantage: If country A is better at producing wheat, and country A is also better at producing fish, country B should focus on producing the one which it is less comparatively bad at producing, and then trade. That will give them the highest GDP/income.

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