Arrigo Serpieri

Arrigo Serpieri (1877 to 1960) was an Italian economist, politician and agronomist and an expert in agricultural economics. Born in Bologna, he graduated from the School of Agriculture of Milan in 1900 with a dissertation on sharecropping, taught valuation at Perugia and Milan and later economics and valuation at the National Forestry Institute of Florence. In 1923 he became Secretary of State for Agriculture for about a year, and he later served as undersecretary at the Ministry of Agriculture during the Fascist period, as a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1924 to 1929, as Senator from 1939, as rector of the University of Florence from 1937 to 1942 and as President of the Academy of Georgofili. He wrote and directed the Forest Act, supported small landownership and independent firms against the big estates, and was a leading proponent of the land reclamation of the 1920s, regarded as a founder of agricultural economics in Italy. He belonged to the National Fascist Party but held liberal positions far from the party leadership.