Emulazione o profitto? L'avvio delle esposizioni agricole nell'Italia preunitaria

[Autom. eng. transl.] The birth and first spread of agricultural exhibitions in the forties and fifties of the century XIX - exhibitions that will multiply and articulate to a truly remarkable extent in the late nineteenth century - represented a decisive turning point in the history of exhibitions and an important innovation in the formation and dissemination of agricultural knowledge. Feeding on the discussions on the most suitable incentive systems for the economy, then the first demonstrations turned to the agricultural sector arose, promoted not by governments or semi-public institutions but by groups of landowners, entrepreneurs and men of science, and aimed at a well public different from that of art and industry exhibitions. The essay, based on original sources, first reconstructs the echo in the Italian peninsula of foreign exhibitions where agriculture found its own public space. Then it examines the development of agricultural and horticultural exposures in Piedmont, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna. In the final part the debate is considered, very heated in the liberalist climate of post-unification years, on the usefulness or otherwise of prizes and exhibitions as tools to promote the development of agriculture.