An Italian Farmer Found Some Unknown Seeds in His Attic and, With Nothing to Lose, Planted Them. The Result Was Almost Biblical

When a seven-eared stem emerged from the ground, it seemed like a miracle. What Claudio Grossi had unearthed was an ancient grain that proved to be an answer to some modern problems

Lina Zeldovich

Photographs by Clara Vannucci

November 2026

Sometime in the early 1990s, Claudio Grossi, a 40-year-old farmer in Parma, in northern Italy, was cleaning his attic when he turned up an old sack full of seeds that he couldn’t identify. The bag, he was sure, had been left by his late great-grandfather, who’d started the farmstead around 1915. Grossi had no idea how long the seeds had been sitting there, deprived of water, soil and sun. Dry and cracked, the kernels looked so old in the palm of his hand that he doubted anything would ever sprout from them. He carried the bag down the stairs, shook the seeds out into a pile of manure and then forgot about them. 

To his surprise, the seeds soon sprouted a few different types of wheat. One was particularly striking: At six feet high, its plants were about twice as tall as commercial wheat. But the most remarkable feature came when it developed ears—the grain-studded parts at the top of the plant. All of the wheat types Grossi had previously seen grew only one such ear. But the tall wheat grew a full seven ears, always in the same pattern: a long one with six shorties bunched up around it like little fingers. Even the kernels themselves were bigger than those of average wheat. And unlike the typical pale-yellow wheat kernels, they came in a rainbow of colors—yellow, black, red, white and even green, sometimes all on the same stem. Grossi, a grain farmer his whole life, had never seen anything like it. “I thought it was a freak of nature,” he says. He couldn’t find a mention of it in agricultural books.

For Grossi, a practicing Catholic, the next insight came from a different book altogether. Leafing through a Bible at church one Sunday, he found a passage in the Book of Genesis describing a stalk with seven ears, in a dream that Joseph interprets for the Pharaoh: “And he slept and dreamed the second time: And, behold, seven ears of grain came up upon one stalk, rank and good. And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them. And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears.” To Grossi, that sounded just like the mysterious crop in his manure pile.

“I connected the dots,” Grossi says. That grain must be really ancient, he thought. And if people were farming this odd-looking wheat in biblical times, why does no one today? 

Back on his farm, Grossi harvested the grain, milled it into flour and baked a loaf of bread in his kitchen. Compared with commercial wheat, the dough didn’t rise well, but as the loaf sat in the oven, it filled the kitchen with a surprisingly nutty and delicious aroma. Once finished, it had a rich, satisfying taste. “You get these notes of sweetness that you can’t find in regular commercial flour,” he says. 

Grossi discovered it had other advantages: It was hardier and more self-sufficient than commercial varieties. It fared better during droughts, growing so tall that it overshadowed the weeds. It didn’t need fertilizer or herbicides. Indeed, it seemed so superior to its industrial cousins that he thought of it no longer as a freak of nature but as a wonder. He dubbed it grano del miracolo—“miracle grain” or “miracle wheat.” 

Grossi’s discovery came at just the right time. In Italy in the 1990s, a burgeoning slow-food movement aimed to preserve traditional farming practices and promote natural diets. 

Grossi hoped that miracolo could ride this slow-food wave, becoming both a portal to the past and a passage to a future. Perhaps, he thought, miracolo could help other farmers bring back ancient grains, leading the movement that is changing how we make bread, a staple of the human diet. And today, as climate change makes droughts, heat waves and plant disease outbreaks more frequent and intense, a grain that has shown it can fend for itself would help keep that bread on the table. 

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Farmers began cultivating wheat about 10,000 years ago, in the Fertile Crescent—the area of the Middle East known as the Cradle of Civilization. Thousands of years ago, the hardy and adaptable plant took hold in Europe and Asia. Compared with our modern crops, these ancient wheats were much taller, outperforming other grasses in the field.  

Over the millennia, humans bred different varieties of wheat, some yielding less grain and others more. As human populations grew, the strains of wheat that brought plentiful harvests became more desirable. That pattern accelerated amid the upheavals of the early 20th century. By the early 1920s, Italy was still recovering from World War I and unable to grow enough grain to sustain itself; the country was importing roughly a third of its wheat. When fascist leader Benito Mussolini became prime minister in 1922, he launched a campaign to “free the Italian people from the slavery of foreign bread,” by pushing for wheat varieties that yielded greater harvests. The Italian government promoted and planted these “elite” varieties, then distributed the seeds to farmers. Named la Battaglia del Grano, or the Battle of Wheat, this campaign became a global model for agrarian development. 

In the United States, wheat harvests were then still plentiful, but not for long: By the early 1930s, amid unprecedented droughts, American farmers found the land was exhausted. The result was the Dust Bowl, during which the previously fertile soils of the Great Plains turned into a desert. American farmers had to look for more drought-resistant varieties that still yielded enough grain. 

The midcentury Green Revolution, a movement launched by the American agronomist Norman Borlaug, focused on selective breeding and boosted crop production. This work spread worldwide, feeding countless people. The wheat that was created was indeed more plentiful, yet it came with trade-offs. The petite plants couldn’t always outcompete weeds and were susceptible to disease, so growers used weed killers, fungicides and fertilizer to sustain the crops. Little did they know that these practices would only weaken the health of the soil—while making the wheat even less resilient to changing climate and extreme weather events.

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In the 1990s, Grossi sensed that anxiety over wheat harvests was building. That’s why, after he grew wheat from those seeds in the attic, he set out to put the hardy ancient grain back on the table. First, he realized he’d have to solve a big problem: Bread made from the wheat leavened poorly, rising only to fall again. In the early 2000s, he began discussing this challenge with an old local baker who shunned modern machines and still kneaded his dough by hand. The baker was intrigued. The two men started experimenting. 

They tried letting the dough rise in smaller batches, using wicker baskets that were taller and helped the dough keep its shape. Soon, the two found another secret: Less kneading made miracolo leaven even better. “The dough was rising, and it was holding its shape,” Grossi says. 

One new fan of the bread was Beniamino Perobelli, a student in food science at the University of Parma, who tasted the miracolo bread at a local farmers market and dedicated his undergraduate thesis to investigating its nutritional value. That work bore out what Grossi had already intuited: This wheat was truly ancient—and truly special. 

Working with the lab of Teofilo Vamerali, then a professor at the University of Parma, Perobelli determined that the grain was Triticum turgidum—literally “swollen wheat” in Latin. Known in English as “poulard wheat,” it had originally evolved in what today are Turkey, Egypt and other nearby Mediterranean countries. And searching agricultural references, Perobelli found that it had been grown in Italy, too, until farmers shifted toward higher-yield commercial varieties. That solved the mystery of the seed bag stashed away in the attic: It had survived because Grossi’s grandfather saved some of the heritage grains.

The food scientists found that, compared with modern wheats, grano del miracolo was richer in phosphorus and iron. Moreover, to their surprise, they found that T. turgidum had less gluten than modern wheat. And it packed a lot of lysine and tryptophan, the essential amino acids that serve as proteins’ building blocks. It also had more arginine, an amino acid that children need to grow. “The richness of microelements, minerals, and the greater presence of proteins other than gluten were very pleasant surprises,” says Perobelli, now a corporate social responsibility and sustainability manager with Rigoni di Asiago, an Italian company that produces organic fruit spreads, honey and more.

For Grossi, Perobelli’s findings offered scientific proof of his grain’s goodness. He persuaded Molino Grassi, a local organic grain company, to offer the flour to artisanal bakers. Over the next few years, Grossi upped production, so Molino Grassi could sell the flour to restaurants and consumers in Italy and abroad. 

By the 2010s, traditional recipes were enjoying a renaissance. So were artisanal bakers and pasta makers, who also became more discerning about which grains they used, says Francesco Sottile, an expert in biodiversity of agrosystems at the University of Palermo. 

Ancient grains aren’t necessarily perfect. For example, Grossi has found that miracolo’s height can be a liability—which may be why it fell out of favor with Mussolini. Heavy winds, rains and hail can make the tall stems flip over before the grain ripens, ruining harvests. But Grossi circumvented the problem by planting miracolo with shorter wheat varieties that provide structural support. “I’m quite happy because I developed something that’s like a discovery,” he says. 

Relying on a limited number of wheat cultivars, Sottile argues, leaves humanity vulnerable to agricultural disasters: prolonged droughts, extreme heat, new diseases or pests that develop resistance to our chemicals. Diversifying grains reduces the risk—even if some varieties succumb to environmental pressures, others will stand.

Sottile shared an example. “I’m based in Sicily,” he says, where 2024 saw “one of the worst droughts in the last 35 to 40 years.” It was so bad that many commercial wheat growers abandoned their fields in April of that year, realizing they wouldn’t be able to reap the seeds they sowed. Sottile was heartened to see a better fate among smaller-batch farmers who grew heritage grains, more resilient to extreme weather.

“Most of the farmers who were adopting ancient grains, they were able to collect, to harvest,” Sottile says. The world needs more crop biodiversity, he adds—including more ancient grains like grano del miracolo. By the same token, we need more people like Grossi, who, much like the ancient grain he sows, have the tenacity to make a miracle happen. 

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Stories of gods and grains

“Miracle wheat” is hardly the first divine cereal. Across millennia, gods have taught mortals how to earn their bread 

By Sonja Anderson

Greece: While Dionysus provided grapes and Athena was responsible for olives, the goddess Demeter brought grain to the Greeks. In myth, the latter goddess taught farming to a man named Triptolemus (pictured at right), then sent him out on a winged chariot to deliver the knowledge to all of Greece—an episode immortalized on ancient vases. 

Mesopotamia: Ancient Sumerians of the Fertile Crescent attributed farming to Ashnan, the grain goddess, “whose face is honey-covered / The lady, the procreatress, the vigor of the land,” per an ancient Sumerian poem. In myth, Ashnan and her sibling Lahar, deity of livestock, once drunkenly debated whether grains or sheep were more important. Enlil and Enki, the paramount Sumerian gods, declared Ashnan the winner, saying that without grain—often fed to herds—there could be no sheep. 

Egypt: Osiris ruled over death and the afterlife but was also a god of fertility, and it was said he taught mankind to cultivate wheat. Ancient Egyptians became famously adept at managing this crop: Their growing seasons regularly produced surpluses, thanks to the Nile’s floods. Some priests honored Osiris by planting grain in earthenware shaped like the god. 

China: Some ancient Chinese myths trace the country’s agriculture back to one emperor of legend: Shennong, born of a princess and a dragon some 4,000 years ago. The ruler supposedly had a bull’s head and a man’s body and is known as the divine farmer, or emperor of five grains (including rice, millets and wheat). He taught his people how to till their land, expanding the ancient Chinese diet—consisting mainly of meat, clams and wild fruits—to include grains and vegetables.

Mexico: Quetzalcoatl was a deity of the Aztec civilization who, according to myth, created the humans of our current era—the Fifth Sun—and their world. He taught people how to carve rocks, dye cotton, read the stars and—most important—grow food. One day, Quetzalcoatl observed a black ant carrying a kernel of corn, turned himself into an ant and followed the insect through a crack in a stone mountain, where he found a trove of maize, beans, peppers and sage. He took a corn kernel, brought it to man and taught him how to plant it.