The government placed about 2,000 families (most from northern Italy and of unimpeachable Fascist background) in standardised but carefully varied two-storey country houses of blue stucco with tiled roofs. Each settler family was assigned a farmhouse, an oven, a plough and other agricultural tools, a stable, some cows, and several hectares of land, depending on local soil fertility and the size of the family. Mussolini used the 10-year operation for propaganda purposes, and was often photographed between workers, shirtless with a shovel in his hand, or threshing wheat at harvest time; these occasions were regularly filmed by LUCE for inclusion in nationally shown propaganda newsreels.