Somebody probably wrote a novel...

The farmers around a small town in Italy, a town made famous by the American writer, Ernest Hemingway,  suffered from a number of disastrous crop failures. They could understand the first one, having, after all, just come through a devastating war. The following two years, however, were just as bad. There seemed to be no end to the drought.
A North American Indian Rain Dancer could not help them either.
Then when all seemed lost, a New York promoter assured them that it all had to do with "bad air", not with lack of water. He convinced them that deep under ground there was a huge supply of good fresh air and only he had the equipment to drill a well deep enough to bring it to the surface.
They struck a deal. The Italian farmers paid the promoter "cash up front" and then they waited for the shipment of boxes containing the promised machinery.
And, low and behold, a few weeks later there arrived a number of wooden boxes  from New York, bearing the stenciled inscription:

                                      " An Airwell to Farms."