ARGENTINA'S PART IN FEEDING THE WORLD
It is well to mark that of the British food supply from overseas
Argentina provides one quarter. Each person in the Republic, after
providing enough food to supply himself, sends at least £8 worth of food
to other countries.
Argentina covers 776 million acres. Eighty million acres are suitable
for wheat, but only one-fourth of this area is cultivated. The
population is growing rapidly; it is now over seven millions, and is
being increased by about a quarter of a million immigrants every year;
but still the cry is for more inhabitants.
At present there are six persons to the square mile; but when you
remember that the province of Buenos Aires has a population of two and a
half millions, you find the population for the outside areas is just
under two per square mile.
Three-quarters of the population are Argentines; everyone born in the
country, no matter from what land the parents come, is reckoned an
Argentine. Of the new-comers half a million are Italian, a quarter
million Spanish, a tenth of a million French; then come the British,
numbering 25,000; Germans 18,000; Swiss 15,000; Austrians 13,000, and
so on, decreasingly. North Americans are few, though within recent
years much United States capital has quietly taken hold of certain
industries. Argentina is capable of carrying a population of fifty
millions, and it will secure them within the next half-century. In race,
language, customs, religion, it is especially favourable to folk from
the thronged Latin countries of Europe.
Every settler becomes a violent Argentine. The emphatic patriotism of
the American is tepid alongside the hot-blooded nationality of
Argentina. It is daily inculcated in the schools. The blue and white
striped flag is honoured on every occasion. You are poetically reminded
it is of the blue of the sky. When the Argentines were in revolution
against Spain in 1810, and needed a banner to flaunt against the red and
orange of the enemy, they got pieces of blue and white cloth (intended
for garments) from an English warship lying at Montevideo, and made a
flag of it. So the Argentine flag, like much of Argentine prosperity, is
due to Britain.
In proportion to the population there are as many millionaires in
Argentina as in the United States. There are sturdy old fellows, who can
hardly write their names, who scarcely know the extent of their wealth.
Fifty years ago an Irish labourer landed in the country. He died the
other day worth over £4,000,000.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._
A GROUP OF GAUCHOS. ]
It is none of my business to boom land values in Argentina. Though the
tendency of late has been a little too buoyant, I know of no land where
there have been such enormous heaves in values, not fictitiously
hoisted, but legitimate on development of commerce, as in this Republic.
In 1885 you could buy land in the centre of Buenos Aires at 2s. 6d. a
square yard. Now you must pay £200 a yard. A suburban plot of 60 by 20
yards, which you could have got twelve years ago for £5, will cost £150.
Fine camp land--the "camp" is the Argentine name for farming
districts--which could be got for a song a quarter of a century ago will
now fetch £100,000 the square league (three miles). I know a plot of
land at Rosario which has jumped in value from £2,000 to £40,000 in
twenty years.
It is easy to understand how Argentine millionaires are made. In the
wars with neighbouring Republics Argentine officers were given tracts of
country in lieu of pay: of small value then, but their descendants are
fabulously wealthy. The careful Briton who came out when railways were
beginning to speed through the country, and acted shrewdly, got land for
next to nothing which will bring a better price per acre than land in
the home counties. I am writing this in mid-Atlantic on my way home, and
each morning on deck I exchange a bow with an old lady who owns 180
square miles of the finest agricultural land in the province of Buenos
Aires.
In a previous chapter my pen was somewhat free about the ostentation of
the Argentine. But the display of wealth is frequently put to a good
purpose. When a fabulous price is paid for a Derby winner it is an
Argentine who has found the money. Argentina has a fine breed of
horses. As the cattle industry is so important, the best stock is
purchased at home. I went to the agricultural show in September, 1913.
All the judges had been brought out from England, partly because good
judging was needed, but chiefly, I fear, because the Argentines cannot
trust each other to give unbiassed decisions. The show was finer housed
than any royal show in England, and the quality of the exhibits was
quite on a level with anything we can produce. The prize bull, Argentine
bred, was sold by auction for over £7,000. Admitted this was a fancy
price due to the rivalry of breeders to have the best and to boast about
it. A thousand pounds has been paid by a meat company for a Hereford
bull to kill; but this may be ascribed to advertisement.
The _estancias_--ranches or stations--are frequently enormous in extent,
as wide as an English county, and are managed as well as any great
estates in Australia, Canada, or New Zealand. There are the usual show
places, maintained by Anglo-Argentines, where the immediate grounds are
laid out like an English park, the farm buildings all on the model plan,
and the animals of the best stock, whilst a successful endeavour is made
toward converting the house into something palatial. Though some
_estancias_ are far inland, and distant from a railway line, life is far
more enjoyable than might be thought. The rich _estanciero_, however,
spends little of his time on his land. He is too often an absentee
landlord. He has tasted the joys of Europe; besides, his wife and
daughters are inclined to prefer Buenos Aires to life in the camp,
however healthy. The place is usually run by a manager. Then there are
sub-managers, often young Englishmen who have heard of the fortunes to
be made; next there are the peons, Spaniards and Italians, who do the
meaner work. Life in the camp is arduous. Men are out at dawn, rounding
up cattle, giving an eye to the "colonists," attending to fencing,
driving beasts to the railway station to be transferred to the
"freezers," and it is sundown when the work is over and men go to their
quarters. It is a strenuous life, and the employees have little of the
pleasures of civilisation.
Within the last ten years the export value of live stock products has
increased from £23,000,000 to £36,000,000, and agricultural products
from £21,000,000 to £53,000,000. Since 1896 the area under cultivation
has grown from 13 million acres to nearly 50 million acres. Of Argentine
cereals the United Kingdom imported 1,654,000 tons. There are 30 million
cattle in the Republic and 80 million sheep. The breeding of sheep is
not what it was, because the Argentine finds he can get a better return
from cattle and cereals. So, whilst the value of exported mutton remains
very much what it was ten years ago (about £1,250,000), the value of the
exported chilled and frozen beef has risen from £1,500,000 to over
£6,000,000 a year.
At the ports are big slaughtering establishments, some belonging to
Argentine companies, and others to American companies. A bitter feud is
being waged to capture the chilled and frozen meat trade, especially in
the English market. As England is only three weeks' distance, meat that
is only chilled has an enormous advantage over meat from more distant
countries which must be frozen. The fact is denied, but it may be taken
as certain that there is a big combination of Chicago houses
endeavouring to squeeze their competitors out of business--and they seem
in a fair way to succeed. The Argentine public are showing fright, and
there have been frantic appeals to Congress that steps be taken to check
the creation of a trust. Also it is hoped that England may take action.
But the authorities in both countries decline to do anything. The
Chicago firms have a long purse and are damaging their rivals at both
ends, first by paying Argentine cattle breeders unprecedented prices for
beasts, and then by selling the meat below cost price in the Smithfield
market. Of course, in reply to what is happening, one hears the
statement, "Why grumble, when the Argentine cattle dealer gets a high
price for his beasts, the London consumer gets cheap meat, and the
Chicago firms pay the difference?" That is true. But it does not need
much business foresight to understand that when the Anglo-Argentine
companies are bankrupt the Chicago trust, having the game in their own
hands, will pay their own price for cattle and lift the price of meat in
London. Meanwhile, the Argentine _estanciero_ is quite happy, and is
willing to let the future take care of itself. One thing, however, may
safely be prophesied. The Argentine Government has a drastic way of
doing things. If the expected happens, and the Chicago houses secure the
meat industry and begin to force down prices for cattle, there will not
be the slightest hesitation in passing a law which will make things
uncomfortable for the trust.
With the care taken in breeding, always striving after improving the
strain of the stock, Argentina, with its millions of acres of pasturage,
is determined not to slacken the stride of its improving meat trade. The
best lands are given to wheat, maize, oats; but the use of alfalfa has
meant an amazing expansion of productivity, for this nutritious plant, a
kind of sanfoil, will grow abundantly on land that is little good for
other purposes. Areas at which the agriculturist was inclined to shrug
his shoulders as barren prosper under alfalfa, the best of feeding
stuffs, and several crops can be got in a year. Two acres will carry a
beast. Alfalfa grown for fodder gives a hundred per cent. profit.
Alfalfa, whilst drawing nitrogen from the ground, attracts nitrogen from
the air. One ton of alfalfa contains 50 lb. of nitrogen. Three tons of
alfalfa has as much nitrogen as two tons of wheat. It is easy to grow,
and cattle fatten on it abundantly. The alfalfa of Argentina means more
to the prosperity of the country than rich gold mines. As there is no
winter, as we understand it, the cattle are left out all the year, and
there is no stalling or hand feeding.
Cattle disease is more prevalent than with us. This is partly due to
carelessness, but chiefly to the herds being so large that the scourge
becomes virulent before it is noticed. Then, as I have indicated, there
is the danger of drought and the dread of locusts. Further, so much of
the cereal growing being in the hands of "colonists," too often anything
but expert farmers, the yield is by no means what it would be if the
farming were in more skilled hands. So, whilst the average yield of
wheat in Great Britain is thirty-one bushels to the acre; in Argentina
it is only eleven bushels. But manuring is unknown in the Republic.
Yet, keeping one's eyes open to all the disadvantages, one cannot go
through the country and see its fecundity, go into the killing houses at
La Plata and Buenos Aires, watch the ocean liners, with the Union Jack
dangling over their stern, being loaded with many sides of beef, visit
the grain elevators at the ports of Bahia Blanca and Rosario pouring
streams of wheat destined for European consumption into the holds of
liners, without the imagination being stimulated when standing on the
threshold of this new land's possibilities.
Already Argentina holds first place in the quantity of exported frozen
meat. It was in 1877 that the Republic led the way in exporting such
meat to Europe. It was not till 1885, however, that the business of
freezing was definitely established. To-day £11,000,000 is invested in
"freezing works." And millions of cattle and sheep are slaughtered for
foreign consumption. There seems to be something of a race at present
between live stock products and agricultural products which shall hold
first place in value of exports. The ports of Argentina, with a capacity
for 45 million tons, are ever busy. Yet they are only in infancy.
Like all new lands, where enterprise and optimism frequently leap beyond
rigid economies, Argentina has its heaves and falls. We know of the
hundreds of millions of foreign capital invested. People do not go to
Argentina for the beauty of the scenery. They go for money-making. Often
when I came across some evidence of Latin sluggishness, saw what had not
been done, what might have been done, and then remembered what,
nevertheless, had been done, I found myself exclaiming: "Oh, that this
land were a British colony!"