AGRICULTURE
The figures representing the progress of Agriculture in the River Plate
Republics, especially in Argentina, which has had the advantage of
freedom from Civil War during by far the longer period, during the last
few decades are truly astounding.
In 1875 the value of the principal Argentine Agricultural Exports was but
114,557 gold dollars; in 1913 the value of these exports was 307,520,854
gold dollars. In 1892 the total of the cultivated areas of the Republic
was only 580,008 hectares; in 1912 there were 22,987,726 hectares under
cultivation, this figure not including the pasturage improved with
foreign grasses. The first ten kilometres of railway line in the River
Plate Territories were laid in Argentina in 1857, now the extent of lines
in that Republic is over 21,000 miles, and that in Uruguay over 1590
miles, making a total for both Republics of over 22,500 miles, or rather
less than the total length (23,350 miles) of the lines in Great Britain.
And new lines and extensions are projected in all directions and will
prove profitable.
It must not, however, be taken for granted by the above juxtaposition
that the railroad has been the whole and direct cause of agricultural
extension. That many other causes have been at work is evident since
River Plate agriculture and export flourished long before the railway
was dreamed of anywhere. During the early years of its life in the River
Plate Republics the railroad was busily enough occupied in the endeavour
to serve districts already under cultivation; and it is only in very
recent times that one of the great English Companies adopted the, even
then much criticized, policy of extensions to secure in advance a sphere
of future cultivation. It may be added that no adverse criticism of this
policy (but only approving admiration) came from anyone practically
capable of forming an opinion of the agricultural prospects on which it
was soundly based.
Still, Argentine railway enterprise in general is conservative in that
it rather waits on than seeks to create a demand for its services; so
that the rule in these matters on the River Plate continues to be that
the railway very cautiously follows the lead of other progress and
enterprise, and much rich land in the more distant Provinces and National
Territories lies fallow waiting for the railway, while the railway is
waiting till actual production guarantees the immediate profit of new
lines at handsome rates.
Time will solve this sort of deadlock as it does other things; but
to most people, other than railway directors, its existence seems to
indicate a lack of commercial courage and energy. They manage some of
these things, in some respects, better in the United States.
At the same time it must be owned that the existing railway policy
protects the countries now under discussion from many of the greater
evils of local land booms and speculation in Town lots; which in early
North American days often left little but disillusionment as the share
of inexperienced speculators and paved the way for equally disastrous
railway competition.
In Argentina and Uruguay, particularly in the former Republic, the
great Railway Companies form something really very like the _Imperium
in Imperio_ that the Argentines say they do. Their General Managers are
quite as much diplomatic Ministers Plenipotentiary as they are actual
Managers of railroads; and, consequently, require qualifications of
which the chiefs of even our greatest British systems have no need. The
work of a General Manager of a great River Plate railway system lies a
good deal at Government House and with the leading men and politicians
of the country. He must know how best to protect the vested interests
of his Company and to pave the way for new developments in competition
with newly arrived applicants and existing competitors. For such purposes
he must combine firmness, serenity in protest if need be, with urbanity
and the power to be all pleasant things to all men whose good-will is
or may possibly be of use to his Company. The slight diversion of a
projected new line is a small price to pay for the easy passage through
Congress of the scheme of a whole important extension. A scheme which may
menace the aspirations of an existing competitor or an expectant rival
concessionnaire; either of whom may also command some “influence.”
All this, however, however true, is a digression from the question under
immediate discussion, namely, to what extent the railway has been a cause
or an effect of the spread of agriculture in the River Plate. The real
answer to this question appears to be that both the railway in these
countries and the agriculture have inter-aided and are inter-dependent on
one another in the inevitable development of a prosperity fore-ordained
by a prodigality of natural endowment.
Comparing the figures representing the cultivable area of these Republics
with those relating to the parts already under cultivation, one can see
why extensive farming is only just now giving way to intensive systems
in those districts the situation of which, in relatively close proximity
to the great port of Buenos Aires, combined with the natural fertility
of their soil, has rendered them the most valuable of all the lands in
the Argentine and Uruguayan Republics. The capital valuation of these
lands is now so high, especially in the Province of Buenos Aires, that
all means must be adopted which will enhance their annual productivity.
In other parts it is often cheaper to put more land under cultivation
than to lay out capital in improved working of that already in hand. As
facilities for transport and the population grow, so will the need for
intensive farming, in gradually increasing complexity, be more and more
felt and complied with throughout both Republics.
Contemporaneous with such advance will be the gradual development of
those products, other than wheat, linseed, maize and alfalfa (to which
the whole available agricultural energies of these countries have till
now been almost exclusively confined), for which the natural conditions
of one part or another of the two Republics are eminently favourable—such
as Cotton, Tobacco, Timber, Rice, Sugar and, perhaps, Coffee.
To quote a pamphlet recently issued by the Argentine Government:—
There are vast tracts of land available for the cultivation of
sugar cane. … With the investment of large amounts of money and
an increase in the area cultivated this industry will no doubt
in a few years be able to supply fully the demand and have a
surplus of 50 per cent over for exportation.
This statement, notwithstanding the rather quaint English of the official
translator, has already nearly been proved true, and might have become
so in actual practice several years ago. To quote again from the same
pamphlet and with a similar endorsement of its statements:—
In the extensive regions existing in Salta, Jujuy, the Chaco,
Formosa, Misiones, Corrientes and Tucumán (the last-named with
300,000 hectares admirably adapted for sowing sugar cane) the
area cultivated will gradually increase.
It should and certainly will do so at some future time. When, depends
chiefly, as do many, if not most, other agricultural developments on the
River Plate, on increase of population.
In the meantime the Argentine National Ministry of Agriculture has done
much good work towards stimulating interest in the undoubtedly great
possibilities of cotton, tobacco and rice cultivation. The cultivation
of cotton is no new idea on the River Plate. It could hardly be so when
there are large districts so evidently and admirably adapted for this
crop. The reasons why several former well-meant attempts at cotton
growing in Argentina were unsuccessful were the difficulties of obtaining
and keeping adequate labour, and a too great reliance on the bounty of
nature unaided by much human science. Selection and just appreciation
of the time for gathering were matters which did not receive sufficient
attention, and a great obstacle certainly was the difficulty of obtaining
labour in sparsely populated districts, in which the necessities of life
are procurable by all with a minimum of effort. The natives fancied they
were being exploited if they did not get commercially impossible rates
of wages for what appeared to them extremely arduous and unwontedly
continuous and careful work. Work of the satisfactory execution of which,
moreover, their primitive mentality was not really capable.
Even now River Plate cotton growing will need to be largely aided by
imported or colonist labour. Given that and due scientific management
and care, applied in the first place to the selection of the seed most
suitable to the soil and climate, there is no sort of reason why River
Plate cotton should not occupy a highly remunerative place in the world’s
markets, where cotton is always in increasingly large demand.
Many districts in the Argentine Provinces of Corrientes, Santa Fé,
Salta, Tucumán, Catamarca and La Rioja and in the National Territories
of Misiones, Formosa and the Chaco are eminently suited for cotton
cultivation.
It will be observed that Argentina alone is almost always here referred
to in connection with these secondary (as they still are) products of the
River Plate countries. The reason for this is that, while many parts of
Uruguay are equally well suited for their growth, the latter Republic is,
owing to her later continuance of civil disturbance, in a less advanced
condition than Argentina in regard to extensive development of the great
primary industries of cereal cultivation and stock breeding.
Tentative and apparently successful cultivation of better classes of
tobacco has already been commenced in the Province of Buenos Aires and
official drying sheds have been erected in each of the Provinces of
Tucumán, Salta and Corrientes and the National Territory of Misiones.
These facilities should greatly stimulate the increase of production
and improvement of quality of the leaf in those, the most climatically
appropriate, districts. Even if they should not confer on the growers the
“moral and intellectual” benefits explicitly expected from them by the
aforementioned translator.
As for rice, even if the question of export be reserved for future
consideration, there is an enormous local demand which could very well
and profitably be supplied locally.
Experimental cultivation of this crop in large and suitably watered areas
of the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios and Córdoba has proved the
ease with which it could be grown in them.
Another crop in universal demand in both Argentina and Uruguay is MATE,
or “Paraguayan Tea,” the leaf of the ILEX PARAGUAYENSIS. This shrub grows
wild in the Territory of Misiones and in the Republics of Paraguay and
Brazil; and Argentina and Uruguay import it from the latter countries
to annual values of several millions of gold dollars. The cultivation
of mate yerba only presents difficulty and risk of loss during the very
earliest periods of its growth; but study has now shown how to avoid
most, at any rate, of such risks, so that it has become an absurdity
that such an article of universal daily, indeed hourly, consumption in
both of the countries under consideration should not be grown by them
in districts so suited for the cultivation of this shrub that they have
become its home in a perfectly wild condition.
Wherever one goes in Argentina and Uruguay the MATE (as the small gourd
in which the infusion of the dust-like YERBA—“herb”—is made, and from
which it is sucked up through a special tube called the “bombilla” from
its perforated, bulb-shaped end) is omnipresent and usually in working
evidence in the hands of one or other member of the household throughout
the livelong day.
Mate is a stimulant of great sustaining and stomachic qualities; and its
use is not followed by the depression which follows excessive tea and
coffee drinking. A River Plate _peon_ will go from daybreak to midday,
riding or doing physically hard work the whole while, on nothing more
than a hunch of bread or a “biscuit” (a hard, dry maize-flour roll) and
a few small _mates_. With sugar, mate is very palatable and the taste
soon develops into a habit, but in the camp it is usually drunk “bitter,”
that is, without sugar, both from motives of economy and because it is
popularly supposed to be healthier and more sustaining when taken in that
way.
At any rate, there can be no doubt that mate growing must one day become
a very large and profitable industry in the Northern parts, where the
climate is suitably mild, of the two Republics.
The Jesuit Fathers, from whom the Territory of Misiones derives its name,
were well aware of the wholesome qualities of mate yerba, and it is
possible that the now wild growth of the shrub in that Territory owes its
existence to their cultivation.
In connection with their primarily great agricultural industries, the
wheat, maize and linseed crops which will always remain a chief pillar of
their prosperity (even if stock-raising on the present huge scale should
be reduced by the encroachment of agricultural or, as is most likely,
mixed farming; or if the Andine regions prove as rich in minerals as some
people would have us believe), the River Plate Republics must always
occupy positions of ever-increasing weight and importance on the cereal
markets of the world.
The world wants meat, but it must have bread, the true staff of human
life. Signs are not wanting of the coming of a day when the majority of
the human race will be forced into vegetarianism by the growing scarcity
of meat; but the time when wheat shall be no longer obtainable by the
multitude is so much farther off on the speculative horizon as to be a
negligible factor in any but abstract contemplation. As for live stock,
most middle-aged people to-day can retrace in their own memories the
decline of the meat exports of the United States; where a rapid growth
of population and spread of agriculture have so increased the local
consumption and diminished the supply that the States not only now eat
all their own meat, but already import from Argentina and Uruguay.
When the latter countries arrive at a similar stage of their development,
as they must do one day, from whence will they and the rest of the world
get meat supplies? Even the greatest and most terrible war the world has
ever known has not reduced the population of the globe to an extent which
will do more than very temporarily, if practically at all, affect the
question of its future food supplies.
Recently the reproductive capacities of the existing Argentine and
Uruguayan flocks and herds were brought almost to a standstill in respect
of the increase of their numerical value; chiefly on account of the
ever-increasing demands and high prices paid by the Cold Storage Export
Companies.[37] And purely economic reasons cause more and more land
each year to be put under cereal cultivation while numerically large
flocks and herds are pushed further into less accessible regions of the
Republics, on the boundaries of which vast quantities of finely bred
animals already graze.
More transport (and labour), more cereals; more cereals, less live stock:
will be the rule of these Countries’ progress, following that of the
great Northern Republic. A rule which mixed and intensive farming will
only modify in a degree quite incommensurate with the experiences of an
ever and rapidly increasing demand.
The future of both Argentina and (later on) Uruguay appears to be bound
up in their cereal production (of which wheat, maize, linseed and oats
are now the chief elements).
I say _appears_, because the Andes may yet yield marvellous mineral
treasure; good coal may yet be discovered; it and the petroleum
deposits of Comodoro Rivadavia and elsewhere may yet provide fuel for
manufacturing industry; and the River Plate Republics may yet become the
great pig-producing countries of the world, as a United States expert
once prophesied to the present writer that one day they would be. But all
these things, even if the future do hold them in store, are beyond the
perceptibly practical horizon; while the already preponderating influence
of cereal production on the destinies of Argentina is immediately
evident. Argentina practically supplies the world with linseed.
Uruguay is still in the infancy of its agriculture. It has as yet but
some two million acres of cultivated land as against some thirty million
acres of pasturage. But the world’s demands will doubtless lead it on the
same course as that imposed on the United States and Argentina; modified,
perhaps, to some extent by the more undulating nature of its lands as
compared with the flat Pampa. Again, Uruguay is much richer in running
streams than is Argentina; which latter country is but sparsely provided
with water courses, especially in dry weather.
During the course of the last decade the value of the cereals exported
from the River Plate tripled.
The great areas of cereal cultivation are the Provinces of Buenos Aires,
Santa Fé, Córdoba and Entre Rios and the National Territory of the Pampa
Central. Cereal growing in Uruguay is still chiefly confined to the
Southern Departments of that country.
Nevertheless, Uruguayan wheat has received special quotations as the
highest quality of any in the European markets; and “Montevideo wheat,”
as it is called, is much purchased by Argentine exporters to mix with
their own grain. The cultivation of alfalfa (lucerne) is also increasing
with enormous rapidity, both for home consumption and export; and
is likely to show still greater proportionate increase as mixed and
intensive farming grow in favour.
Economic necessity may also soon increase the cultivation of this
valuable plant as an alternate crop on, and restorative for, the
exhausted soil of many districts where wheat has been grown on wheat
since, one might almost say, time immemorial.
Wheat, as all the agricultural world knows, absorbs the nitrogen from
the soil on which it is grown; while alfalfa, on the other hand,
absorbs nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the soil. These two
crops are therefore, as was found out long ago in North America,
naturally complementary. And a course of alfalfa prepares ground for the
replanting of wheat in a way unequalled by the most expensive artificial
fertilizers. The time will therefore doubtless come when Argentine
farmers will plough up such of their alfalfa as may be on suitable ground
and plant wheat thereon; and, contrariwise, will plough up their wheat
and give the ground two or three years of alfalfa before putting wheat on
it again.
But this is still, to the vast majority of Argentine farmers, an absurdly
impracticable counsel of perfection. Since, does one think, he asks,
that he is going to spoil his alfalfa fields, soon after seeing them
pass through the critical stage of their tap-roots reaching water, and
break his ploughs into the bargain by cutting those thick, tough roots up
again? Not he. Alfalfa it is now and alfalfa it is going to remain; to
yield him four or even more cuttings annually. Only time and ever-growing
land values will force this kind of reasoning out of his mind. He, in the
more distant parts of the country at all events, is still in the stage
of mentality when what were good enough methods for his forefathers are
good enough for him. Nature has been kind to him. He has always reaped
much benefit from little labour or capital outlay; and this state of
things suits his nature so well that he is altogether disinclined to vary
it by following theories which do not appeal to him, be they preached
never so wisely by the ambulant Agricultural Instructors employed by the
Government to travel about the country and teach improved methods to its
rural inhabitants. The deaf ear which even the very well-to-do among
what may be called the peasant proprietors, the little-educated rural
classes, that is to say, turn to the teachings of modern science is due
to the fact that these people have long been too much spoilt by nature’s
gifts of highly fertile soil and favourable climate to perceive any very
pressing need to bestir themselves to unaccustomed expenditure of energy
or money.
Thus, as is told elsewhere in these pages, thousands of head of cattle
and sheep die each time a drought occurs simply because their owners will
not go to the trouble and expense of boring for water (seldom far from
the surface) and putting up windmills to draw it.
Education and economic pressure will in due course end this era of _dolce
far niente_; which is doomed to disappear from even the most outlying
of rural districts as surely as the traditional MAÑANA has from the
business communities of the great cities. Nowadays, a denizen of Buenos
Aires who scents a good stroke of business will pursue and capture it
with a rapidity and real vigour which would not shame a citizen of the
United States. Only, the Argentine will always conceal his haste under an
affected outburst of boisterous humour or an equally assumed dilatoriness
of manner. He will, in fact, be politer about it than the Northerner.
But he will get there all the same. So will the agriculturist,
comparatively untutored as he still often is, once he realizes his own
advantage in the matter; as circumstances eventually will force him to do.
Just now the River Plate countries are faced with an exceptionally acute
phase of the problem of their increased agricultural expansion; the
governing factor of that problem, indeed the whole cause of it, being
their lack of adequate rural population.
To appreciate this inadequacy one must realize that the Argentine
Republic alone is only a very little smaller than Germany,
Austro-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden,
Portugal and Switzerland put together; while her population is only some
7,500,000. Of this over a million is in the city of Buenos Aires; and the
other cities such as Rosario, Bahia Blanca and the Provincial capitals
account for another.
Even were the whole 7,500,000 equally spread over the Republic, we
should only get an average of 6·5 per square mile, as against some 193
per square mile as the average of the other countries named above for
comparison of area. Uruguay has a considerably larger population (and,
it may be added, railway mileage), to the square mile than Argentina;
but even then it has only some 1,200,000 inhabitants, or about half the
number possessed by the Province of Buenos Aires.
Unless this state of things be remedied, it would appear as if the
hitherto rapid advance of both agriculture and stock-breeding in these
countries must soon reach a point beyond which they can no further go
for want of hands to sow, reap and carry crops and rear and tend cattle
and sheep! This situation is not a perfectly new one in modern economic
history; but it may safely be called new in degree when it is found in
countries where all other natural conditions are normally so entirely
favourable to uninterrupted rural production. In countries not (as yet at
all events) directly involved in Armageddon; and while so much of the
rest of the world urgently needs every grain of wheat and every ounce of
meat they can possibly send out.
Great irrigation works now in progress will open up further vast and
almost unprecedentedly fertile areas for cultivation; which areas railway
lines are practically ready and waiting to serve with transport and for
which new ports are in course of construction while existing ones are
being enlarged and improved. New agricultural laws have been passed to
meet difficulties which have arisen with already increased production and
land values; everything in fact has been done and is being done to second
and enhance nature’s gifts.
But the question, “Where are the human beings necessary to an
advantageous result of and to benefit by all these preparations?” still
remains unanswered; except by the apparently very stubborn fact that they
have not yet appeared on the River Plate and show no signs of doing so.
At the present moment the outlook from this state of things reveals only
a tangled problem, in view of the awful wastage of human life now going
on in Europe. But for its occurrence and continuance before the war the
Governments of Argentina and Uruguay are almost wholly to blame, and
that of the former country in much the greater degree. This because,
while Uruguay may be said to have only just emerged from a long period of
internal political disturbance which necessarily absorbed all the time
and energies of her statesmen, Argentine politics long ago reached their
destined haven of sunlit, calm waters.
Argentina _has_ spent much trouble and money in propaganda; in all
sorts of publications giving true and therefore favourable statistics
of her ever-increasing rural industries, trade and prosperity. But—and
this cannot be insisted on too often for her own good and for Uruguay’s
example—she has never even seemed to trouble herself about suitable
people who might be attracted by the perusal of her statistics and
pamphlets to wish to know more of her and of their exact individual
prospects did they decide to set sail for her shores.
Like so many of the good laws and schemes in which this country abounds,
everything concerning prospective colonists is excellently arranged and
set down on paper; but nothing is yet in really practical working order
for the reception and assignment of land to the real colonist, the man
most needed in new countries, bringing with him a small capital which he
wishes to invest in a holding which will be the future home of himself
and his family.
It seems a hard saying, but I hold it truth that the only provision yet
made has been, and is, for the reception and despatch upcountry of the
very poorest class of immigrants; glad to get a job at manual labour of
any kind, and therefore at the mercy of the landowners who still really
govern this pretendedly ultra-democratic Republic.
It is—whether accidentally or of set purpose is needless to discuss
here—in point of fact through the influence of landed proprietors, and
through their influence alone, that the elaboration and putting into
practice of existing colonization schemes and laws lie fallow; while
poor immigrants, by a seemingly cynical courtesy, called “Colonists,”
are granted the privilege of a share in any immediate profits to be
derived from breaking up virgin soil from which they will be turned off
practically as soon as it begins to yield—to commence a similar operation
elsewhere if they care to—under conditions which leave them little choice.
Congress and the National Provincial Governments are to blame for this,
really suicidal, scandal; resulting from a condition of things so patent
that the Italian labourers who come for the harvest return back home
again to an existence of probably considerable hardship in Italy, in
preference to remaining as “Colonists” under the blue and white banner of
Liberty.
The root of all this is that the Argentine _cannot_ bring himself to
part with the ownership in land, and the fact of his having done so in
the past still rankles bitterly in his mind; forgetful of the fact that
then that was the only way to interest foreign capital in the development
of his country.
The conclusion is that, if he will not and does not give land to
colonists, he will find that his prosperity has reached sticking point
for want of labour to advance it any further.
That is to say, the agricultural production of Argentina has almost,
if not quite, reached the limits of the power of the Republic’s seven
million inhabitants.
“The case for the Colonist” has been put with such admirable accuracy by
Mr. Herbert Gibson, in a recent pamphlet by him called _The Land we Live
on_, that the present writer has been unable to resist the temptation
to cite some passages from it at length. A temptation enhanced by Mr.
Gibson’s faculty for hitting exactly the right nails on the head coupled
with his command of a vividly virile style.
Mr. Gibson is a member of a family of very large landowners in Argentina;
a man of exceptionally high moral and intellectual qualities, and an
accepted and respected authority on all matters concerning Argentine
rural industry; the best interests of which he has done much to advance,
often at his own considerable pecuniary cost.
A born Argentine, he can lay bare to the public eye the weaknesses and
faults of the agricultural systems of the Republic in a way and to an
extent impossible to a foreigner without a strong likelihood of the
latter doing much more harm than good to the cause of reform by what
would probably be deemed by Argentines a gratuitously offensive advocacy.
It should rather befall the man who cries to the shoeblacks and
hotel waiters of the city, than to us who are of the land, to
plead the cause of the colonist. But let us state his case for
him.
An examination of the meteorological conditions, the
constitution of the soil, the economy of inland collection,
and the average proximity of the radial point of export to
the site of production has usually convinced the intelligent
traveller, very especially if his intelligence is engaged in
ocean or land transport, that the Argentine is the garden of
the world.
A closer examination of the abruptness of the thermographical
curves and their relation to soil foods and the growth and
harvest of its products; the difficulty of collecting from
units of large area, and at the precise moment of their maximum
yield and maturity, the seeds of annuals; the yet unbridged
gulf between the field of production and the main channels of
its collection;—might well lead the intelligent traveller to a
contrary conclusion. When he ceased to generalize he would find
the lot of the agriculturist was not as easy as it looked.
Burmeister no doubt overstated the case if he said that wheat
would never prosper in the Pampa soil. If he said that wheat
cultivation would not prosper in the Pampa except under
skilled husbandry we could find it easy, after twenty years’
experience, to agree with him.
Meantime the best has been done to make it unsuccessful. The
agriculturist, if we are to call him one, is let loose on a
five hundred acre pitch of the prairie. In so many cases that
one is entitled to generalize, he set out on borrowed land with
borrowed implements to scratch the soil for three, four or five
years and sow wheat on it.
If he is asked whether he sows winter or spring wheat he does
not know. If he is asked how many tons of straw he harvests, he
neither knows nor cares. If he is asked what calcium carbonate
and nitrate are, he thinks they are sheep dips, but is not
quite sure. If he is questioned on rotation, he waves his hand
to the rolling Russian thistle that gathers like a snowdrift
against every obstacle.
His house is, at best, an enlarged sardine tin. He has neither
barn, byre nor pigsty. He has no enclosures for cattle, sheep
or poultry. He has no garden. He has not a single tree to
shelter him from the sun. With land suited for every form of
live stock and field farming he is enslaved to the deadly
monotony of wheat growing.
There may be countries with a soil and climate such that
white straw crops can be grown for a large number of years
in succession without exhausting the land or setting up soil
sickness. We know it is done at experimental farms such as
Rothamsted. But we know too that the efficiency of soil culture
in pursuit of these experiments is beyond the practical
ability of the colonist; nor is the economy of the farm an item
that is taken into consideration. We know, because we have
witnessed it, that in this country after the colonist’s term of
four or five years, during which he has collected an average
crop of eight bushels per acre, is ended, what remains is a
five hundred acre field of weeds.
We can grow weeds. Whatever other merits may be denied to us
we have achieved the production of a garden of weeds without
equal in the world. Some of them are good plants for animal
food, but out of place, for the colonist has not the means to
make use of them for that purpose. Others are weeds of the
most useless and noxious description. If it be true that the
scabby Argentine sheep has been a source of wealth to European
chemical manufacturers, the day must surely come when still
greater fortunes will be made out of weed-spraying nostrums.
Until this agricultural arab whom we call a colonist is
replaced by an occupant with permanent or sufficiently long
fixity of tenure; until he has adequate barns, byres, sties,
water sweet and cheap, a garden and a homestead; and until he
is possessed of cattle, sheep, swine and poultry he will remain
as economically lean and weak as the muzzled ox. We have talked
much of rural banks to enable him to borrow more money; but we
have not begun to put into practice the rural economy that will
be followed by the rural bank as sure as summer follows spring.
When the agriculturist profits, instead of loses, on the year’s
overturn, he will build up the bank on his own thrift.
Within the economy of soil cultivation there is room for two
alternatives only. Either the landowner must himself farm his
land, or he must lease it with sufficient fixity of tenure and
farming equipment to secure to his tenant the prospect of being
able to pay a fair rent.
Agriculture in this country has very largely failed through
an attempt to drive a middle course between these two
alternatives. The landowner, usually one possessing a large
area and hitherto a pastoralist, has seen, or has thought
he saw, a larger profit to be earned by turning his soil to
agriculture. Instead of putting it to the test by turning
agriculturist, he has paid his intelligence the sorry
compliment of believing that an illiterate Italian, spewed up
on our shores may be a year since, could earn this large profit
if he were let loose upon the prairie without further capital
or assistance than the right to plough the soil, in exchange
for a share of the harvest, to be delivered threshed and bagged
to his landlord.
The benefits the landlord has derived from this, in a great
majority of cases, have been to collect a smaller rent than
he could have earned if he had depastured or farmed the land
himself; and to receive back at the end of three or four
years his pasture land converted into a garden of weeds. The
process is termed “improving the land by the plough.” Not long
since properties in the market were advertised as especially
attractive if they were “all under agriculture.”
Having sowed the wind the landlord is reaping the whirlwind.
He has not only failed to profit by agriculture, but he has
pledged the land and squandered the proceeds. The matter
is not that such silly methods of rack-renting, bonanza
farming, land gutting and money lending have wrought their own
confusion. It is the loss to the industrial community, to the
rural population, and to the national thrift that lays bare
the defects of the system. These are the fruits. We have to
look into the ordering of our agricultural industry, not as
determined by a “good year” or “bad year,” a “dry” or “wet”
year, but by such a readjustment of our rural economy that the
soil shall be no longer cultivated at a loss. It is necessary
to unmuzzle the ox. Without the aid of domestic live stock the
colonist can neither profit from the by-products and fallow of
the land, nor can he restore to the soil the factors necessary
to yield crops that are of themselves profitable.
Neither have we been careful to conserve and stimulate the
settlement of a truly agricultural population on the land. We
have exported the cult of sterility from the old world to the
new. We have measured in this new world a field of production,
not for the labourers, but for their European mandatories. It
was said in the days of the Spanish dominion that America was
the “factoria” of the mother country. She has seemingly not yet
ceased to be regarded as a “factoria.”
We take pride that we export so much and need so little. We
call it a favourable “balance of trade.” We spread abroad
pamphlets and graphic charts and dreary columns of ciphers
to show how successfully we have gutted the land we live on
to fill alien mouths. We display pictures of train loads of
labour-saving machinery, glorying in the fact that one man
aided by Pittsburg steel and Cardiff coal can fend off twenty
families from a thousand acres, and garner the yield for the
contentment of fat-handed brokers eating lobsters in a distant
city.
Had the matter been understood rightly by the “estanciero” of
a generation or two ago, nay, even by this present generation,
he would have put a premium on fecundity. His business was to
encourage population; but while he drowsed in siesta hour over
the newspaper proclaiming the arrival of alien immigration and
smiling unctuously at the intelligence, he condemned his own
men to celibacy, unwilling to spend the price of five bullocks
on a mud hut to cradle the generation on his own land of a race
of lusty yeomen. He took pride in the number of calves and
lambs born on his estate. It would have beseemed him better to
take pride in the number of _babies_ born there.
Such a consummation would be vastly upsetting to Malthusian
economists who view with jealousy the peopling of new fields
of production. They would have us believe that it is only here
by the overflowing of the Nile, and there by the discovery of
the New World, that the human race has been saved from famine.
If we can no longer send 350,000 tons of meat and five million
tons of cereals to the Old World our usefulness has passed away
and our mission ended.
Fiddlesticks! Had the Pampas of South America, the pasture
lands of Australia, and the wheat fields of Canada remained
virgin there would have been ere now thousands of acres in
Great Britain under glass and harnessing the solar spectrum
and the electric currents of air to manufacture food for
the people. Feminists, instead of rending other people’s
garments to bewail the departure of their mankind, would be
conjuring out of four-inch potsherds fruit rich and rare for
the household. If among the social economists of the present
generation there is a disposition to revert to the Malthusian
creed; in this spacious country, and as far as the vegetative
population is concerned, there is no need to raise the voice of
alarm. National progress and thrift will be soonest achieved
by the increase of the national population; and, without
closing the doors to useful alien immigration, the welfare of
the community should be dependent rather upon the increase
of the family than upon the overflow population from other
lands. … Under our present system of agriculture the domestic
requirements of the country are sacrificed to foreign demand.
We measure our progress by our export trade of raw produce.
When we speak of agriculture what we really mean is the
production of maize, wheat and linseed for shipment abroad.
It is to this end that so much has been heard of warrants,
elevators and other devices to enable the farmer to dispose of
his crop. They are in some degree devices for his own security;
but they are in a much greater degree devices to secure for the
export of cereals a more regular flow from the sources that
supply it. The time is no doubt distant when this country shall
have a population sufficient to consume the raw produce of its
soil; but by turning our eyes constantly to its export trade
as the sole source of its production we have not only limited
the lines of our agricultural production, but we have neglected
complementary lines that would have increased that export trade
by maintaining soil values.
The cereal that gives the best return from a large area of our
Pampa soil and climate is barley. Being shallow-rooted our
indifferent tilth suffices for its seed bed; and being short
lived it can be sown late and harvested early, reducing the
risks from frost and drought. The “chacarero” who produces 8
fanegas of wheat could produce on averages from the same soil
and with no better husbandry 18 fanegas of barley per hectare.
In food equivalents that is equal to 280 kilogrammes of pork.
The “chacarero” does not grow barley for the same reason that
he neglects or ignores almost every branch of agriculture
except wheat, maize and linseed. For the same reason that he
neglects rotation, fallow and weeds; vegetables and small
fruits; live-stock breeding and feeding; poultry, dairy,
and bee-hiving, tree planting; and the greatest of all
cultures—home culture. He has no fixity of tenure. There is no
other reason.
It is said of the Argentine “chacarero” that he is ignorant and
incapable of good husbandry. When he first began, of course, he
was ignorant. The gold medallist from an Agricultural College
is ignorant when he begins to practise farming. Though the
farmer’s craft engages the whole cyclopædia of science, and
there is no limit to the knowledge it demands, its practice
is essentially one of observation and local experience. To
those the “chacarero” comes as well equipped as another. His
ignorance is but the reflection of his environment.
It is also said of him that he is greedy, and undertakes a
larger area than he can cultivate. Again, his greed is but the
reflection of the landowner’s. He is called to the land on
terms that exclude all fixity of tenure, maintenance of soil
values, small farming, rotation or live-stock values; terms
that merely bind him to plough as best he can a given area, to
seed it in cereals that will enable his landlord to collect
without inconvenience his rent in kind, delivered “dry, sound
and bagged” at the foot of the threshing mill; to continue this
process for three or more years; and at the end of his term to
go to the devil if his unsuccess has not already landed him in
that quarter.
In a scheme of agriculture that was to take no heed of the
permanent thrift of the land and the man who tilled it we
have failed; as we deserved to fail, most miserably. We have
built upon this most uncertain apex as a base, an inverted
pyramid by which ocean and land carriers, merchants, brokers,
speculators, and every branch of parasite commerce were to
wax lustily. We may devise as we will rural credits, schools
of agriculture, prophets of agrarian science, bellowing from
the tail-end of peripatetic railway coaches, grants of seed,
warrants, elevators, labour-saving machinery, and every other
panacea to nurse the sick field labourer. Until we give him
fixity of tenure he will continue to be a sick man. There has
been no other solution to agricultural problems of the past.
There can be no other solution. Our present rural population,
concentrated on less than the present area they are engaged in
cultivating, with continuity of usufruct or compensation for
improvements secured to them, would produce a larger cereal
harvest than they now do, and add to the wealth of our animal
produce, and still more to the accumulation of our national
thrift.
In Uruguay progress is still possible to the existing population; since
the consequences of the civil disturbances which until recently paralysed
the production of this country, by the constant commandeering of men,
horses and supplies by one or other of the combatant parties, have not
yet been overcome by the existing settlers who, therefore, still have
work ready to their hands. Nevertheless, for Uruguay also it is a case
of the more the merrier; more available labour, more rapidly increased
agricultural output. Once means are found for an appreciable and constant
increase of the population of these countries, immediate results of such
increase may be expected not only from their production of Cereals,
Live Stock and the “Secondary” products already enumerated, but also
from coffee, chicory, tea, arrowroot, sugar-beet, sweet sorghum, hops,
cinnamon, vanilla and very many others, for the cultivation of all of
which favourable conditions are to be found in one or other of the
various climates found between the many degrees of latitude traversed by
the length of Argentina and the various altitudes between the Argentine
Andine frontier line and the sea.
At the same time much could be done for their own comfort and prosperity
by farmers, in the ample time which their chief occupations necessarily
leave them, by the cultivation of some of these secondary products for
their and their neighbours’ use. At present their almost unaccountable
neglect to do so justifies an _obiter dictum_ of the great Argentine
statistician, Dr. Francisco Latzina, in a Monograph by him attached to
the last Argentine agricultural Census.
“It seems to me,” Dr. Latzina says, “that the Ministry of Agriculture
ought to take a decided initiative in encouraging horticulture which, as
we see, does not supply the National demand. To add to the climax, even
eggs are imported in this year of grace. If this goes on, the day will
come, perhaps, when bread and milk shall be imported in order to be able
to export all the wheat, flour and butter produced in the country.” (By
“horticulture” Dr. Latzina means, in this connection, the produce of the
Kitchen garden.)
It is a fact that, as he says elsewhere in the same Monograph, garlic and
onions, peas and beans figure among the imports of a country possessing
millions of acres of fertile land! While the farmer frequently buys his
potatoes at the Store. This neglect on his part of everything which does
not savour of export is one of the factors of dear living in Argentina.
Uruguay is on a somewhat different footing in this regard, her rural
population having, as has already been indicated, still about as much as
it can do in making good the ravages of past Revolutions.
Still Uruguay sends vegetables to Buenos Aires, and Uruguayan housewives
complain of the high prices of Kitchen stuff which, consequently, now
rule in the Montevidean markets.
A very large proportion indeed of the whole of the Republic of Uruguay
may be considered as cultivable. In Argentina the question of how much of
the whole area of that country may be so considered is yet without exact
solution.
In this regard therefore it may be well again to quote Dr. Latzina, who
says:—[38]
It is difficult to determine even approximately the cultivable
area of Argentina, because hitherto, and yet for some time to
come, the extent covered by mountains, deserts, salt marshes,
sand-hills, swamps, moors and lagoons, and the Patagonian
table-lands, which are almost entirely uncultivable—not so much
so on account of the poor soil, but on account of the want
of water and the boisterous and continuous winds which blow
incessantly day and night in those parts. A calculation such
as I wish to make can only be roughly made, and I may say that
I doubt if the cultivatable area of Argentina be greater than
half its total area—in round numbers, 150,000,000 hectares.
Dr. Latzina then suggests the reservation of two-thirds of that area for
stock-breeding, leaving only 50,000,000 hectares for pure agriculture.
However, hardly one-half of this last-mentioned area is as yet under
cultivation; leaving plenty of room for the present for the extension of
agriculture.
This fact of very large areas within the Territory of the Argentine
Republic being, chiefly for climatic reasons (e.g. the more southern and
the mountainous parts of Patagonia), unfit for either cultivation or
pasturage, except in the latter regard for goats and perhaps the very
roughest kinds of sheep, should not be lost sight of when comparing
Argentina with Uruguayan statistics. One eminent Uruguayan Agricultural
Authority, for instance, has triumphantly referred (in, it must be
considered, a more patriotic than strictly scientific spirit) to the
fact, as stated by him, that the value of the Exports of Uruguay, per
square mile of that Republic’s territory, are double those, similarly
reckoned, of Argentina. Even accepting his figures as correct, which
Argentine statisticians do not, the deduction he obviously suggests is
certainly based on fallacious reasoning; indeed, the very comparison
itself is misleading.
Uruguay is a small, compact country not two-thirds the size of the
Province of Buenos Aires, containing practically no exclusively
mountainous or arid or otherwise desert large areas and none of the
obstacles, of distance, or other kinds, encountered by transport in
Argentina.
Truly some statistics suggest that their compilers believe that “Figures
can be made to prove anything.”
In connection with Agriculture, locusts still unfortunately succeed
in not letting themselves be forgotten. From time to time vast swarms
of these rapacious insects appear, covering and darkening the sky for
leagues. They come from their breeding centres, undoubtedly somewhere in
the huge virgin tracts in the western tropical regions of Brazil. Many
well-meaning persons have counselled measures for their extermination
there. A counsel of perfection, alas! Those who have preached have never
been even on the frontiers of the thousands of square leagues of tropical
forest and undergrowth which yet have scarcely ever heard the voice of
man. To dream of exterminating locusts there is as if one proposed to
empty a running stream with a bucket. An impossibility.
All that can be done is to attack and destroy the swarms when they have
arrived. For this purpose special and, it should at once be said, very
successful organization have been brought into existence by the Argentine
National Government with the loyal concurrence and aid of the Provincial
Governments and by the Uruguayan Government.
At first the DEFENSA AGRICOLA, as this organization is called,
encountered a good deal of passive resistance from rural landowners
who, doubting its efficacy and seeing in it or affecting to see in it,
rather a means of affording remunerative jobs for Government hangers-on,
declared that its officials who pervaded the country requisitioning
labour and supplies were a worse nuisance than the locusts themselves.
The Defensa Agricola continued its work, however, unheeding of such
protests; and now, for some time past, may be said to have fully
justified its existence and its methods by results in both countries.
It has its centres of observation, like any other force prepared to repel
invasion, and, on the coming of a swarm being signalled, every human
being in its course is called upon to aid in the defence.
The plan of this defence consists, briefly, in driving and sweeping the
insects into trenches backed with long lines of sheets of corrugated
iron, placed together end to end. Once gathered into these trenches the
locusts are burned; and by the untiring continuance of this process they
are gradually destroyed before much damage (very small indeed compared
with the ravages of pre-Defensa Agricola days) has been done.
The sweeping-up process can be usefully employed for the extermination of
settled swarms otherwise its members will quickly proceed to deposit eggs
which later would hatch into young “hoppers” born with infinitely more
voracious appetites than even their parents had.[39]
Locusts, as has been seen, come from the North and in the normal course
of their nature would disappear again in that direction, leaving bare
fields and their hungry young behind them in memory of their visit. Still
in recent years, before the full development of the Defensa Agricola, it
appeared that locusts had actually become acclimatized in some regions of
both Republics, notably in the Southern part of the Province of Buenos
Aires and in the Territory of the Rio Negro, and therefore did not return
North but managed to survive frost.
This last menace may now, however, be considered as past.
The Defensa Agricola does not only devote its attention to locusts. It
possesses a highly trained scientific staff which combats the invasions
of all the other insect pests which from time to time threaten the crops,
vines or fruit and other trees and useful vegetation. It issues clear
instructions as to the treatment to be applied in each case and punishes
noncompliance with its orders by fines which it is empowered to inflict.
Agriculture has much for which to thank this Institution in respect of
protection against pests; the danger from which was increasing with the
importation of vines and fruit trees from other countries.
The Argentine organization is under the direct control of the Ministry
of Agriculture[40]; an indefatigable Government Department the immensely
wide sphere of whose work is ever increasing; Division being added to
Division as need arises from the ever-increasing number of the branches
of National Industry, whether agricultural or not. For instance, it
is only quite lately that anything like complete official statistics
have been obtainable in relation to internal manufactures. The country
regarded itself, as it was regarded abroad, as purely agricultural in the
broad sense including Live Stock production. Now these statistics are
regularly issued by the “Division of Commerce and Industry” so admirably
directed and watched over by Señor Ricardo Pillado; a veteran the list of
whose valuable economic services to the State dates from the financial
renaissance which followed the disastrous year 1891; in which renaissance
he played a very leading part.
Señor Pillado was largely instrumental in the devising and carrying
into execution of the drastic financial remedies rendered necessary by
the culminating abuses of the Juarez Celman regime; and it is to his
practical and patriotic genius that the Argentine statistical diagrams
and many other statistics of that country reproduced in this book owe
their existence and annual reappearances in the simple and striking forms
which is their very salient feature.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARGENTINE AGRICULTURE, 1896-1913
CULTIVATED AREAS IN HECTARES[41]
------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------------+----------
Years.| Wheat. | Linseed.| Maize. | Lucerne.| Other | Total.
| | | | |cultivations.|
------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------------+----------
1896 |2,500,000| 360,000|1,400,000| 800,000| 510,000 | 5,570,000
1897 |2,600,000| 350,000|1,000,000| 900,000| 522,000 | 5,372,000
1898 |3,200,000| 332,788| 850,000|1,067,983| 533,000 | 5,983,771
1899 |3,250,000| 355,329|1,009,000|1,268,088| 545,000 | 6,427,417
1900 |3,379,749| 607,352|1,255,346|1,511,601| 557,000 | 7,311,048
1901 |3,296,066| 782,880|1,405,796|1,631,733| 567,000 | 7,638,475
1902 |3,695,343|1,307,196|1,801,644|1,730,163| 580,270 | 9,114,616
1903 |4,320,000|1,487,000|2,100,000|2,172,511| 606,000 |10,685,511
1904 |4,903,124|1,082,890|2,287,040|2,503,384| 648,000 |11,424,438
1905 |5,675,293|1,022,782|2,717,300|2,983,643| 682,443 |13,081,461
1906 |5,692,268|1,020,715|2,851,300|3,537,211| 796,099 |13,897,593
1907 |5,759,987|1,391,467|2,719,260|3,612,000| 1,129,078 |14,612,792
1908 |6,063,100|1,534,300|2,973,900|3,687,200| 1,572,063 |15,830,563
1909 |5,836,500|1,455,600|3,005,000|4,706,530| 3,772,042 |18,775,672
1910 |6,253,180|1,503,820|3,215,350|5,400,580| 3,994,152 |20,367,082
1911 |5,897,000|1,630,000|3,422,000|5,630,100| 4,304,589 |21,883,689
1912 |6,918,450|1,733,330|3,830,000|5,955,000| 4,550,946 |22,987,726
1913 |6,573,540|1,779,350|4,152,000|6,690,100| 4,896,736 |24,091,726
------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-------------+-----------
EXPORTS OF PRINCIPAL ARGENTINE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS, 1875-1913
--------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-------------
Years. | Oats. | Linseed. | Maize. | Hay. | Wheat.
| $ gold. | $ gold. | $ gold. | $ gold. | $ gold.
--------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-------------
1875 | — | — | 3,714 | 107,517 | —
1876 | — | — | 136,986 | 105,496 | 997
1877 | — | — | 166,889 | 219,570 | 7,335
1878 | — | 7,107 | 290,088 | 130,648 | 105,350
1879 | — | 20,338 | 501,857 | 105,625 | 1,328,692
1880 | — | 95,485 | 288,275 | 184,695 | 46,747
1881 | — | 604,387 | 541,058 | 37,283 | 11,111
1882 | — | 1,650,043 | 2,141,135 | 132,683 | 66,864
1883 | — | 1,153,087 | 372,804 | 137,531 | 2,430,184
1884 | — | 1,699,582 | 2,274,201 | 142,153 | 4,339,970
1885 | — | 3,471,305 | 3,957,191 | 165,587 | 3,139,736
1886 | — | 1,825,199 | 4,653,421 | 149,414 | 1,510,378
1887 | — | 4,066,409 | 7,236,886 | 148,506 | 9,514,635
1888 | — | 2,131,813 | 5,444,464 | 238,308 | 8,248,614
1889 | — | 1,607,162 | 12,977,721 | 572,153 | 1,596,446
1890 | — | 1,228,825 | 14,145,639 | 198,866 | 9,836,824
1891 | — | 732,798 | 1,384,088 | 420,058 | 23,733,312
1892 | — | 2,546,220 | 8,561,231 | 374,428 | 14,696,089
1893 | 19,504 | 2,887,975 | 1,578,545 | 638,640 | 23,459,926
1894 | 29,489 | 3,583,459 | 1,046,007 | 456,386 | 27,118,142
1895 | 228,875 | 8,287,112 | 10,193,338 | 432,657 | 19,471,652
1896 | 38,389 | 6,856,106 | 15,994,556 | 899,781 | 12,830,027
1897 | 18,110 | 4,996,288 | 5,478,718 | 933,716 | 3,470,351
1898 | 20,929 | 5,420,031 | 9,274,197 | 1,246,849 | 22,368,900
1899 | 88,493 | 7,402,488 | 13,042,983 | 1,158,825 | 38,078,343
1900 | 127,249 | 10,674,011 | 11,933,747 | 1,282,620 | 48,627,653
1901 | 47,139 | 16,513,263 | 18,887,397 | 961,576 | 26,240,733
1902 | 503,465 | 17,840,952 | 22,994,060 | 1,004,133 | 18,584,894
1903 | 514,267 | 21,239,894 | 33,147,249 | 1,033,244 | 41,323,099
1904 | 541,973 | 28,359,923 | 44,391,196 | 616,287 | 66,947,891
1905 | 334,349 | 26,233,851 | 46,536,402 | 801,219 | 85,883,141
1906 | 1,117,184 | 25,915,861 | 53,365,687 | 1,169,089 | 66,561,181
1907 | 3,593,397 | 36,081,221 | 29,653,979 | 769,505 | 82,727,747
1908 | 9,697,716 | 49,004,704 | 41,556,865 | 599,937 | 128,842,610
1909 |10,115,161 | 43,713,358 | 58,374,430 | 580,853 | 106,038,940
1910 | 8,142,575 | 44,604,395 | 60,260,804 | 478,228 | 72,202,260
1911 |11,666,291 | 33,579,990 | 2,766,597 | 679,425 | 80,675,066
1912 |21,858,517 | 34,213,565 |108,908,193 | 307,112 | 97,835,174
1913 |20,447,278 | 49,910,201 |112,292,394 | 312,590 | 102,631,143
--------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-------------
Totals |89,150,350 |500,158,408 |766,754,992 |19,933,193 |1,252,532,157
--------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-------------
£ |17,688,561 | 99,237,780 |152,133,927 | 3,955,000 | 248,518,285
--------+-----------+------------+------------+-----------+-------------
--------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------------
| | | QUEBRACHO. |
|Wheat Flour.| Bran. +-----------+-----------+ Totals.
Years. | $ gold. | $ gold | Extract. | Logs. | $ gold.
| | | $ gold. | $ gold. |
--------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------------
1875 | 1,188 | 2,138 | — | — | 114,557
1876 | 33,069 | 4,928 | — | — | 281,476
1877 | 20,419 | — | — | — | 414,213
1878 | 300,282 | 63,802 | — | — | 897,277
1879 | 160,304 | 58,070 | — | — | 2,174,886
1880 | 100,695 | 44,353 | — | 10,121 | 770,371
1881 | 105,832 | 37,439 | — | 11,016 | 1,348,126
1882 | 39,188 | 28,320 | — | — | 4,058,233
1883 | 343,099 | 43,647 | — | — | 4,480,352
1884 | 261,406 | 58,948 | — | — | 8,776,260
1885 | 521,295 | 87,482 | — | — | 11,342,596
1886 | 362,807 | 40,105 | — | — | 8,541,324
1887 | 378,076 | 62,921 | — | 5,095 | 21,412,528
1888 | 639,244 | 33,132 | — | 172,700 | 16,908,275
1889 | 510,853 | 69,082 | — | 485,357 | 17,818,774
1890 | 600,894 | 28,337 | — | 826,508 | 26,865,893
1891 | 361,230 | 110,929 | — | 1,245,628 | 27,988,043
1892 | 1,024,041 | 290,849 | — | 617,811 | 28,110,669
1893 | 1,318,590 | 243,403 | — | 1,265,942 | 31,412,525
1894 | 1,019,931 | 211,551 | — | 962,687 | 34,427,652
1895 | 1,882,366 | 249,830 | 40,167 | 1,778,814 | 42,564,811
1896 | 1,949,556 | 708,738 | 68,419 | 832,718 | 40,178,290
1897 | 2,411,719 | 747,551 | 120,474 | 1,356,744 | 19,533,671
1898 | 1,592,495 | 767,972 | 119,224 | 1,882,604 | 42,693,201
1899 | 1,938,281 | 922,916 | 317,156 | 1,593,761 | 64,543,246
1900 | 1,718,085 | 1,163,120 | 595,701 | 2,398,362 | 78,520,548
1901 | 2,711,298 | 1,454,428 | 431,004 | 1,989,195 | 69,236,033
1902 | 1,603,568 | 1,726,562 | 909,904 | 2,477,233 | 67,644,771
1903 | 3,128,525 | 1,894,693 | 1,204,049 | 2,002,010 | 105,487,030
1904 | 4,757,248 | 2,409,250 | 2,011,130 | 2,527,227 | 152,562,125
1905 | 5,373,699 | 3,051,155 | 2,427,772 | 4,275,164 | 174,916,752
1906 | 4,477,964 | 3,249,888 | 2,162,949 | 3,425,101 | 161,444,904
1907 | 4,696,934 | 4,552,332 | 1,811,878 | 3,132,493 | 167,019,486
1908 | 5,133,335 | 4,698,879 | 2,994,922 | 2,962,184 | 245,491,152
1909 | 5,594,852 | 4,483,317 | 4,226,333 | 4,380,033 | 237,507,277
1910 | 4,947,137 | 4,521,783 | 4,429,357 | 5,604,430 | 205,190,969
1911 | 4,739,421 | 4,612,292 | 4,980,027 | 6,897,435 | 150,596,544
1912 | 6,926,280 | 5,940,579 | 4,836,860 | 3,568,557 | 284,394,837
1913 | 7,224,029 | 4,740,184 | 4,974,686 | 4,988,349 | 307,520,854
--------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------------
Totals | 80,909,235 |53,414,905 |38,662,012 |63,675,279 |2,865,190,531
--------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------------
£ | 16,053,419 |10,598,195 | 7,671,034 |12,633,983 | 568,490,184
--------+------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------------
[Illustration: DEVELOPMENT OF ARGENTINE AGRICULTURE]
The total value of the Agricultural Exports during 1914 was some
$200,000,000 (gold), but recovery was made in 1915 to some $320,000,000
(gold) during the latter year.
The Argentine harvests of 1915-16 are estimated in round figures at:
Wheat 5,500,000 tons
Linseed 1,300,000 ”
Oats 1,360,000 ”
The Maize crop is as yet unascertained at the time of writing.
The corresponding Uruguayan figures are as yet unobtainable. The
Statistical Department of this Republic was reorganized in 1912, but, no
doubt, has had to cope with enormous arrears. Still it is regrettable
that authoritative statistics regarding this country are difficult, when
not impossible, to obtain.
In 1913 Uruguay exported agricultural products of the value of
$(Uruguayan) 1,857,000. 400,000 hectares in Uruguay were under wheat, a
slightly less area under maize; the cultivation of oats was increasing
rapidly, and that of barley slowly.
As has already been mentioned, the present (1915-16) harvests are
reported as generally splendid in both countries though labour presents
a serious problem, as do freights and scarcity of ships for export. Such
complications have been prevalent and are likely to prevail throughout
the war.
THE SOIL
Naturally, the soil of such a vast area as that covered by the two
Republics of Argentina and Uruguay is varied to an extent with which a
book like the present cannot attempt to deal adequately. The greatest
feature is, however, the celebrated Pampean formation which obtains
over the whole of the Province of Buenos Aires, the greater parts of
the Provinces of Santa Fé, Córdoba, San Luis and Mendoza, the National
Territory of the Pampa Central, the Republic of Uruguay, and extends
southwards beyond the Argentine Rio Negro. In many places on this
formation there are also later alluvial deposits.
The lightest soils, those with the smallest proportion of clay and
consequently the loosest, are found in the West, near the Andes.
Starting from the most sandy western region, the soil grows more and
more compact towards the east, along the River Paraná, the South of
the Province of Santa Fé and most of the Republic of Uruguay, the
Northern part of the Province of Buenos Aires (where rather heavy soils
predominate); while in the South and South-West, that is to say the
southern portion of the Province of Córdoba, the National Territory of
the Pampa Central and the central and southern part of the Province of
Buenos Aires, the soil is of lighter, though firmer consistency, than
that of the western part.
The generally salient qualities of the Pampean soil are richness in
humus, deficiency in lime and good proportions of nitrogen and phosphoric
acid. A characteristic feature of the subsoil is stratified layers of
more or less calcareous concretions known as TOSCA (tufa or tophos
stone). This layer is sometimes deep down; but in the southern region of
the Province of Buenos Aires, beginning at Tandíl and Azul, it reaches
nearly to the surface, so as to appear immediately under the soil, thus
forming a waterproof subsoil impenetrable by roots.
The present writer has seen wheat growing on less than an inch of soil
above the tosca; the roots spreading out at right angles to the stalks.
These layers of tosca or, in other parts, clay, are of great importance
for holding water; seldom at any great distance from the surface.
On low and level plains when the soil is light or loose, chains of
sand-hills are formed by the prevailing winds. Some of these are kept
stationary by quick-growing vegetation, while others are constantly
shifting. The shifting sandhill is, however, fast disappearing in
consequence of the advances of pastoral industry; for, and by, which they
are becoming fixed by herbaceous growth.
The tosca and clay subsoils have in many parts occasioned the formation
of lagoons and swamps; the waters of which are, usually, at least
brackish and often salt. A white or grey efflorescence seen in these
swamps is locally called saltpetre, but in fact it only contains slight
traces of nitre.
Towards the extreme North of the Province of Entre Rios and the Republic
of Uruguay red soil heralds one’s approach to subtropical or tropical
vegetation.