34— THE REALM OF ALFALFA. 

 By S. Hodder, F.R.C.T. 



It may perhaps afford some guarantee that more than a mere 

 cursory attention has been devoted to the subject of these notes, if I 

 am permitted to explain that for more than thirteen years I was 

 intimately associated with the development of agriculture in Minnesota 

 and Argentina ; moreover, it was mainly due to experience gained in 

 the former country that I was entrusted with the organising of the 

 first authorised system of cereal inspection, and the introducing of the 

 most approved methods and appliances for transporting the cereal 

 crops of the River Plate. These facts are only mentioned here to 

 show that any views hereafter submitted, whether right or wrong, are 

 based on experience acquired under conditions not unfavourable to 

 obtaining trustworthy information and forming careful judgments. 



The great question to be determined in the development of the 

 agricultural resources of new countries, lies in the judicious selection 

 of crops to meet the special circumstances of the environment ; and 

 in modern times it has been generally recognised that where open 

 prairies constitute the dominant feature in the topography of the 

 country, the winning over of the soil from a state of wildness can 

 be best and most profitably achieved by the cultivation of cereals 

 on a large scale. There is no country in the world perhaps possess- 

 ing so vast an area of rich lands of this description as the Argeritine 

 Republic. Of the three provinces of Buenos Aires, Cordoba, and 

 Santa Fe, comprising in the aggregate an area of 234,000 square 

 miles, or 150,000,000 English acres, more than half of each of the 

 former, and almost the entire province of Santa Fe, present a surface 

 so uniformly level that Darwin records his impressions of this 

 phenomenon in the statement, " Scarcely anything which travellers 

 have written about its extreme flatness can be considered as exaggera- 

 tion." This particular region is popularly known as the " Great 

 Pampa " of South America, and at the commencement of this year 

 presented the unparalleled feature of having 4,389,100 acres in which 

 alfalfa was growing, unassisted by irrigation, stamping the country 

 with the eminent purpose which Nature undoubtedly intended her 

 to fulfil. Besides these three provinces, Argentina embraces a 

 further area of 800,000 square miles, divided into twenty provinces 

 and territories, which are for the most part mountainous, and enjoy 

 a diversity of climates and geological formations. 



For the purpose of illustrating from an economic as well as a 

 practical point of view, how inseparably the growing of cereals and 

 alfalfa are linked together, it is necessary here to make a slight 

 digression, and as we proceed the vital importance of this combina- 

 tion will appear with increasing distinctness. In the early eighties, 

 when the prairies of the Red River Valley and the Great North West 

 came under notice as cereal-producing areas, farms of 5,000 acres 

 sown with wheat were by no means uncommon. The " Dalrymple 

 Farm " at Fargo, boasted of as being the largest wheat farm in the 

 world, had under cultivation about 56,000 acres. A decade later 

 the pampas of Argentina furnished numerous examples of even still 



