102 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



were already under a monopoly with the packing houses they had then 

 — a worse monopoly than they have had since — and strange as it may 

 seem they feel very kindly toward the packers now. Prices have 

 increased from 100 to 150 per cent since the packers have gone in there 

 and they have a market for the cheaper animals which formerly they 

 couldn't dispose of at all. 



It is not very long ago, twenty or thirty years, that in some parts 

 of the country they were killing and slaughtering those cattle for their 

 hides, and the hides weren't worth very much, either. Now they are 

 getting prices that compare favorably with prices that we are getting 

 here, although they are not quite so high, but at that the prices are on 

 a very profitable basis. Those men are cattlemen v/ho appreciate the 

 value of the packing industry. It is the great business of that whole 

 country and naturally they take great interest in it and everything is 

 done to make it profitable and make the conditions favorable for pro- 

 duction. The corn industry has only come into existence in comparatively 

 recent years, because originally this was a grazing and not a farming 

 country. The farming is done in a very loose and haphazard way, and 

 they have not given anything like the attention to the methods of cul- 

 tivation that has been given to the improvement of their live stock. 

 It has been taken up as incidental to the main business, and as prices 

 have advanced they have put more and more under cultivation until 

 agriculture is now assuming quite sizeable proportions. They put under 

 cultivation some of this raw land for the purpose of raising a few crops 

 and then put it into alfalfa and feed it to their cattle. 



The output during the past ten years, from 1903 to 1913, is interesting. 

 The export of corn during that time, in 1903 was 82,000,000 bushels, and 

 in 1913 the export of corn was 189,000,000 bushels; wheat 19,000,000 

 bushels in 1903 and 103,000,000 bushels in 1913; of flax seed it was 22,- 

 000,000 bushels in 1903 and 49,000,000 bushels in -1913; oats 2,000,000 

 bushels in 1903 and 61,000,000 bushels in 1913. So you can see what 

 a rapid increase there has been in the ten-year period. Then years 

 previous to 1903 there was scarcely enough produced and exported to take 

 into account, but if they continue to develop at the rate they are now 

 going, there will be a very large export production of corn, wheat, oats 

 and flax seed, but particularly corn, wheat and flax seed. Argentine has 

 1,200,000 tons of wheat in storage on account of lack of boat space, and 

 that is only a part of their product. That will probably be increased, 

 and increased quite rapidly. A large part of what they produce in the 

 way of grain is exported because they have only a small population, 

 so that probably four-fifths of the grain they produce will be available 

 for export. That will continue to be the case for a number of years, 

 until their population consumes much more than it does now. There 

 are only 8,000,000 people in the entire Argentine Republic, with 1,800,000 

 of that number living in the city of Buenos Aires, leaving only about 

 6,000,000 people for the rest of the republic, so you can see that the 

 city of Buenos Aires is the great cosmopolitan center not only of the 

 Argentine but of the whole country. 



