400 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



the best lands that we have in this or any other state, and it is de- 

 voted almost exclusively to grazing and to live stock production. It is 

 true that they are increasing the area under cultivation, and increasing 

 the output of their grain crops from year to year; nevertheless, the 

 large business there is the cattle and sheep business, and that is a'.most 

 exclusively a grazing industry rather than a feeding industry. Central 

 Argentina has a mild winter climate, and they are able to graze cattle, 

 jiheep and other live stock out in the open with but very little if any 

 shelter the year around; and under conditions of normal rainfall they 

 are able to ship out of their pastures fine beef and mutton every month 

 in the year. 



To be sure, they have their diificultie^ and drawbacks to contend 

 with, the same as we have. In the first place, their range country, 

 to which I have referred, is a better watered country than most of the 

 so-called range country in the United States. They have a fair amount 

 of rainfall, comparing quite closely to that of the Mississippi valley. 

 Sometimes it is not so well distributed. They have very severe periods 

 of drouth. During the past season, they experienced what was said to 

 be the worst one in thirty years — practically no rainfall in some sec- 

 tions of central and northern Argentina from April to November; and 

 that was their winter, a time when they are dependent upon their pas- 

 tures to carry over their stock. As a rc-ult, there were a great many 

 scant pastures and considerable shortage of feed, resulting in a loss 

 in the gains of flesh of live stock, and some deaths among the animals. 

 They are also subject to the attacks of the locust, which is somewhat 

 like the grasshopper scourges that we used to have, sweeping every- 

 thing before them over the limited area which they infest. But I pre- 

 sume they suffer more seriously from the drouths than any other one 

 cause. Of course, they told us that the drouth they were experiencing 

 was unusual; that they have not had anything like it in thirty y^ars. 

 They are somewhat like some other famous regions in this respect, 

 and as one noted traveler said, "The mo:t common thing in the world 

 is unusual weather," and you find it in every country, I presume. 



Their live stock business has been the basis of the prosperity of 

 that country. The great fortunes have been made from cattle and 

 sheep and lands, and agriculture is secondary in importance. They do 

 not depend upon cultivating a large area. A good deal of this range or 

 pasture land which is now enclosed is still in the wild grasses, and 

 with a fair amount of rainfall and the mild winter which they have — it 

 seldom being cold enough to freeze ice in their open water tanks out 

 in these big pastures — they are able to graze successfully the year 

 around. 



But the ideal grazing and beef and mutton-making conditions come, 

 not from the native grasses, but from the land which has been under 

 cultivation for a few years, and put back into alfalfa; and when their 

 lands of that kind are put into these alfalfa pastures, they afford the 

 very best pasturage conditions that I have ever seen in any country; 

 and, taken together with their mild climate, I doubt if there is a more 



