Part IV: Miscellaneous 



ARGENTINA. 



MISCEIvIvANEOUS NEWS. 



The extension of home colonisation. — As we have had occasion 

 to observe in former articles in this Bulletin (i), the chief problem of 

 Argentine agricultural economics has always been that of colonisation: 

 the subdivision of farms, the establishment of the colonist on the land 

 he cultivates, in one word, the increase of the numbers in the phalanx 

 of peasant farmers. 



The governing classes understand that the extraordinary develop- 

 ment of agricviltural production in the last twenty years is rather due to 

 the progressive exploitation of new territories than to a continuous work 

 of colonisation and a land regime such as might ensure the prosperity of agri- 

 culture together with the welfare of the farmers. One of the chief causes 

 of the agrarian agitations to be deplored in the principal agricultural 

 districts of the Republic is to be found, writes the Minister of Agriculture in 

 an official document, in the fact that the very great majority of the Argentine 

 farmers are tenant farmers or metayers on land owned by private indi- 

 viduals or colonisation undertakings. In recent times we have seen the 

 Government and Parliament, therefore, devoting themselves with renewed 

 vigour to the study of the best means for encouraging the development 

 of agricultural holdings and seconding it by the encouragement of co- 

 operative association (2). Several bills on the subject are awaiting discuss- 

 ion; we shall here give a short account of an important one introduced 

 by the Government and a law recently passed in the Province of Cordoba. 



(i) See especially, in the number for October, 1913, the article " Some Indications of 

 the Economic and Agricultural Progress of Argentina. " 



(2) With regard to co-operation, see the article " The Co-operative Movement in Ar- 

 gentine Agriculture", in the number of this Bulletin for December, 191 3. 



