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f ects in this country, and unless the supposed good years 

 have been more apparently good than actually profitable 

 it is difficult to conciliate the present atmosphere of agri- 

 cultural calamity with years of undisturbed prosperity. 



If one year with diminished facilities for disposing 

 of an excellent crop threatens to annihilate all the gain 

 -of the previous years, I venture to suggest that in truth 

 our rural prosperity has been fictitious, inasmuch as one 

 mishap can bring down the whole house about our ears. 



The chief sufferer, if we may term suffering the com- 

 parative prosperity which our farmers have enjoyed, 

 has again been the cereal farmer the chacarero whose 

 sufferings, five years ago, were to be relieved for ever 

 by the war. 



Despite the high prices, despite the huge demand, 

 and despite excellent harvest he is still where he was 

 before 



During the last decade agriculture has spread con- 

 tinually, although chronic distress characterised the years 

 immediately preceding the war : then when the war came, 

 all this was to be remedied, but the war has come and 

 gone and still we have not disposed of our bugbear. 



Before the war the distress was attributed to the 

 bad methods in vogue, both among farmers and commer- 

 cial men handling the products of the farm. Is the same' 

 cause to be attributed to the distress to-day ? 



The war then has not established once and for all the 

 prosperity of our farmer, it has only saved him from 

 going further back ; it has brought no permanent results, 

 it has increased our prices but not our profits, it has given 

 a fictitious air of bustle and movement, and after the 

 spur of a passing moment we are rapidly drifting back 

 past where we were before. 



Does the future hold out any brighter prospect than 

 it did five years ago? Decidedly not; for surely if the 

 times preceding the war were unsatisfactory, and only 

 the abnormally favourable conditions of a war could put 

 our farmer on his feet (and this it has been unable to do) 

 what then are the favourable events we must look for- 

 ward to? 



To a bad year or two, weather and prices, may be 

 attributed an occasional setback, and pass unperceiv- 

 ed in the general run of ups and downs. But in the past 

 our agricultural distress was not attributed, any more 

 than the present depression can be attributed, to this 

 cause. Instead of an epoch of depression following a 

 period of bad times we have one in the middle of an era 

 of prosperity, in certainly the most favourable period 

 ever registered in the annals of Argentine farming. 



