THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 603 



THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



THE CATTLE INDUSTRY OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



REPORT BY CONSUL BAKER, OF BUENOS AYRES. 







I have to acknowledge the receipt of the circular of the Department 

 of State, dated the 18th of July last, asking information relative to the 

 breeding-cattle of the different stock-growing countries of the world, 

 and annexing a series of forms to be filled with details in regard to 

 breeds, size, weight, average product of milk, butter, cheese, meat, &c., 

 together with topography and conditions of climate, quality of soil, 

 kinds of cultivated grasses, and methods of handling, &c., in the locali- 

 ties where they are raised, these reports being requested, with a view to 

 the importation of new breeds into the United States for the purpose 

 of improving our own stock. 



In reply I have to state that the information sought has no applica- 

 tion whatever to the Argentine Republic, since there are no breeds here 

 which it would be worth while to import into the United States. The 

 raising of cattle is, next to wool-growing, the most important industry 

 in this country, but the stock is exclusively crcole, and, so far as the 

 topics suggested in the circular are concerned, there is nothing what- 

 ever to communicate which would be of any use to the stock-breeders at 

 home. 



It may seem paradoxical, yet it is true that while the Argentine Re- 

 public contains about 12,000,000 of horned cattle, it produces neither 

 milk, butter, nor cheese, while the beef itself is, generally speaking, so 

 inferior, at least in this part of the country, as to be the subject of uni- 

 versal execration. Such a thing as a dairy farm is unknown ; such a 

 thing as butter-making, in the true sense of the word, is a myth; such 

 a thing as a cheese-factory, if we except a cheap curd produced in Goya, 

 has never been attempted. In this immediate neighborhood you may 

 or you may not find milk enough for your coffee, but not elsewhere. 

 Nobody, with rare exceptions, keeps a milch cow. Butter, if it is used at 

 all, has until very recently been brought from Italy. Of late years, an 

 unsalted butter, the work of Spanish Basques settled near Buenos Ayres, 

 has been finding its way to market, but it is nothing more than coagu- 

 lated cream, while the cheese comes mostly from England or Germany. 

 Not long ago I visited an estancia stocked with 15,000 cattle, and we 

 did not have a mouthful of butter for our bread, while our coflee was 

 seasoned with condensed milk from Illinois. 



ARGENTINE CATTLE RAISED EXCLUSIVELY FOR SLAUGHTER. 



Cattle have never been raised in the Argentine Republic, either for 

 the milk, butter, or cheese they might produce, but exclusively for 

 slaughter; and their only product, for export entirely, is hides, horns, 

 bones, sinews, and a kind of jerked beef ( charqui) which finds a market 

 in Brazil and Cuba for the slaves. The science of husbandry is without 

 any development in the Argentine Republic. During all the years which 

 have elapsed since its conquest by the Spaniards, no attention what- 



