SIBERIA 



Siberia was, prior to the war, advancing as an important 

 factor in live-stock production. Petropavlovsk, on the trans- 

 Sibeiian railway, was the centre of an immense cattle-breeding 

 district, and consignments of beef have been made from that 

 region. The number of cattle there rose from 360,000 in 1903 

 to 770,000 in 1909, and subsequently the advance has con- 

 tinued. Mutton will also be largely exported when the new 

 ways of communication provide means of tapping the great 

 outlying pasture lands, and as a proof of their importance the 

 official returns show 2,000,000 sheep in Kirghiz Steppes, and 

 1,300,000 sheep in Akmolinsk, both areas being capable of 

 greater development. In respect to such progress, however, 

 the trans-Siberian railway, whilst traversing a rich pastoral 

 zone, leaves some hundreds of miles to the south, said to be 

 the most fertile lands of Siberia. The cattle-breeding industry 

 there awaits the impulse of railway communication and 

 settled government. Pig-breeding is of special importance, 

 thanks to cheap and abundant food supplied by dairies in 

 the Kurgan district, whence large quantities of bacon and 

 pork are exported annually ; but the inadequacy of railway 

 transit prevents, for the present, an extension of that trade. 



An English firm has erected meat works at Barawei. Re- 

 frigerators have been erected at Semipalatinsk, and works are 

 contemplated at Omsk. Stock and game are abundant and 

 cheap, and the climate is favourable for the frozen meat trade, 

 but what effect the last four years have had remains to be seen ; 

 however, new blood may make things progress after the war 

 is over. 



The vast region of Asiatic Russia is practically a new country 

 in cattle-raising, and has possibilities too numerous to be esti- 

 mated. From 1905 to 1911 the number of cattle increased 

 from 5,600,000 to 14,700,000. Russia was proposing to'gojui 



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