Visits with Farmers of 



S, America 



A Chilean houaewiie does her baking in 

 an outside mud oven, A fire is built in- 

 side the oven to heat it up. and then 

 coals are raked out and the douc-h is put 

 into it to bake. 



By JOHN STROHM 



Managing Editor, Prairie Farmer. * 



and author of the new book, 

 "I Lived with Latin Americans" 



VISITS with farm families who live in 

 South and Central America would 

 make any Illinois Farm Bureau member 

 swear that there's no place like "Home 

 Sweet Home." 



Down in Mexico, I visited Pablo's 

 home. He called his hut a "rancho", al- 

 though I'm afraid an Illinois farmer 

 wouldn't have used it as a hog house. 

 He had rolled rocks together for the 

 walls and, with a few poles, attached a 

 roof of straw. Windows and chimneys 

 were conspicuous by their absence; the 

 floor was of dirt. Pablo and Maria, 

 his wife, and their five children lived 

 in this one-room house. Frequently, the 

 chickens and pigs wandered in through 

 the open hole that served as a door. 



In the 20 republics of Latin America, 

 1 found millions of homes like Pablo's. 



TTie Latin American housewife has a 

 hard time. In Ecuador, I visited another 

 farm home — typical of that country — 

 and saw the housewife cooking over an 

 open fire at one end of the one- room 

 house. There was no chimney so the 

 smoke was so thick that it reminded me 

 of the smokehouse back on the farm. She 

 cooked in utensils of stone or iron, and 

 a few were made from common gourds. 



The housewife works in the field when 

 there's work to do and she does much 

 of the marketing. I've seen women pile 

 65 pounds of fruits or grain in baskets, 

 balance the baskets on their heads, and 

 then stride five to fifteen miles, bare- 

 footed, to the village market. Many of 

 these women spin cotton into thread 

 and weave their own cloth on crude, 

 homemade looms. In the humblest hut, 

 I've seen women weaving gorgeous fab- 

 rics which are sold in such exclusive de- 

 partment stores as Marshall Field's in 

 Chicago. 



The wooden plow is standard equip- 

 ment, and the only iron part about it is 

 the point. Oxen furnish horsepower. 

 Cattle are expected to 'be triple-threat 

 breeds — to furnish meat, milk, and 

 power. (Only Argentina has many 

 horses, and there a farmer with 160 crop 

 acres will have 40 horses. They use eight 



There may be a com and feed shortage 

 in the Middle West, but not in Argentina. 

 Incidentally, their com cribs arc made 

 from stalks of cane as you can see by this 

 picture. 



where we would use four, and they turn 

 them out at noon for eight more — pri- 

 marily, because about the only feed a 

 horse has is what it picks up along the 

 road.) 



Farm Bureau .■* No, with three or four 

 exceptions, there are no farm organiza- 

 tions in these countries. And there are 

 no 4-H Club or Future Farmers chapters. 

 In many of the countries, if the boys and 

 girls get to go to school three or four 

 years, they are lucky. 



Of course, some countries are progres- 

 sive. Argentina, for instance. Because of 

 a fine climate and soil, cattlemen can put 

 1 1 00 pound prime steers on the market 

 in from 24 to 30 months. And these 

 steers do not get a pound of grain. They 

 graze outside 12 months of the year. 

 They run on alfalfa pasture, and are 

 fattened on rye pasture and sorghum. 

 Incidentally, prime beef in 1941 was sell- 

 ing for about 3^ cents a pound. 



Argentina knows how to grow grain, 

 too. I saw corn fields that had grown 25 

 crops in succession without a speck of 

 fertilizer. And it was producing 50 

 bushels to the acre from open pollinated 

 seed. But, all is not well on the pampas. 

 Corn and wheat, because of the shipping 

 shortage, has backed up on the farms. 

 The Argentines are now burning wheat 

 and corn for fuel. They have to import 

 all of their coal in Argentina, but they 

 have corn and wheat to burn. 



Certain sections of other countries are 

 progressive agriculturally, but, in the 

 main, methods are pretty primitive. Of 

 course, these farming cousins of ours 



south of the border are working under 

 tremendous handicaps: Their ancestors 

 came over looking for gold and glory, 

 looked down upon farming, and, as a 

 result, set a bad example. They have 

 mountains and jungles which make trans- 

 portation difficult. In certain sections of 

 the Amazon jungle, Indians still use 

 blowguns to shoot poison darts. And 

 mountains, four miles high, make road 

 building extremely difficult. Several of 

 these countries have a great many more 

 Indians than whites, and, finally, many 

 of these countries lack the size and wealth 

 to push programs of education, health 

 and road building. 



Any sound policy towards Latin Amer- 

 ica must be based on a sympathetic but 

 realistic analysis of farm people and their 

 agricultural resources. This is the founda- 

 tion on which their progress must be 

 built. 



Yes, after seeing Latin America, I've 

 decided that we don't quite realize just 

 how good God is to Illinois. 



26 



L A. A. RECORD 



