36 



RECENT FEATURES IN ARGENTINA'S 

 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. 



The Argentine estanciero has some reason to reflect upon the 

 sweet usefulness of adversity. It was the crisis of 1890 that 

 drove him from dreams of speculation "back to the land." It 

 was the lack of capital that induced him to call in the colonist 

 to convert his rough western lands into alfalfa paddocks, and by 

 making agriculture his handmaiden to become, perhaps uncon- 

 sciously, a contributor to Argentina's production of wheat y 

 maize and linseed. It was the outbreak of foot-and-mouth 

 disease among his herds, and the resultant closure of the British 

 ports to his live stock, that forced upon him the profitableness of 

 the cow for dairy produce. However related these develop- 

 ments may be to the ordinary sequence of progress, they seem 

 to have assumed their most vigorous manifestation when events 

 appeared least propitious to their encouragement. 



At the present time, more than an ordinary interest 

 has arisen in the pastoral resources of the country. The 

 increasing local demand in the United States, which has already 

 outstripped its meat production if the imports of live stores from 

 Canada and Mexico are charged to the debit side ; the lament- 

 able drought in Australia ; and the augmented consumption of 

 meat per unit of population in the United Kingdom, combine 

 to attract the attention of this country to Argentina as a source 

 of supply. At such a time a brief review of the stage of agri- 

 cultural production at which Argentina has arrived is not 

 inopportune. 



It is perhaps worthy of note that the neighbouring republic of 

 Uruguay, whose present capital of live stock is twenty-eight 

 million sheep and six million cattle, cannot fail to become an 

 important supplier of food-stuffs for Europe in the near future. 

 The sheep stock is at present chiefly merino, and the cattle are 



