144 



CULTIVATION OF CEREALS IN ARGENTINA. [Sept. 1896. 



♦extended in Argentina would not have been possible if the 

 land, in place of grass, had been covered with trees or even 

 bush. The absence of timber for building or fuel is of no 

 consequence. The material for constructing the first hut is 

 obtained from the soil, whether in the form of turf or of 

 mud, which is either burnt or dried to bricks. The long, tough 

 grass of the pampas serves as a roof, which makes a warm house 

 in winter and a cool one in summer. For heating there are 

 either the woody stems of a large umbellif er (bisnaga), or, where 

 this bush does not grow, the dried dung of the domestic animals, 

 which forms a fuel of excellent heating properties. 



The separation of the grasses into pasto tierno, or pasture with 

 tender soft grasses, and pasto fuerte, or hard grasses, is of 

 importance in Argentine agriculture. The first is much more 

 nourishing and easily digestible, the other endures frost and 

 drought better. While horses and cattle thrive on both kinds, 

 the hard grasses are completely unsuitable for sheep. By long 

 feeding with cattle, however, the hard sorts gradually disappear, 

 and give place to the softer grasses and clover which are 

 relished by sheep. Agriculture has attained its greatest develop- 

 ment almost exclusively where the pasto fuerte forms the natural 

 vegetation ; that is, in Santa Fe, Cordoba, Entre Rios, and the 

 w^est and south of Buenos Ay res (province), whereas in the east 

 of the latter province, where the grass is pasto tierno, there 

 is practically no wheat cultivation, notwithstanding the favour- 

 able position of the region for home and foreign markets, and in 

 spite of its fertile soil. 



This feature appears to be due to two reasons, one technical 

 and the other economic. Lands with pasto fuerte are by climate 

 &nd soil clearly better adapted to wheat than those with pasto 

 tierno, the climate of which is apparently too damp and the soil 

 too luxuriant, and apt to favour too much the formation of straw 

 to the detriment of the grain. An economic cause is to be found 

 in the fact that the sheep-breeding pursued on pasto tierno 

 yields a very much better profit to the estanciero than the cattle 

 and horse-breeding of the pasto fuerte, and that hence the 

 necessity of letting plots of their land to wheat-growing colonists 

 in order to make it more valuable was not so great with 

 sheep-breeders. 



Among the disadvantages with which the wheat-grower in 

 • Argentina has to cope are locusts, drought, hail, and rain, but 

 these have not, hitherto, seriously affected the competition of 

 that country in the world's wheat market. Rust is not regarded 

 with apprehension in Argentina, because it rarely appears, 

 and when it does it attacks hardly anything beyond the leaves, 

 and those only at a stage of growth when the ripening of the 

 grain no longer requires their co-operation. 



