AGRICULTURAL SURVEY OF SOUTH AMERICA 41 
and the number of goats will remain practically stationary in future. 
They subsist under rather severe conditions of scanty pasturage and 
water supply, and a topography unsuited for other forms of livestock 
or agriculture. It is not likely, therefore, that the goat-raising 
industry of Argentina will be materially affected by changes that 
other industries may undergo. 
Swine 
Swine are not popular in Argentina. They require too much feed 
and too much attention and manual labor to compete with either 
beef cattle or sheep in a country of large estates, underpopulated, 
and with less than 8 per cent of the total area in cultivation. The 
census figures show that there are fewer swine in Argentina than any 
other kind of domestic animal and that the number has not increased 
since 1908, but actually decreased from 2,900,585 in 1914, to 1,436,638 
in 1922. 
The practice of pasturing swine on alfalfa and of hogging down 
corn is not yet generally known or practiced in Argentina, although 
the economy and profitableness of these methods have been fully 
demonstrated on a large scale on one group of ranches in the Provinca 
of Buenos Aires, where American varieties of corn and hogs are grown 
on the same system as that followed on some of the larger farms in 
Illinois and Iowa. With increase in population, subdivision of the 
large estates and increased production of corn and other feed in the 
strictly agricultural region, great expansion in the production of 
swine in Argentina may be expected. 
Viewing the livestock industry as a whole, the statistics show that 
the number of domestic animals, especially cattle, sheep, and horses, 
increased greatly following the fencing of the Pampa country and the 
subjugation of the Indians and other marauders in the last half 
century. During this period, the quality of the livestock was 
freatly improved by the introduction of purebred sires from abroad, 
t is said that the Argentine breeders pay the highest prices in the 
world for prize purebred animals. Many of the estancias are 
princely estates, models of their kind not only for the uniformly high 
grade of the purebred livestock produced by them (fig. 8) , but for their 
equipment, organization, business management, and modern methods. 
The livestock exposition held annually at Buenos Aires is surpassed 
by few or none in the world for the number and quality of the pure- 
bred animals on exhibition and the nation-wide interest displayed 
in them. 
The livestock industry of Argentina has the advantage of large 
areas of rich soil, excellent pasturage, a winter climate so mild as 
not to require artificial shelter or feed, relatively cheap land and labor, 
and nearness to seaport (fig. 9), but with the disadvantage of a 
relatively small population, limited domestic consumption, and high 
ocean freight rates to distant markets. The future of the livestock 
industry in Argentina will be influenced largely by increase in popula- 
tion, subdivision of large estates, and the expansion of agriculture, 
as well as by the trend of future foreign demand and prices. 
