Advantages in Agricultural Production. 
255 
putting her in India’s place in succession to America and 
Russia. According to the Buenos Ayres Standard , the wheat 
area has risen from 120,000 acres in 1850 to 6,100,000 acres 
in 1893, while as recently as 1880 it was only 490,000 acres, 
and in 1890 no more than 2,800,000 acres. Seeing that this is 
the only country in the world in which any considerable increase 
in wheat growing has taken place since 1880, it is obvious that 
Argentina possesses peculiar advantages of one kind or another. 
It is w r orth while, then, to inquire what they are. 
In the first place, a practically unlimited area of cheap land, 
a good deal of which is very fertile, must be noticed ; but that 
this fertility is neutralised by climate, or by climate and locusts 
together, is obvious from the fact that the average yield in an 
exceptionally good harvest, that of 1893, was represented as only 
10^ bushels per acre. The authority named above put it at 13 
bushels, but only by making the strange mistake of converting 
weight into measure at the rate of 50 lb., instead of 60 lb., per 
bushel. The estimate, probably much exaggerated, was 
1.920.000 short tons (of 2,000 lb.), or 64,000,000 bushels from 
6.100.000 acres, which will work out at barely 104 bushels an 
acre. 
What, then, are the advantages ? First, there is the tre- 
mendous gold premium, which has frequently been over 200 
percent., and occasionally over 300 per cent. Mr. Gastrell, of Her 
Majesty’s Legation at Buenos Ayres, in a very interesting re- 
port on the agricultural condition of the Argentine Republic, 
written last June, says : — 
During the last five years the continually rising gold premium made 
wheat growing unusually remunerative. "Wheat, whether sold locally or 
for export, naturally fetched a price based on its gold value in European 
markets, which price meant a great deal in depreciated paper currency, in 
which the wheat grower paid all his outlay, except for agricultural instru- 
ments and a few other articles, which were paid for at gold rates. His 
wages and expenditure bemg consequently' so much less when converted 
to gold, his profits were therefore considerably higher than in former 
years. Again, the high gold premium enabled persons having gold to 
buy wheat lands cheaply, for their value in depreciated paper dollars 
remained much the same. A great impetus was thus given to wheat 
cultivation, and a demand created for labour and capital to still further 
increase its area. 
Another advantage is the level surface of almost the entire 
country, which renders transport easy and comparatively cheap 
wherever there are roads or railways. The absence of forests, 
too, renders the expense of breaking up fresh land small, 
though, for that matter, the lack of fuel is a disadvantage, and 
one that causes rail rates to be higher than otherwise would 
be the case. 
